Update: Marketing Tactic #1: Sponsorshippin’

Whew.  What a week.  This whole Blog/Sponsorshippin/running a cooler company by myself thing is tiring!

It has been a heck of a ride this week, though, and all of it good.  Punchline:  I am TOTALLY into the whole sponsorship scene.  Plus, tons of extras that have come my way as a result of reaching out through CoolerNotes and offering to sponsor some of the good people in the Kayak Fishing community.  In fact, the extras are what are so surprising and they really speak to the power of social media / online-based marketing.

Let’s recap:

Sponsorships. As I reported a few days ago, Joe Cambria at KayakFishingMagazine.net (which rocks) suggested that I sponsor a few kayak fishing tournaments to promote the IceMule.  Ok – seems like a lot of work, but…OK.  So, I sat down, grabbed the tourney calendar on KayakFishingMag’s site, jumped to each event organizer’s site, found the contact info and sent each tournament director an email asking if they had any sponsorship opportunities for a young, growing cooler company with an extremely limited marketing budget.  I even suggested that I could sponsor without paying but by providing IceMules as prizes or for raffles.

I contacted 7 groups, some that run individual tournaments, some that run a series of 5 or 10 or more events.  Within 24 hours (in some cases, within a few minutes) 5 of the 7 had contacted me back.  EVERY ONE was excited about our participation.  Of these 5, I have already committed to 4 and all but one will be unpaid sponsorships.  I fully expect to hear from the others soon.

These four are listed below (I’ll include an event calendar on CoolerNotes.com and IceMuleCooler.com soon) – go to their site & check them out.  In some cases, the tournaments support worthy charities so if you’re so inclined drop them a check, I’m sure they would appreciate it.

Kayak Fishing ClassicS Series

Kayak Fishing Trail

Carolina Yakfish Tournament Series

7th Annual Jacksonville Kayak Fishing Classic

And – here is the first extra of the week…my (beautiful) wife Meg and I invited some friends over for dinner this past Saturday night.  One friend, Lisa, mentioned that she didn’t know that the IceMule was my product (she had seen it promoted on Facebook) until she got a note I posted on Facebook about CoolerNotes.com.  So, we got to talking about it and she mentioned that her son was playing in an enormous Lacrosse tournament held in Fort Mill, SC this summer.  She’s one of the event organizers and thought that the IceMule would be a great sponsor.  I agreed.

Go check it out:  Catawba Classic Lacrosse Tournament

What is interesting is how easy this is (that said, several of my weekends just got booked!) and how much exposure I’ll get.  I estimate that – just from participants and guests, the IceMule will be seen – in context – by over 3,000 people.  I’ll pay (all expenses in, including product value) about $2 per.  I’m paying up to that much for certain Adwords right now and somehow I think that seeing an IceMule in action will be a heckofa lot more impressive than clicking a link.  But that’s just the surface – as one of the tournament media kits pointed out, the community of anglers in these areas (NC – GA – FL) is very large but very interconnected.  In GA alone there are almost 1 million fishermen, and they all will know about the kayak tournaments there (or even know someone who competed).  Plus, each tournament has well-trafficked websites where my logo will appear, plus emails, newsletters and, in some cases, magazines.  The reach can be staggering.

So – that is what I did Sunday and Monday.

Product Reviews. Not only will I get great exposure from the sponsorships but – extra #2 – KayakFishingMagazine.net just posted a short review, pic and link to IceMuleCooler.com on their site TODAY.  This is just beyond cool for me.  Check it out! Kayak Fishing Magazine.net IceMule Review

And – one of the tournament directors offered to review it for another magazine (details to follow).

Sales. Another extra - Up 300% so far this week.  Not bad.

So, there you go.  A little social media, a bit of hustle, and awesome people and new partners and you’ve got yourself a perfect week.

Stay Cool gang!

James