Adding Local Sponsorships to Your Marketing Strategy

Are you sponsoring any local events or organizations? 

It’s a great way to raise your business’s brand awareness and send traffic to your website.

Your brand awareness is important.  This is especially true for local businesses.

For the past 5 years I’ve been a sponsor of the Rescue Dog Games.  It’s a cause that I’m passionate about and it also helps get me and Your Biz Watchdog out in front of the community. 

Not only do they have my logo on their website, but it links back to my website.  The Rescue Dog Games has online challenges for everyone to participate in virtually from October 1^st – 16^th and then the in-person event, Rescue Dog Games, on October 16^th in Piedmont Park.

I’ll be getting social media coverage from Rescue Dog Games prior to the event for the online challenges I’m sponsoring and for the event sponsorship on game day.

Now for the Technical Part – NoFollow Links

If you are getting links to your website in exchange for something of value, like paying for a sponsorship, Google wants to know about it.    

By identifying these links on the sponsors website as “nofollow”, Google understands that money or something of value changed hands and does not give your site the normal “SEO Link Juice” that it otherwise would.

Not including this “nofollow” attribute for a sponsorship is against Google Guidelines and could get your site banned from Google!  The easiest way to handle it is to have your website maintenance company create the code for you to provide to the sponsor to use. 

These links are still important for your business, even though you aren’t getting the “SEO Link Juice” from them.  They’re helping your brand awareness and driving traffic to your website.

What Local Sponsorships Can You Look For?

Don’t simply sponsor an organization or event because you think it will be good for PR.  Start off by picking something that means something to you or an employee.  Do you or an employee enjoy volunteering for a certain organization? That’s a good place to start. 

I sponsor and help the Rescue Dog Games and also a local nonprofit, Pawsitive Supporters, that offers low cost spay and neuter to help decrease the number of homeless pets in Cobb County, Georgia. 

What groups and nonprofits do you enjoy volunteering with in your spare time? Start there first.

Of course, there are some instances that you can tell are just a good fit.  If you’re a chiropractor, you may want to sponsor some local sports clubs. Then when the team has aches and pains, you will be top of mind and they will come to you for an adjustment.

It’s Not Always About Rank

Businesses often want to simply “rank” online, but sometimes they miss the big picture. 

Are those rankings converting to customers?  Brand awareness and an increase in traffic from local sponsorships may be the edge you are looking for to help with your Local Marketing Strategy.