How to get sponsors for our event? - VaynerWorld Q&A

hi my name's um cat I'm from blogtacular we're blogtacular on Twitter we're a UK blog conference um we're working at the moment on our first event and one of our challenges is convincing companies that they want to sponsor as they want to invest in what we're doing how do we help them make that leap understand that what they're investing in is that early platform involvement and that it will be exponential for their brand two ways one you listen so you actually go to them and ask them what they want to get out of it I mean putting on events you know this with this people just start going to where they think the brands or organizations that should put dollars into them without knowing if they even believe in event marketing might not even be your event they might have decided theoretically that they don't believe in event marketing or they've allocated dollars somewhere else so the biggest problem with salespeople is they don't listen so the first thing you need to do is ask questions is this even theoretically because the second they say yes now you can compare it to where they put their dollars elsewhere the best way to get dollars is to compare yourself to something else they've done now if you're in your first year the things they've done are more established they're safer right the thing you need to do is paint them a picture and the picture you need to paint them is reverse engineering the most successful events ever and so you should show them and you should do the homework on how the first South by Southwest actually happened how the first lay web happened and what you'll find out if you do the first delay web is that the early sponsors get a discount today and are saving themselves a for you need to sell them a picture first ask questions find out it's even feasible second when you see what happens is when you ask questions you get data when they say yeah and then you go which conferences they go these five then you go watch what they do and you say listen Timmy you sponsored ukuk expo. you know this and all they did for you was throw your logo up here here's what I'll do for you I mean there's ways but you need to reverse engineer from the actual question got it I just want to learn something as well being an events guy so you're you have a conference that pushes blogging or the benefits of that is that right it's on essentially it's um a business conference for people whose business is blogging so it's for blogging creatives people who blog about design um creative people who have real show them what's going on with blog world in the US it's a humongous event it's going on June 4th January 4th to the 6th in Las Vegas show them the brands that are involved show them Google and see what blog World looked like 6 years ago cuz I can tell you what it looked like it was small now it's 80 times the size paint a historical picture but see my question off the back of that is to just to you just so I understand when you say how do I convince people what do you fundamentally want out of it like honestly like do you just want you if you want money at the end of it no I mean we want it to work on three levels for us as a business the businesses we work for and we want it to be amazing for our attendees we don't want to Short change them so we want to create Partnerships between the brands and the attendees so that they can story tell so that their blog Outreach is elegant and um it's you want to edate by creative bloggers so that they're doing something also something else there's also something else you should do you should go on my YouTube page and watch the video where I taught people how to get advertisers on their blog yeah where I just picked up the phone and called somebody like the answer to your question also is to knock on every single door yeah like I get this all the time they like how do I get a sponsor I'm like okay like here I'm trying to move fast on Q& A and give you more of the religion than the church but like how many people have you asked um yeah a lot of people how many um we're probably up to about 30 to 50 PE um different companies but we're targeting quite a niche get the [ __ ] out of your Niche okay you know what I mean 30 to 50 is Dick right so first get out of your first find more because if you have 30 to 50 I promise you and don't make me double check because I'll call you out there's probably 30 to 50 other things that are close enough right did you ask WordPress automatic not yet we we're talking did you ask get barley I know who you're looking for but I also know that WordPress is a blogging platform that has [ __ ] money right so you've asked 30 to 50 because you've narrowly decided you also want to go to people who can get the benefit of doing a better job of pitching to bloggers for their bigger benefit because that makes sense but you're stuck here and you need to be looking here because by the way you're running a marathon it's not about this year get your money from [ __ ] Pepsi I don't give a [ __ ] because if you get the money then next year you can get the right person right I mean people are too cute about what they're looking I mean when I hear startups saying we want to get the smart money I'm like [ __ ] you're not going to get any [ __ ] money you know like and so I think you need to get out of your Zone

and your money okay money first Niche later yeah yes you can be cute later get your money and you gives you a whole another year to build up for next year to