Getting Sponsored To Fish
Author: Dean Taylor
With ice thawing and tournament season approaching, many tournament anglers look to sponsorships for assistance in advancing their bass fishing seasons and careers. Sponsorships can be very beneficial, providing exposure, resources, and valuable connections that can make advancing in the fishing world much more plausible. Unfortunately for many anglers, and companies for that matter, applying for sponsorships can often be a very difficult and intimidating process. This article will hopefully provide you with some insights into how to approach these companies, what they are looking for, and how to better advertise yourself as an angler in todays media focused world.
1) Marketing Yourself
Before applying to any sponsorships, you must first have something to offer. This means that you need to begin by marketing yourself and your talents on multiple platforms, whether that is tournament fishing, blogging, videography, photography, or even just a promising or successful social media account. Although some larger companies may require marketing experience or even degrees, many companies are simply looking for practical experience and success within the fishing industry in order to better advertise their products through your work or accomplishments. A strong social media presence, now more than ever, is becoming one of the most valuable assets an angler can have, as you are capable of reaching thousands, or even millions of people through simple yet effective posts, helping your sponsors advertise their message and products.
2) Choose Your Company Wisely
Although choosing a company to apply to seems like an easy and obvious decision, many anglers do not put a lot of time into this stage of the process. The first, and perhaps most important step to choosing a company is identifying which companies you have the most knowledge and trust in, as well as the companies that you feel you can offer the most to. Far too often, especially with modern pro staff programs, anglers apply to as many sponsorships as they can in hopes of simply filling a jersey or Instagram bio. This is the wrong motivation to have when looking for sponsorships and is very easy to spot by both the companies and other anglers, possibly leaving you with a professional reputation that will be very difficult to overcome. One other point of advice when applying for sponsorships is to avoid companies with massive pro staffs. Although these opportunities are often the most attractive and the most widely advertised, it will be very difficult to gain relationships with the company, making it difficult to move forward with the company and as an angler.
3) Contacting the Company
Once you have chosen a company that you feel passionately about representing, the next step is contacting the company. The first, and increasingly most common way of getting in touch with these sponsors is through applications on the company's website, or through third party sites such as National Pro Staff. These methods are often a great place to start as they make the application process very easy and will often identify exactly what the company is looking for in their prospective pro staff. Although it is very possible to gain sponsorships through this simple process, it is often what you do after the application has been submitted that will determine your exposure and make you recognizable to these companies. One of the easiest, yet effective steps to take after you have submitted an application is ensuring that the company is actually seeing your social media posts. This can be done through simply tagging or hashtagging the company in your posts. Though you might not see direct responses from this, such as likes and follows, it will likely help in making your name recognizable and may put a face to your name when they are reviewing sponsorship applications. Another more intimidating yet extremely beneficial strategy is sending follow-up emails after your application has been sent. Like applying to jobs, follow-up emails allow your application to stand out from dozens or possibly hundreds of applications, as well as allow you to provide further information about yourself on a much more personal level than online pro staff applications. These emails may also allow you to build valuable and long lasting relationships with the company and their staff, making you much more likely to retain the sponsorship overtime
4) Following Through
Following through with your promises once you have gained a sponsor or joined a pro staff team is unfortunately often a forgotten part of the sponsorship process. It is always important to remember what got you sponsored in the first place, if it was photography-keep taking pictures, if it was tournament fishing- continue representing them and using their products in tournaments, and if it was social media- ensure you are continuing to make regular posts. Communication with your sponsor is key to this process as you can establish expectations and ensure that you are always on the same page with what they are expecting you to be doing.
Although this article focused primarily on what you can do for your sponsor, sponsorships can obviously be extremely beneficial for the angler as well, as it offers connections, exposure, and perhaps even gear that will assist you in advancing your bass fishing career. It is also very important to remember to enjoy the process, fishing is supposed to be fun and turning it into strictly a business venture can often make you forget that.