A year ago today it was announced that from the beginning of the month, Sir Richard Branson’s Virgin Group had became a sponsor of the Brawn GP Formula 1 racing team.  The newly sponsored car, driven by Jenson Button, has been one of the biggest promotional successes in the past 12 months for Virgin, and Jenson Button’s been pretty happy about the past year too!

So how can a smaller business make promotion work for them?

Begin by planning at least six months in advance. If your business is seasonal, aim your big promotional push for a period at least 3 months ahead of your busy time – if you sell wedding cakes, doing all your promotional work in June is daft, as that’s when most brides are getting married – you need them to be thinking about you in January! Also, suppliers of promotional items such as overprinted bags will be able to offer you a better deal the longer ahead you organise your promotional supplies.

Think about sport as a promotional vehicle

Sports promotion has two big advantages: publicity and public relations – supporting local athletes is always good publicity and it’s good public relations for the sponsor.

Pick a local club such as a hockey team or a junior football league and ensure your name is on the sporting equipment such as kit and casual clothing worn for warm-ups.

Make sure you do all the public relations work you can – it’s not enough to have your logo on team clothing, you also need to organise things like visits by the team to your workplace, days out for local children who have special needs to meet the players and try out the sport in question etc. All this builds a strong brand association between you and the team and public service.

Use sporting success to support your business

If your team wins, get your staff into some printed celebration T-shirts marking the victory, it’s a talking point with customers and gives your staff a real motivational boost to be supporting a winning team.