You are a newly accepted Professional Cornhole Player, congratulations. Now comes the hard part, marketing yourself to obtain sponsors. Jay Corley shared pointers in an article entitled ACL’s Influence on Pro Player Sponsorship. Be sure to check it out.
The most common mistake players make is assuming that anyone who sells cornhole gear has a budget for sponsorship’s for all types of players. This is not true and in most cases, the top name companies are not going to sponsor you for winning a couple local events. Those companies are looking for the top of the top players, the 1%. This is not them doubting your abilities but let’s face it, you are unproven.
Your market as an emerging player is your local businesses. That pizza spot in town you eat at after events, the bar you play your weekly league at, the cigar shop, liquor store, town hardware store, local BBQ joint, the 7-11 you are in every morning.
Those are where you can possibly get some cash to help you on your journey and in return they will get some free marketing and the chance of you possibly one day making it onto ESPN. By marketing, I’m talking about you wearing a jersey or a shirt with their logo to all the local events you go to as well as using social media.
If a business understands that you can maybe bring in 10 customers they have never seen before, then that could be worth their investment. Here’s an example for you on ways you can bring that local business new customers. Let’s say a friend is having a party or event, you can say “Hey, check out Valentino’s Pizzeria in Belford. Great food and they helped me out with a sponsorship.”
Marketing yourself to potential sponsors
Back to marketing yourself. You walk into Pete’s Pizza Haven for a meeting with Pete. You present Pete with this awesome presentation. It has all your accomplishments from every event since you started playing. Pete goes home and tells his wife about how excited he is for a chance to see his logo on ESPN.
Mrs. Pete says, “how do you even know if any of these tournaments are legit? Is this guy padding his resume? I mean come on, 1st place at the Morales Family Reunion, is that a legit win Pete? Oh and 2nd place at Angelo’s blind draw last week. How can we even be sure there were any top players playing? Oh, wait they weren’t, Kuhn was in Nashville.”
Now let’s be realistic here. Being on ESPN is a great marketing point, but how good are your chances of making it? This is where we come in providing you with a missing piece to your cornhole portfolio. Imagine having a profile/resume on a cornhole website that will feature you, your bio, sponsors and accomplishments AND when someone searches, you will be in the top 5 placements in Google?
Now, what if I told you it was free, would you believe me? Yes, completely free! A free profile page which can easily act as a cornhole resume, if you utilize it correctly. This way Pete pulls up your profile on the site and can share that with the Mrs. And then Pete says, “See honey I told you he was legit, now can you stop telling me how dumb and gullible I am?”
Still think I’m full of it? Go into any search engine right now, like open another browser window. I’m serious, stop reading this. Open it up and search Matt Guy Cornhole. Better yet, click here (we did it for you). What did you find?
Matt Guy is the 8-time King of Cornhole for the ACO, yes 8 times he bested the top players in the world. Did I also mention he is two time Doubles World Champion with son Bret Guy. There must be a lot of articles related to all his accomplishments. Well you are correct fine sir. There are a lot of articles on Matt Guy. But what did you see from the search? Where did CornholeAddicts.com fall? Impressed yet? And guess what, it’s totally free. Yes, still free.
Take for instance Cornhole Addicts Sponsored player and ACL Pro Jimmy Youmans. He is from Jackson, NJ and plays in the Middletown Elks League, but plays for Manasquan in matches against Middletown. Now, Jimmy made it onto ESPN and did a fine job. Somehow, someone cut him sponsorship check and didn’t make him do a player profile. ( He has one now)
Jimmy can use all the Twitter and Facebook posts to back up the fact he was on ESPN. But could you imagine if Jimmy took the 4 minutes to fill out the questionnaire what that could do for his proposals to sponsors? Did I mention it was free? (Jimmy has submitted his profile the morning this article was published, smart move Jimmy)
So, if you are an ACL Professional and you would like a free profile which will be showcased on our website, just go to this page and fill out the appropriate form. Once again, this is completely free! It’s free marketing and exposure for you AND your sponsors!
If you currently have a profile and want to update your information, that can easily be done by filling out the same form and only adding your new info. Or, you can message us on FB. We love hearing from you guys. Keep practicing and maybe one day you can utilize our services to obtain more exposure.
*Disclosure, while this is a free service this is limited ACL professionals who are vetted through our vigorous interview process. We reserve the right to remove your profile if your professional status gets revoked, you get thrown out of a league, piss one of us off or general misconduct we deem unacceptable to our values here at Cornhole Addicts. Please play nicely with others.
*Disclosure 2, Dickey does have a 4-year degree in Marketing even though it took almost 5 years to obtain. He does not claim to be an expert as this was 20 years ago, and this doesn’t guarantee you getting a sponsorship.
