Daily Archives: November 14, 2008

Sourcing Innovation Sponsorship Update

The new year is almost upon us, and with it comes new opportunities for Sourcing Innovation sponsorships, possibly the best opportunity you have to expose your brand to a wide, discerning audience of influencers and decision makers who read Sourcing Innovation on a regular, if not daily, basis.

If you’ve been paying attention, you know that:

  • Sourcing Innovation is one of the few independent blogs in the sourcing space, one of the very few blogs that posts daily, and, more importantly, one of the top two blogs, if it has not already taken over as the Top Blog. Consider some recent statistics from the external tracking engines (which are never truly accurate, but paint a picture in relative terms) for Spend Matters, Sourcing Innovation, ESourcing Forum, and Supply Excellence:

    Alexa (Rank) Compete (Visitors) Quantcst (Visitors) Ranking (Rank) Traffic Estimate (Hits)
    SM:    615,000 SI:  2,750 SI:  5,400 SI:  526,000 SM:  23,600
    SI:    914,000 SM:  2,690 ESF: 2,700 SM:  NA SI:  12,200
    SE:  1,658,000 SE:  1,950 SM:  NA SE:  NA SE:  NA
    ESF: 2,746,000 ESF: 1,000 SE:  NA ESF: NA ESF: NA

    NA = Not Available (typically due to not enough data, or hits, for the ranking engine to derive a relevant rating)

  • Sourcing Innovation receives thousands of unique page views every day, and an average day (in an average week) sees approximately 5,000 hits. The average visitor visits 1.5 pages a day, which means there are about 3,500 unique visitors on an average day. Most importantly, 60% of the visitors arrive directly from search engines, directories, and related sites, which means that Sourcing Innovation’s influence is far wider than “the same old crowd” showing up again and again. (Hits spike to 15,000 hits on a non-average day in a non-average week.)
  • Unlike “gossip” or “news” sites, Sourcing Innovation visitors are showing up for content — over 1000 quality posts that constitute one of the most useful aggregations of reference material in our space. Traffic to Sourcing Innovation is never driven artificially, for example with irrelevant content that has nothing to do with sourcing. Instead, people come to SI for a very simple reason: SI delivers key information that they need to do their jobs better and find solution providers who can help them.
  • Sourcing Innovation was one of the first blogs to discuss sustainability, green, risk management, the need for best-cost (and home-cost) country sourcing, and other hot-button issues, before they made the headlines — and SI will continue to stay ahead by addressing relevant issues while everyone else is catching up.

And you may not realize that:

  • Some companies have gotten more leads from a single post on Sourcing Innovation then they got from sponsored analyst white-papers, trade-show booths, and advertisements in “industry leading” publications combined. Because SI’s editor tries very hard to be fair, honest, and objective in the breadth of coverage, Sourcing Innovation remains credible where others fall short.
  • Sourcing Innovation Sponsors Get Results. I invite you to talk to those companies who have sponsored the blog, SI White-papers, and SI Illuminations. All have gotten exposure and results. And I’m sure they’d all be happy to tell you about it.
  • While the editor does his best to cover every company that is willing to engage in an open and honest dialogue on the blog, regardless of whether they are sponsors or not, sponsorship does convey huge advantages over simple coverage. Whereas most companies are lucky to get a couple of posts a year with so much to cover and so little time, your logo, especially as a lead sponsor, is seen on every page — every single day. As we all learn more about web advertising, we’re learning that the key is impressions, impressions, and more impressions — by the right audience. You want your brand to be in front of the people you need to reach, every day. Nothing is more important.

Starting in 2009, Sourcing Innovation will be offering

  • five lead sponsorship slots
    (five logos fit nicely on one page, with room to spare, and every visitor will see them)
  • associate sponsorship slots on the to-be-relaunched resource site
    (which has already acquired a number of functional and content improvements). This comes with text-link recognition on the blog sidebar, but no logo — only lead sponsors get logos in the coveted blog sidebar!
  • associate sponsorship slots on the soon to-be-launched buyer’s guide
    (more information will be forthcoming with the new year)
  • event and white-paper sponsorship opportunities on both the blog and the resource site

But the best value, at least in my view, is a lead sponsorship slot, of which two are now available. They are on a first-come, first-serve basis, so you don’t want to miss the boat; and, right now, the pricing that I locked in until the end-of-the-year is too good to miss! (I’ve been contacted by a number of companies over the last month about sponsorships for next year, and if you do what they do and wait and see, it might be too late!) So buy today, and, as a special bonus, the first two sponsors to commit to a year will get the rest of this year free.