Understanding how to sell interactive sponsorships, such as the example from CBS Chicago WBBM and Stephen Colbert, can help broadcasters quickly boost sales and revenues.

Local television stations and broadcasters need fresh, engaging ways to help advertisers stand out and drive results. Like those offered by Megaphone TV, interactive sponsorships have emerged as an ideal solution—blending broadcast, digital, and social media marketing into one integrated campaign.

This guide will explain how to effectively sell interactive sponsorships to local advertisers, helping you generate more revenue with this exciting new sponsor-friendly inventory.

 

Step 1: Focus on Solving Advertisers’ Challenges

As with any advertising or sponsorship campaign, always begin by understanding the specific business or promotional challenges the advertiser seeks help with.

Do they want more exposure, more interaction, and, ultimately, more sales? Are they looking to drive more leads? Do they need to collect opt-in data?

Interactive sponsorship provides the perfect way for stations to meet these needs. However, each campaign must be tailored to the individual advertiser’s needs.

Luckily, our interactive sponsorship solutions provide tremendous flexibility to meet almost any advertiser’s brand, business, awareness, and sponsorship needs.

So, start with the basics. What do they want? What problems do they have? How soon do they want a solution?

 

Step 2: Highlight the Benefits of Interactive Sponsorships

Interactive sponsorships provide a fully integrated advertising experience. By leveraging Megaphone TV’s platform, stations can seamlessly incorporate advertisers’ messaging, branding, and promotions across broadcast, digital, and social channels.

Unlike traditional commercial spots that viewers may tune out, interactive sponsorships encourage active participation through sponsored contests, user-generated content (UGC), trivia, or other forms of interactive engagement.

Focus on how this dynamic approach benefits local advertisers by capturing viewer attention and offering an experience that goes beyond – but compliments – traditional 30-second spots.

(The best way to do this is to work with Megaphone TV to provide your advertiser with a custom pitch deck that allows them to visualize what this experience would look and feel like.)

 

Step 3: Emphasize Improved Brand Awareness and Recall

Campaigns that integrate viewer interaction drive improved brand awareness and recall. When viewers actively engage with a brand—such as by participating in a sponsored trivia game or submitting content for a UGC campaign—they form a stronger connection, leading to higher brand recall and increased likelihood of taking action.

Highlight how interactive sponsorships keep audiences involved and invested in the sponsor’s brand by extending the time they are exposed to it.

 

Step 4: Showcase the Ability to Generate Instant Leads and Sales

Interactive sponsorships can generate instant leads and sales, which traditional advertising often struggles to achieve. Viewers who engage with an interactive sponsorship via their phones or computers are served digital offers that lead them directly to a sponsor’s landing page, opt-in form, or e-commerce site.

For broadcasters, showing a faster path to ROI for the advertiser makes the entire sales process easier.

 

Step 5: Tell Them You Want to Create a Stand-Out Campaign

Advertisers always seek ways to stand out—especially in crowded local markets. Interactive sponsorships are inherently unique. They encourage viewers to interact with the brand and create a memorable experience.

It’s important for any advertiser to highlight that interactive sponsorship campaigns allow brands to cut through the clutter and make an impression, whether it’s a simple word scramble sponsored by a local bakery or a live trivia event during a local sports game.

 

Step 6: Suggest They Run a Contest

Interactive contests, such as the one from WRTV and Gold Over America, allow broadcasters to deliver tangible results to sponsors. Megaphone TV streamlines the entire process, allowing you to leverage the power of your broadcast reach.

Running an interactive contest is easy with Megaphone TV. It doesn’t require extensive technical know-how or extra resources from the advertiser. Everything is handled through an easy-to-use platform, meaning advertisers can focus on the results without the hassle of managing the details.

Most importantly, contests drive big engagement for advertisers, which means more hits to their conversion pages, bigger opt-in data collection, and an increased likelihood that their campaign can go viral.

Stress how turnkey these solutions are—your broadcast organization will take care of the details while advertisers reap the rewards.

Launching interactive campaigns easily has been a significant buying point for advertisers, making interactive sponsorships easy to implement and sell for broadcasters.

 

Step 7: Offer Tailored Interactive Experience

Interactive sponsorships offer endless flexibility to accommodate various brand needs. Whether it’s a sponsored trivia segment for a local restaurant or a watch-and-win contest for a car dealership, interactive sponsorships’ diverse content options allow you to create campaigns that resonate with different types of advertisers – regardless of their size, market, or vertical.

Stress to potential advertisers how interactive content can be tailored to suit their brand identity and goals.

 

Step 8: Highlight Customizable Campaign Duration

Interactive sponsorships are highly customizable and can run for months, weeks, days, or even for a single event, like this Thanksgiving Parade example from WDIV Detroit and Michigan First Credit Union.

Local advertisers often have specific goals and limited budgets. With customizable campaign durations, interactive sponsorships can be adapted to meet short-term promotional needs or support longer brand-building efforts.

Emphasize that interactive sponsorships can fit any timeline, whether a one-week flash sale during Black Friday or a months-long brand awareness campaign during football season.

This flexibility makes it easier for broadcasters to close deals, as they can offer a solution that fits any advertiser’s schedule and budget.

 

Step 9: Leverage Social Media Amplification

Interactive sponsorships extend engagement beyond the broadcast. Stations can share links to interactive content on social media and encourage viewers to share their engagement online, providing advertisers with valuable social buzz and extended reach.

This added social amplification makes interactive sponsorships a compelling and easy-to-sell solution for any advertiser looking to grow their reach.

 

Step 10: Show Them Case Studies

To effectively sell the value of interactive sponsorships, come prepared with examples of past campaigns. Luckily, Megaphone TV makes it easy for you to do just that. We’ll gladly provide you with video clips of real-life campaigns to include in your pitch decks.

Use our case studies to show that interactive sponsorships deliver on their promises.

Showcasing real results makes interactive sponsorships an easy product to pitch, as advertisers can see firsthand how they can benefit.

 

By following these steps and emphasizing the benefits—such as higher conversion rates, instant leads, social media amplification, and the flexibility to tailor campaigns—local stations can effectively demonstrate the value of interactive sponsorships to potential advertisers, helping broadcasters quickly generate more revenue while providing a powerful advertising solution.