I wrote this article as I regularly speak to adventurers, expeditions, and projects both in the course of my work and this passion project, however I see the same lack of understanding for some basic business principles in almost all areas, whether that’s ocean rowing, mountaineering, remote travel adventures and so wanted to change this for the better of the community.

To increase your chances of success of getting an expedition paid for (and to stop you wasting your precious free time), you should understand a little about the mechanics of how business works, and the sales and marketing functions of it, otherwise you’ll probably be wasting your time approaching people who don’t have the money to support you, don’t see the value in your project, or a combination of both.

Before you approach them, try to imagine it from their perspective. This is because when you first make contact, they’ll boil your request down into 2 simpler questions, and a third one you’ll also need to deal with:

-       How much will it cost?

-       How useful will it be to my business?

-       Is this a scam?

It’s nothing personal, business is a full-time job that requires attention, some self-protection (from competitors and scams), and making sure you can pay your ongoing costs of doing business (aka ‘the burn rate’, if you didn’t realise that it costs money to run a business you might be surprised).

Failing to understand these 2 concepts will lead to wasted time, effort, and reduced morale (when you get endless stream of ‘no’) for doing these types of life-affirming projects in the future.

Before we dive into it, it’s worth understanding what the AIDA sales funnel is, as this article will refer back to it several times.

Even if you’re not rowing across an ocean, it’s worth reading my other articles as they give a useful step by step guide to preparing for success.

1.     What will the business get from giving you their hard-won money?

Essentially businesses get one of two things, which I’ll discuss individually, they are: Increased profile, and sales conversions. Read on for what these are.

a.     Increased profile

Fundamentally, increased profile means that potential customers that weren’t aware of the business before they potentially partner with you, will become aware of their business after they’ve had a visible connection with you.

If you’ve built an audience for other adventures, and those demographics fit the business’ target demographics, then they’ll at least listen to your pitch (as they’ll see the value early).

i)      To their website

Traffic to a website is valuable, because it increases the value of the website in Google’s eyes, helps it rank higher, and increases ‘domain rating’ if you provide a link to their website (note: this link will be even more valuable if you get a lot of traffic going to your website if you’re successful on the challenge).

They’ll get even more traffic if they feature your project on one of their pages, hence it is worth investing in a decent logo (i.e., anything more than a Fiverr attempt) and photographs so they can do this as early as possible.

Furthermore, there is strong reasoning to suggest that more traffic to a website will signal higher importance to Google’s ‘crawlbots’, who will then investigate more pages, and potentially index more of them to show up on in search results – thus increasing the company’s profile closer to the first page.

ii)    On social media

If the company is a B2C (i.e., does business directly with consumers), this will be easier to show – as their business model relies on scale. Think about a soft drinks company, they want to stay high up in your awareness, and so invest heavily in marketing as the cost to buy their product is low. If there’s an opportunity for consumers to see their logo regularly (i.e., it is stuck on the side of a boat, on oars, or on a baseball cap) – they’ll be able to measure a return on the investment.

b)    Sales conversions

This is people that already know about the business you’re going to approach. This is where they’ll get people who’re already thinking about buying their product ‘convert’ from being aware to purchasing (hence the term sales conversions).

For businesses that rely on shorter sales pipelines (i.e., cheaper products), you’ll need to be able to show how you can increase the conversion rate (think about logos on the side of the boat or pulk, etc).

2.     How many other similar questions do they get from people in your same position?

If you’re doing something that a lot of other similar people are doing, you’ll find it harder to describe the unique value your expedition will deliver.

Furthermore, if your competitors are doing it with better branding, marketing support, a stronger network, you’ll find it harder – but not impossible. Be aware of this and but don’t let it hold you back, there are ways to design in a unique angle to your trip.

3.     Who is being missed out in your marketing strategy?

 You may have chosen to target businesses that look like they have the most to gain, or you have a personal connection to – however, what about the other businesses with a big enough budget to help out that you haven’t approached?

From personal experience, I find mind mapping a really useful exercise to put businesses into different areas. By this I mean, finding a nutrition partner (who would give you nutrition products in return for a logo placement on website, boat, pulk, etc) means you will want to look at different partnerships (i.e., not nutrition as no one will like it if you have two competing businesses supporting the same expedition).

If you’re struggling for inspiration, look at other expeditions to see who has supported them.

Some tips to increase success.

Define who your target demographic is that’ll be following your progress.

There is an old saying in marketing in that if you market to everyone, you market to no one. Try and define what your target demographics are (i.e., millennial professionals based in the UK) so you discuss the benefits in your meetings with the marketing managers.

Add a world record.

If you’re finding it hard to get interest in your expedition, try adding a world record attempt. You can apply to Guinness World record beforehand to get it officially accepted – this will make the pitch stage easier as records tend to get people interested.

Make the project look visually good.

Companies don’t want to get behind something that looks like it was made by a 5-year-old. Having a professional looking logo and website will increase your chances of a yes when you do ask as it makes the whole project far more likely to happen.

Give it a unique angle so that it draws attention.

If you’re doing something that everyone has already done, then you may find it harder to gain interest. This is because news channels are interested in world firsts or subjects that aren’t often spoken about (within good reason, they may not be interested in the first person to unicycle to the south pole I don’t think…).

Summary

If you want to understand these subjects better (and I strongly suggest you take an interest in it), watch some business programs like BBCs Dragon’s den or The Apprentice and imagine yourself in their shoes – as you can learn a lot about the basic jargon, concepts, and how to present your information for the shortest possible route to ‘yes, we’d love to!’.

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