Event sponsorship is a long-established means to subsidise the cost of staging an event or even work towards a cost-neutral basis.
The Olympic Games, by example, attracts the world’s leading brands spending $billions on coveted partnership status. At a more local level, the world’s leading B2B events equally rely on sponsorship revenue and, increasingly, promotional partnerships to boost event awareness and fuel growth.
But if your past events haven’t integrated sponsors and yet budgets continue trending downward, what are the considerations building sponsor relationships from scratch?
Let’s start with how to get sponsors.
Research potential sponsors. Start with existing supporters and look at how their interests align with yours and gain clues to identify new sponsor prospects or, seek referral introductions.
Leverage audience data insights. Legitimise your sponsor offer by asking audiences outright for known, leading industry pioneers and leaders.
Know who to talk to and who’ll listen. Establishing the right contact is key. Understand that sponsorship deals are frequently nurtured by marketing, brand, commercial and C-Suite leaders.
Go online. Personally, never done this but increasingly online portals such as Sponsor My Event and Sponsor Pitch publish opportunities that match organisers and sponsors.
Next, understand why people sponsor.
Reaching specific demographics. Events, by the very nature of segmenting audience/attendee types, provides access to very specific demographic types that might otherwise have been less accessible to companies.
Fast tracking lead gen. Simply put, if an event audience aligns with your customer base, then sponsorship opportunities can tap directly into new prospects accelerating pipeline and sales.
Increased followship. Events generate hundreds sometimes thousands of social impressions leading to greater brand awareness and followers.
Just ahead of drawing up a sponsorship prospectus, really know your event(s).
Type of event(s). A one-off or a series? Regional or international? Brand awareness or leadership? In-person or hybrid?
Clarity of vision. Be clear on the event’s objectives. Can you articulate this is one short sentence?
What makes your event different? In an increasingly saturated event space, what differentiates your event? Programme? Participants? Your organisations values? Legacy?
Who comes? Get wise to audience data and be ready to bang out key stats including key demographic profiles, year on year attendance figures, positive sentiments, Net Promoter Scores (NPSs).
Understand this, it’s not [just] about the [sponsorship] money.
Venue partnership. Negotiate a significant reduction in event costs through a partnership with your event venue.
Programme sponsorship. Add value to your evolved programme by curating content lead or facilitated by event sponsors. Be careful to avoid lazy sales pitches in favour of high value content experiences.
Media partnership. Offer high visibility placement for industry media channels in return for free or subsidised promotional and advertising driving event awareness and registration/ticket sales.
Content partnership. Similarly to media partnership but focusing on attracting independent ‘influencers’ with significant follower numbers and offering exclusive content deals.
Brand partnership. Consider complimentary brands that share similar markets and values offering exposure to your event audience in return for elevated brand experiences at your event and levelling up your own event’s credibility.
And lastly then, ahead of pitching out, learn about the 3 types of sponsors.
The logical sponsor. Logical, rational and why it makes business sense. Loves facts and figures, stats, demographics and other analytics.
The emotional sponsor. These guys are moved by narratives. Lots of mission-led stories and how customers, partner and employee will derive more meaning from the event experience.
The ‘follow the leader’ sponsor. Inherently unsure, they’ll take a lead from others, particularly other sponsor organisations and event participants they admire. So lean into this to capitalise on sponsors’ credibility and reputation.
Deliberately intended to answer how to build sponsor relationships from scratch, we’re increasingly pitching sponsorship solutions to clients to help address ‘do more with less’. If a conversation to explore sponsorship options would be useful, get in touch via the form below. We’re happy to talk.
