Ever received a response like this when you’ve presented an event prospectus to a potential sponsor …
"Oh great, another sponsorship prospectus offering the riveting combo of logo placements, booth space, and maybe—if I'm lucky—a lanyard sponsorship! Where's the innovation? How am I supposed to achieve my goals when every event gives me the same tired options?"
You probably haven’t received a response like this, as people are polite. But that doesn’t mean they aren’t thinking it.
Events needs sponsors; it helps with the funding of the event.
Sponsors need events; they provide opportunities to get in front of new and existing customers.
But why has an industry renowned for creativity become so lackadaisical when producing event prospectus and sponsorship opportunities?
Maybe timescales don’t allow for it? Pressures to build the programme and organise the event might take priority? Sponsors aren’t valued (ooh controversial!)?
Attracting the right quality of sponsors to your event takes time. It cannot be a knee jerk reaction to an event being planned.
There are three steps you should follow if you really want to attract the best sponsors to complement your event.
Understand what sponsors want when they dig deep into their marketing budgets to be at your event. Here’s a headline list for you.
Brand visibility and awareness
Lead generation and sales opportunities
Return on Investment (ROI)
Opportunities to engage with decision makers
Exclusive access to attendees/engagement with a captive audience
A higher profile than their competitors
Content creation and amplification
Product launch or demo opportunities
Exclusivity
Data and insights
If you reviewed all of the above to create opportunities for sponsors when building your prospectus, you’d create a pretty decent offer, but would it really achieve what a sponsor wants?
Understand how sponsors measure the value of a sponsorship opportunity. It won’t be all of the below at the same time, but it will certainly be one of them at least.
Return on Investment (ROI) - Comparing the net financial gain from sponsorship. Revenue from sponsorship less costs of sponsorship
Revenue attribution - Sales generated, customer lifetime value (CLV) average deal size
Cost per Lead (CPL) - Cost of sponsorship divided by number of qualified leads generated
Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC) - Cost of sponsorship divided by number of new customers acquired
Media Value/ Equivalent Advertising Value (EAV) - Sponsors might choose to compare exposure gained from the event against what they would have paid for traditional advertising - digital ads, TV commercials, print media etc.
Cost per Impression (CPI) - How much each impression (every time someone sees their logo or key message). Cost of sponsorship divided by number of impressions
Lead or revenue conversion rate - Number of sales generated from the event divided by number of leads generated at the event. Sponsors use this measurement to assess the quality of their sponsorship opportunity
Long-term Customer Value (LTV) - The total revenue a customer is expected to bring in over their relationship lifetime
Cost savings from in-kind benefits - Sponsors will calculate the value of items such as VIP access, product showcases or speaking slots versus how much it would cost to purchase them separately
Break-even analysis - How many customers/revenue is required to break event at an event. Is it realistically achievable? Cost of sponsorship divided by average revenue per sale.
Some of the above are retrospective, but if you, as an event owner, can demonstrate the potential of each opportunity linked to one of the above then you are creating a more compelling and personal offer for sponsors.
Now you know what sponsors want and you know how they measure their investment, you’re almost there in creating an appealing prospectus.
But the third element is the real investment of time and energy … but it will pay off if you do it properly.
Get personal with your sponsors and build long-term partnerships.
Conduct research to understand the sponsor - Study the sponsor’s business, analyse competitors and industry trends and if possible, review the sponsor’s current marketing strategy
Set up a pre-event consultation, discovery meeting or call - Ask open questions. What are their main objectives? Target audience? Current challenges with marketing and sales? What does success look like? How have you measured ROI previously? Is there anything specific they wish to promote in the future?
Clarify key metrics for success - What are their KPI’s? How will they measure success? What level of engagement are they looking for (high-touch sponsorship, large scale visibility etc.)?
Customise offerings to align with their objectives - Review your conversations and insights to create bespoke, innovative opportunities for your sponsors.
Build in a continuous review process - Pre-event check-ins, reporting on progress, updates on promotions. Create mock ups of any branding opportunities you have offered
Work collaboratively - Sponsors will have ideas of their own. Ask them their ‘dream’ sponsorship opportunity
Provide benchmarks insights - Actively research competitors activity and other events to help refine your sponsors tactics and approach
Explore long-term partnerships - Work together on longer-term contracts with defined statements of work included
Post-event review and reporting - Produce a comprehensive review of the event sponsorship for your sponsors. List objectives met, provide metrics and data relevant to KPI’s. Provide insights gained from the event.
If you follow all three steps above, as an event organiser, you will give yourself the best opportunity to sell all sponsorship offers in your given timescale which will then allow you to focus on delivering the event.
For your sponsors, you are creating high value opportunities with immediate, and longer term, return on their investment.
Now it’s time to get creative. Rip up the traditional prospectus and create opportunities that your sponsors will get excited about.
Sound easy? It isn’t.
Let’s give you an example where Ten Thousand Hours was able to create an opportunity that directly achieved a sponsors key objective …
The event: a major international trade show in Spain
The sponsors key objective: hold informed conversations with key decision makers
The sponsor prospectus offer: an exhibition space amongst all of their competitors
The wishy-washy ROI: build a great stand. Put great staff on it and you might meet the right people (I wrote another blog about this subject if you have time you can read it here).
Ten Thousand Hours solution: ‘let’s avoid the exhibition hall.’
Here’s what we created …
The trade show is massive. Thousands of attendees. What are the chances of meeting your ideal prospect and then having time to engage in detailed/informed conversation?
Needle in a haystack we thought.
So don’t pop yourself in amongst all your competitors, let’s look outside of the exhibition hall.
If you’ve attended an international trade show you will have experienced the chaos on arrival at the airport, looking for suitable transportation to get you to the trade show. On this occasion the transfer time, depending on your chosen mode of transport, time of day and traffic, was anywhere between 35-55 minutes.
We suggested reaching out prior to the event to targeted individuals to offer them a VIP helicopter transfer experience on arrival and departure at the event location.
This reduced the transfer time to 20 minutes for the attendee and made the whole experience a lot easier and more comfortable for them.
All very nice.
But what opportunity did this provide the sponsor?
First of all, brand loyalty, the attendee really appreciated being treated as a VIP.
Secondly, and more importantly when judged against the sponsor objectives, every transfer allowed the sponsors best sales and marketing personnel to engage in a twenty-minute meaningful conversation with their target attendee(s).
Objective achieved. ROI and all sorts of measurement acronyms easy to assess. One happy sponsor who now insists on the same package year on year.
A long-term relationship built on creative thinking.
If you’re wondering how to shake up your sponsorship packages for your target audience follow the three steps above.
If you don’t have time, or the team, we’d be more than happy to help.
Click here for a discovery call. No hard sell. We listen, you talk. We create.