For many event managers, sponsors are a major source of income. They either make your event profitable or allow you to invest more in it. Searching for and finding sponsors for your event is the most important part of what we do.
Why is event sponsorship crucial?
Sponsorship often generates media coverage that may not have otherwise been available for your event. Given an event sponsorship proposal and the propensity of consumers to associate sponsors with the event they promote, it is important for companies to select events that are appropriate for their brand, product, or corporate image. Sponsors offer funding, products, and services to support your events, trade shows, teams, nonprofit activities, or other organisations.
What do sponsors expect from the events?
Once you’ve decided on the vision for your event, you must find a sponsor who shares this vision. To do this, you first need to decide why you’re organising this event. For example, if you are organising a conference for technicians focused on solving environmental problems, the goal of your event is to inspire visitors to innovate in the field of environmental conservation. Sometimes it doesn’t matter to the sponsor whether the project’s orientation is aligned with its activities if the result is a wow-effect.
Sponsorship offerings should comply with the corporate culture and policy of sponsors and their goals and should contribute to their brand awareness and profitability. Also, remember that sponsorship is not a duty but a free will from a partner.
Show the value of your event to the sponsors and build credibility with them so that they trust your next event.
Ways of including sponsors in the general structure of the event
How do you correctly present the sponsor onsite? Modern events no longer feature the usual placement of the logo on the interior. They use art and interactive installations, media technologies, and other useful techniques.
- Instead of outright branding, focus on the decor of the venue: walls, carpet, tablecloths on tables, and other interior details.
- Arrange a media room with high-definition TVs and chic chairs, karaoke rooms, or social walls.
- To ensure that your sponsor’s brand remains noticeable during the event, use graffiti created by a world-famous street artist.
- Create photo booths, swag-bags, brand walls, giveaways, charity donation opportunities, festivals, and concerts or create other sponsor integration options.
Some modern sponsors may prefer to stay humble and hide their labels or any brand reminders in order to avoid any aggressive advertising-related associations. You can choose which way to integrate your sponsor with the maximum amount of creativity and compliance with the sponsor’s desires.
What to offer to your sponsors?
Think hard about what to offer event sponsors before you take any real action. If you want to get a solid technology sponsor for an innovation conference or trade show, such as a Microsoft product release, tell the company representative that 60% of your most recent event’s attendees were the heads of IT departments, opinion leaders, celebrities or other interesting, political/media representatives, and show your sponsorship package example, etc. Such information will force a corporate representative to appreciate your efforts. After all, you’ve spent time understanding their business objectives and designing an event that can benefit them as well.
After speaking to the company representative, you need to collect even more data. They must confirm that sponsorship will be beneficial for both parties. It’s better if you come to a meeting with an already prepared plan and send a sponsorship proposal beforehand, which will state how you intend to promote the sponsor before, during, and after the event.
Creating a sponsorship proposal
While presenting an event sponsorship proposal, pay attention to the following items:
- Understand their target audience and business goals.
- Establish the sponsor’s marketing objectives.
- Understand what you can offer a sponsor that will be beneficial.
- Know the person who can say yes to your sponsorship proposal.
- Choose those who are capable of establishing a trustworthy relationship.
- Provide a real event plan with well-designed sponsor integration.
- Think of follow-up techniques and further sponsor promotions post-event.
Don’t forget that one of the most fundamental keys to getting sponsored is your ability to create a winning sponsorship proposal and present it the right way.
Event sponsorship packages
When you are finished choosing your sponsors, decide on your chosen offerings for sponsorship packages.
A sponsorship package is an agreement that implies support for an event or activity by an external brand. It’s quite common to think of a sponsorship package as a contract established between an event organiser and a sponsor.
First of all, clearly tell your potential sponsors who you are and what you want from their sponsorship. Include the following information in your event sponsorship package:
- Who you are
- Why you are organising a given event
- Who the attendees will be
- Who attended it last time
- The projected size of the event
- The target audience
- Previous sponsors
- Why you need sponsors
- What you hope to achieve with them
- What’s in it for them
- Your CTA
Also, think of ways to improve your event sponsorship offerings to attract big brands. Your event sponsorship package needs to stand out and should always include something special to wow them.
How to change a sponsorship approach
To spice up your sponsorship approach, consider some fresh methods to help stand out from the crowd. No generic tiered sponsorship packages, customisation should be allowed.
Gather Feedback
Keeping in touch after the event, as well as collecting and acting upon customer feedback, is a great idea to apply to sponsorships as well. You can also come up with a survey for your sponsor to get their feedback and do better the next time around.
Align Opportunities with Objectives
It’s a good and realistic idea to achieve “goal alignment” in your event organisation. You must first clearly communicate your strategic business objectives to your partners on a win-win basis.
Set Benchmarks and Measure Success
Of course, the process of setting a baseline or standard is important so you can easily measure your performance over time, identify areas for improvement, and set new goals that align with the goals of your sponsors.
Tips to choose the right sponsors
In order to give your proposal for event sponsorship to the right organisation, use some of these tips for choosing the right sponsors for long-term and fruitful cooperation.
Choose an active sponsor: Think about the future, because you may work with your sponsor for more than a year.
Choose a stable sponsor: Future sponsors should be in touch all the way. You should know as much as possible about your sponsor and be willing to research more.
Pick someone that will talk to you in real life: To chat with representatives remotely is one thing, but talking in person with a sponsor is quite different. The easiest and most effective way to get to know a sponsor is to have a good talk with them or answer a few of their basic questions.
In this way, you will be able to assess the level of their professionalism. Ask the sponsor questions before launching the event project. After that, analyse all the points and make your choice in favor of the most reliable and responsive business.
The event will be associated with sponsors that will promote it
Choose sponsors that are pleasant, business-oriented, motivated, and helpful organisations. You should be attracted to them, because it should be interesting to communicate with them and work on joint event projects for a long time into the future. How to attract sponsors for an event? – Trust your professionalism and intuition, and use the guidelines to support your decisions. Do your research, design a nice package that stands out, and then make your final choice. You should also use Gevme’s event success technology to improve the process.
Any other ideas? Feel free to share them below.
