Corporate sponsorships have the power to fast-track branding & positioning initiatives, create sectoral alignment and provide access to new audiences.
Powerful part of your integrated marketing
While sponsorship should always be just one element of any corporate marketing strategy, it is an important one to get right.
However, in our experience, the purpose and value of sponsorships are often misunderstood or unrealised. Why?
• Sponsorships can be chosen for the wrong reasons
(e.g. everyone else is sponsoring, access to very broad audience or right audience but lowest sponsorship level)
• Sponsorships are often under-utilised
(e.g. not matching monetary investment with involvement from your people or not spending enough on “activating” or magnifying your sponsorship through other related marketing programmes)
• The success of sponsorships are measured on very narrow outcomes.
(e.g. as if it’s a transaction - we spent x but only got y in return, when in reality, it takes a lot more work to convert x to y)
Globally, sponsorships are estimated to be growing at about 4% annually (for context, advertising is growing at about 3%, according to Nielsen.) And that doesn’t include sponsorship activation costs and activities, which should include the cost of people time, advertising, events, merchandise, social media, PR about the sponsorship and so on.
So how to we make sure we justify this growing investment?
Making the most of sponsorship investments
Whether it’s an overall sponsorship of an organization, sub-section or an event / conference sponsorship, here is our thinking on how you get the most out of any sponsorship.
The first step, as in any commercial initiative, is to be clear as to what you want the sponsorship to achieve. What are your expectations for branding? Audience access?Engagement with key groups? And how do these lead to new business?
The second step, is to change from a transactional to a partnership mindset.
This means it’s not only about giving an agreed fee for a list of branding rights but also to ask yourself
1) how can we magnify those branding rights with other activities and spend and
2) what can we do to really embed our company and our people with the audience and others involved?
Fit, access, engagement
To help you take that second step - these are the things to think about:
Fit: Because a lot can be said about your brand based on who you are associated with.
Ask yourself:
• How does the event/organization and what it stands for fit with our brand values?
• Is their audience likely to want our services?
• Is this audience a key target sector for us?
• How should we position ourselves to suit audience interests?
• Who else is sponsoring? Are they aligned to us in terms of market position, caliber, brand values?
• What level of sponsorship can we commit to? Are we happy with being 1st/2nd/3rd or one of many fiddles? Will other eclipse us?
Access: Because, depending on the cost of the sponsorship, branding alone will not be enough to get the audience’s attention - let alone build a connection with them as a group or individually.
Ask yourself and be really clear about the specifics elements included in your sponsorship agreement:
• How would the sponsorship give me direct access to our target audience?
• What does “access” mean in this case? Speaking opportunities, tickets to events, materials, ownership of specific aspects of the programme e.g. event, publication, working group, break-out sessions
• What KPIs can I embed into access to ensure my expectations are met?
• What will I do with this access? What will be talk about? What formats will suit the audience? How can I support my brand with content?
• What else can I do with my own marketing money to build on this access via brand association - integration across other channels? E.g. supporting ads, materials, website profile, gifts, PR prior, during and after the period of sponsorship, so that your brand means something to them when they see it as a sponsor
Engagement: Ways in which you move beyond “sponsor” to being of real use and support for the organization you’ve sponsored, but more importantly, directly to their members & stakeholders – the audience.
Ask yourself and talk to the organisation seeking sponsorship about:
• How can I share our expertise in less formal ways? For example, via materials, email, blogs and simply being available without always being “on the clock” for calls and meetings outside of events or sponsors meetings
• What can I give the sponsored organisation that others cannot? What would be an ideal joint project or collaboration? Use that to co-create new initiatives of value to the audience – for example, a mentoring programme, a competition, a CSR initiative, a young leaders agenda, a sectoral or new market workstream/working group/committee
• Can I “own” particular sessions, programmes, event series or audience agenda items? Exclusivity is important in this case – even if it means a narrower focus, it will help you create a deep connection with smaller sub-sections of the overall audience through regular contact and with a very specific mandate
• Are my market-facing efforts synched with my office- based marketing team? Any new contacts and relationships should be captured by your marketing admin and planning processes to make sure you integrate relationships with further opportunities to interact with you and your brand
• What KPIs can I embed into engagement aspects to ensure my expectations are met?
Measure, tweak, repeat
The final or ongoing step is to regularly measure against expectations and KPIs set at the start to see if the sponsorship makes sense over time. But remember, you have to measure your part also – what you put into the sponsorship and the impact that had on brand, audience access and engagement with your target audience.