Event sponsorship and partnership is an effective tool to offset the costs or particular aspect of your event, it also provides an additional dimension giving delegates access to key resources specific to their industry, creating value for all involved.

In a time where sponsorship and partnership are proving difficult, how can you break through in attraction and retention?

Deploy a sponsorship and partnership acquisition strategy; if you don’t have one here are some useful strategic elements for you to consider when creating your own.

  • Identify the benefits of sponsorship and partnership
  • Highlight what you can offer sponsors and partners
  • Determine who your sponsorship and partnership offering appeals to
  • How are you going to find prospects
  • Map out how you are going to engage prospects
  • Create a retention and service strategy
  • Generate targets for 1-3 years
  • Determine the costs and resources required

Identify why events are a good marketing tool for sponsors and partners; here are some key elements to consider when ‘pitching’ to potential sponsors and partners.

Event sponsorship and partnership provides a chance to engage with a target audience; sponsors and partners can promote their brand and deliver their brand message.

Connect and engage with delegates: people to product, people to people and people to brand.

Your event can help put sponsors and partners brands in front of an audience with the right context.

Sponsorship and partnership are more than a one-time benefit, offer a 12-month campaign of brand exposure, promotion and message delivery.

Sponsorship and partnership are a way of demonstrating; events provide the opportunity for sponsors and partners to prove their claim.

Determine what a sponsor and partner can provide besides financial investment, not everyone can give money. These could include:

  • Good and services in kind (contra)
  • Income generation i.e. raising funds through sponsor/partner networks
  • Awareness and understanding of your event and key message
  • Audience supporters and donors
  • Volunteers to assist with the delivery of your event
  • Table sales through the promotion of sponsor/partner networks
  • Credibility, getting credible brands on board will help build sponsorship

In order to retain your sponsors and partners it is important to deploy a retention strategy; don’t have one, following is an overview of a simple strategy for you to employ.

Ensure that all agreed entitlements are delivered, exceed sponsor and partner expectations to provide a positive experience.

Service effectively by continually looking at the business of your sponsors and partners to uncover additional needs that you can provide a solution to.

Work with your sponsors and partners to integrate the sponsorship agreement into their business activities.

Be specific in understanding sponsor and partner problems, needs or challenges, this will allow you to be more specific in offering a solution to meet their objectives.

Ensure that you develop multi-level relationships between your organisation, sponsors and partners, ensuring that you maintain strong relationships irrespective of staffing changes.

Move from being a seller to a trusted advisor, build relationships that see sponsors and partners sharing information with you regarding their business and seeking your thoughts on how to deal with those challenges.

So how do you guarantee success? here are some key tips to consider to ensure you succeed in servicing your sponsor and partners.

  • Develop a joint implementation plan, identify who is doing what, when to achieve objectives and the agreed measurable outcomes.
  • Conduct regular reviews with your sponsors and partners to determine what is working and what is not.
  • Use effective questioning skills to determine sponsor and partner satisfaction.
  • Work together to identify additional actions to drive extra value from the relationship.
  • Conduct sponsor and partnership networking workshops or events to bring parties together so they can explore doing business together.

EVENTFUL PROJECTS TIP: Remember it is always harder for a sponsors and partner to retract relationships and promotion than it is money.

At Eventful Projects we are Professional Conference Organisers and event managers who are passionate about event management. Contact us for a FREE one-hour consultation to see how we put our magic into your conference or event!

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