Sponsorships Making More Money from Sponsorships at Your Events By Brent Barootes
IMAGE COURTESY STOCK.ADOBE.COM (MAXIM STEPANOV)
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he sponsorship industry continues to grow and is presently a $2.5 billion industry in Canada. Are you and your events getting your fair share of this multi-billion-dollar pie? If not, let’s figure out how we can help you get your fair share—or even your unfair share! Sponsorship around events is not only critical to the event organizers and operators, it’s also a much sought-after marketing channel. In fact, according to the Canadian Sponsorship Landscape Study (CSLS), almost 1 in 4 marketing dollars spent in Canada are allocated to event experiential marketing and sponsorship. Again, that is an awful lot of money—almost 25% of all the marketing budgets in Canada. What can you do to yield more of that money to your event, be that a meeting, a conference/
convention, special event, gala dinner, festival, concert, etc.? Too often, sponsorship is about getting a supplier to give you extra cash beyond their booth or allowing a business to hang a banner or to be included on your website, or get their logo associated with a dinner banquet, conference, or festival. Most often, events have pre-designed “stock packages” at three-tier levels: Gold, Silver, and Bronze. Sound familiar? If so, you are failing to maximize revenue AND failing to provide maximum value for your partners. The following Nine Concepts to Event Sponsorship Success outline what you need to change/adjust and adapt to, based on my 30 years of personal experience in the sponsorship industry, as well as from our team at the Partnership Group – Sponsorship Specialists® and
their decades of experience with buyers and sellers of sponsorship, as well as from our clients and other industry leaders. 1. Accept that there needs to be a paradigm shift in your thinking. Nothing like starting out with a tip that will shatter your current way of thinking. You need to move away from thinking about what you need to make your event successful (products/services or cash) and to start thinking about the sponsor and what they need to be successful. This will be a big change. You are used to being inundated with your own thoughts (or those of your superior) about needing to account for a title sponsor, a luncheon sponsor, a presenting sponsor, a wine sponsor, bottled water, audiovisual services, airplane flights, etc. Budget for these, but MEETINGSALBERTA.COM
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