Guest Post by Eyob Yesus | Director, Icon Corporate Events

Securing sponsorship for an event is not just about acquiring financial support. If done properly, sponsorship can be the best partnership for your event, ensuing that both parties involved achieve worthwhile results.

“Sponsorship is the best partnership for your event”

Entering into a sponsorship deal means you are embarking on a relationship with a company or brand that is looking to maximize their return on investment through the sponsorship. As is the case with any relationship, there needs to be give and take on both sides, and you need to create a balance that meets the needs for you and your sponsor.

That means you need to foster good communication, create an agreement that works for everyone, and follow through on that agreement. Assuming all goes well, this can be the foundation for a long-term relationship and repeat events with this same sponsor.

Securing sponsorship for an event is a process, and there are vital steps you must take to ensure the partnership will work for both parties.

Here are our seven steps to securing the best partnership for your event…

1. Market research – finding the right partner

Identify the audience you have attending your event (demographics and interests). Then highlight any new audiences you would like to attract. By having a clear idea of your audience, you will be able to start researching your potential sponsors. The ideal sponsor will be one that it sees value in being exposed to your database and associates. In return, consider what new audiences your potential sponsor can bring to your event.

2. Consider all the benefits to both the sponsor and the event organiser

Once you have a shortlist of ideal sponsors, consider all the benefits to both the sponsor and the event. For the event, it may include financial support, adding to the guest experience, enhancing the events credibility by being aligned with a reputable brand, or gaining access to marketing support. For the sponsor it may include brand exposure, targeted marketing, access to a new database of contacts or enhancing credibility by being aligned with the event.

3. Create a compelling proposal

Your proposal should be simple, clear and to the point with tasteful graphics. Always remember that when approaching a company to ask for sponsorship that you’re coming out of nowhere and asking for their time and support – make it easy for the contact person to ascertain exactly what it is you need by outlining the benefits of their sponsorship. The actual proposal should have the following points listed:

• Welcome message

• Why sponsor? (crucial to your proposal with figures, statistics and benefits)

• About the event

• Goals and purpose of the event

• Sponsorship levels

• Application form

4. Establishing the relationship – the approach

Once you have put together a comprehensive contact list, make contact by introducing yourself initially via email, then a follow-up phone call. You should aim to set up a face-to-face meeting once you have established that the company is interested in sponsoring the event. Sponsors are always looking for the right event to work with and want to meet the person behind the event to determine their character, communication and history with events. Make sure you have hard and online copies of your proposal ready for your meeting and be prepared with all the event information that is relevant to the sponsor.

5. Securing the deal

When securing a sponsorship deal make sure all parties are clear on what they need to deliver. Have an agreement in place and be specific by confirming and signing of on the actionable points. You’ll sometimes need to be flexible in your package to customise the sponsor’s needs for their niche.

6. Activating the agreement – delivering results

With sponsorship secured it’s now time to deliver on the agreed terms. Sponsors do not part with financial or any other type of support without expecting results. Make sure there is open communication between you and the sponsor throughout the event planning process. At the end of the event arrange a debrief to highlight results.

7. Cementing a long term relationship

To be successful in gaining and maintaining sponsorship for future events, you need to view sponsors as partners throughout the entire process. Sponsors require nurturing and care, and should feel that they are both part of the event, as well as gaining value in their sponsorship in the exchange.

The right proposal attracts interest – a case study

Indoor Sports NSW recently launched their newly created Indoor Netball Premier League (INPL) and Big Blast Indoors seeking sponsorship with their new approach to lift up the standards of Indoor Sports in NSW. They asked Icon Corporate Events (previously Memphis Events) to assist. The INPL and BBI has approximately 1,800 and 1080 players respectively, active between March and December each season. Added supporters, venue teams and staff to that number, ISNSW services over 60,000 people through their members (Franchisors) where a sponsor can benefit from a great amount of exposure.

Icon Corporate Events (previously Memphis Events) developed an approach that resulted in a simple, effective and attractively packaged proposal that delivered clear information. The proposal attracted over $40,000 worth of sponsorship within 5 months including brands such as Beastwear, Simply First Aid and Resources for Profit.

If you’d like assistance planning your next event, including getting sponsorship, Icon Corporate Events (previously Memphis Events) can help streamline the process and give you the best chance of achieving your goals.

Guest Post by Lauren Lacava | Principal Consultant, Black & White Marketing

Social media experts all agree, a Facebook page that is not managed strategically, is not worth doing. Random content posted on an ad hoc basis will not do your brand any favours but luckily, there are some free and easy-to-use tools to help you strategise like a pro.

Reach is defined as how many people you are speaking to or ‘reaching’ with your posts or campaigns. The higher the reach, the more successful your campaign has been. Facebook breaks down reach into ‘organic’ which is your unpaid reach and ‘paid’ which relates to posts/campaigns that you have sponsored. Organic reach is becoming notoriously hard to achieve with the ongoing changes to Facebook algorithms – hence, it is even more important to manage your page strategically and make the most out of your analytical data. By using the free analytical tools, you can be clever about what you post and when.

Engagement is another key metric and is defined as the rate at which your fans are performing various social activities (likes, shares, discussions, comments) on your posts. The higher the level of engagement, the better. A good level of engagement shows that your fans are relating to you and your brand.

So how do we use Facebook’s free analytical tools to gain more reach and better engagement?

Check your posts

The most basic level of analysis should be to keep an eye on your posts. If you are an administrator of a Facebook page, then you will automatically be able to view your posts reach and engagement. Checking your posts regularly will ensure that you can interact and respond to any comments as well as to monitor how that style of content performed for future reference.

Use the Facebook Insights Tab for monthly reporting

The Insights tab is free to use for administrators and houses lots of useful information such as fan demographics and comparative tools so you can see month on month performance. It is good practice to block out time for monthly reporting and go through each section of the Facebook Insight tab so that you can better know your market; this will enable you to ensure better results next month. By knowing your market, you know who you are speaking to, what they like and where they are. These are all very powerful pieces of information for marketers and enable you to tailor your content very specifically.

You can also use the free Facebook Pages Manager app on your smart phone or IPad to give you live stats on the go.

By going through your results – checking reach and engagement, as well as call to action responses, you are enabling yourself to see what is working and what is not. Like all marketing, you do need to try new things, however if you see something is clearly not working, it is time to pull the pin.

The Insights tab will allow you to see who you are speaking to (including their gender and age group) which should help you be strategic with your content. It will also tell you what style of posts are working (for example – you might be getting better reach on posts that have an advice or DIY component). Facebook will also tell you what days of the week and times of day your fans are online – this should guide you as to when to post to get better traction.

Set a strategy and measure your outcomes

Social media is a critical marketing activity in any events business. It often gets mistaken as an admin task and allocated to a busy staff member that is not trained to manage such a key piece of marketing.

If you choose to keep your social media management in-house, make sure you allocate time for monthly reporting and set your team goals around consistent posting and positive results. It is good practice to also report on your web stats monthly, to ensure that you are getting some traffic from your social media pages.

Social media results are not all about how many fans you have. Your focus needs to be on engagement and creating content that is in line with your strategy. As with any type of marketing, strategy always comes first, so set yourself some goals and measure them monthly.