Sponsorship is a marketing tool and it’s there to help you promote your products and services.
There are two parts to sponsorship:
You have your property, which is your activity – it could be an event, conference, venue, webinar series, a concert, etc.
And then you have your sponsor, and your sponsor is the person that is paying to get access to the audience that is attending that activity, or the audience that it’s promoted to.
A sponsor could be paying in cash, or they could pay with products and services in kind.
Sponsorship in Canada
In Canada there is a study that’s done every year, called the Canadian Sponsorship Landscape Study. The results for 2017 have just come out. They found that 1.98 billion dollars is spent on sponsorship, for 2017 in Canada.
It also found that corporations typically spend 21% of their marketing budget on sponsorship. 1 in 5 marketing dollars is spent on sponsorship. Meaning there is a lot of opportunity for small businesses can capitalize on this budget, for their own businesses.
So why would a small business use sponsorship?
There are so many great things that can be achieved by using sponsorship. Here are four that I think are the most important:
Revenue
Who doesn’t want more revenue? If you’re running a webinar series and you don’t have the software tools to help you run them, by getting sponsors, that will cover that cost for you. If you’re hosting a conference and you need to put down deposits for your venue, then sponsorship will help you cover those costs. So sponsorship can bring in revenue for you.
Resources and Value Add
This one I love, sohow can it bring value add and resources? If, for example, your community has a common issue that you’re not able to solve – it’s not something that you focus on but they all have this issue – if you’re able to bring a sponsor on that can solve this issue for them, that provides you with more value add for your organization. Maybe it’s education, maybe it’s the tools they need, but if you’re able to make their life easier, that provides you with more value add and that’s better customer service from you to your community.
Increase brand perception and trust
This is a very interesting tool – Sponsorship can leverage your sponsor’s brand perception and trust in the marketplace on to you. Sponsorship brings with it trust. A lot more than if you were just to do an advertising campaign. Trust is something that’s built up over a long period of time, but if you’re a new organization that’s just coming on, by getting sponsors that are way more established than you, you can leverage the trust that the community has for them onto you, just from that association with sponsorship.
Increase in Awareness
By bringing on sponsors, you can get access to their customer base, and they’re able to promote your event or your activity to their customer base. So you’re generating more access to potential customers. It is a great tool.
Those are four really great things that you can do with sponsorship. If you’re an organization that is looking to explore sponsorship a bit more – maybe you’re getting requests for sponsorship and you’re not sure how to manage it, or you’re looking to run an event and you would like to get sponsors, then please check out our workshop coming up next week
There are two parts to sponsorship:
- Property
- Sponsor
You have your property, which is your activity – it could be an event, conference, venue, webinar series, a concert, etc.
And then you have your sponsor, and your sponsor is the person that is paying to get access to the audience that is attending that activity, or the audience that it’s promoted to.
A sponsor could be paying in cash, or they could pay with products and services in kind.
Sponsorship in Canada
In Canada there is a study that’s done every year, called the Canadian Sponsorship Landscape Study. The results for 2017 have just come out. They found that 1.98 billion dollars is spent on sponsorship, for 2017 in Canada.
It also found that corporations typically spend 21% of their marketing budget on sponsorship. 1 in 5 marketing dollars is spent on sponsorship. Meaning there is a lot of opportunity for small businesses can capitalize on this budget, for their own businesses.
So why would a small business use sponsorship?
There are so many great things that can be achieved by using sponsorship. Here are four that I think are the most important:
Revenue
Who doesn’t want more revenue? If you’re running a webinar series and you don’t have the software tools to help you run them, by getting sponsors, that will cover that cost for you. If you’re hosting a conference and you need to put down deposits for your venue, then sponsorship will help you cover those costs. So sponsorship can bring in revenue for you.
Resources and Value Add
This one I love, sohow can it bring value add and resources? If, for example, your community has a common issue that you’re not able to solve – it’s not something that you focus on but they all have this issue – if you’re able to bring a sponsor on that can solve this issue for them, that provides you with more value add for your organization. Maybe it’s education, maybe it’s the tools they need, but if you’re able to make their life easier, that provides you with more value add and that’s better customer service from you to your community.
Increase brand perception and trust
This is a very interesting tool – Sponsorship can leverage your sponsor’s brand perception and trust in the marketplace on to you. Sponsorship brings with it trust. A lot more than if you were just to do an advertising campaign. Trust is something that’s built up over a long period of time, but if you’re a new organization that’s just coming on, by getting sponsors that are way more established than you, you can leverage the trust that the community has for them onto you, just from that association with sponsorship.
Increase in Awareness
By bringing on sponsors, you can get access to their customer base, and they’re able to promote your event or your activity to their customer base. So you’re generating more access to potential customers. It is a great tool.
Those are four really great things that you can do with sponsorship. If you’re an organization that is looking to explore sponsorship a bit more – maybe you’re getting requests for sponsorship and you’re not sure how to manage it, or you’re looking to run an event and you would like to get sponsors, then please check out our workshop coming up next week