Feel like you have an opportunity for potential sponsors that you would like to capitalise on? Don’t know where to start trying to put in place a sponsorship strategy for your organisation? Don’t worry help is at hand. This blog will clearly outline the steps you need to take to put in place a robust sponsorship strategy to set you up for success in securing sponsors.
Understand the Sponsorship landscape
Start by understanding the sponsorship landscape in your geographical area and for your sector. While sport sponsorship is by far the most active there are lots of sponsorship opportunities for Commercial and Cultural organisations who provide access to a key audience potential sponsors would like to target. Research the size, scale, spend, competitors and organisations sponsoring.
Review the competitor landscape
Have any of your competitor’s secured sponsorship? If so find out as much about their sponsorship programmes as you can – their website is a great resource for this information. Understand the benefits your competitor is offering potential sponsors. How can you differentiate your offering from your competitors to make your offering more desirable to potential sponsors? Are you clear on your Mission, Vision and Value Proposition? Is your value proposition clear to your target audience?
Develop your Sponsorship Objectives
Asking yourself the tough questions about why you want to put in place a sponsorship strategy is key to unlocking the goals of your sponsorship strategy. Set sponsorship objectives -set yourself revenue goals from your potential sponsors – what does success look like?
Understand what you have to offer a potential sponsor and why they may be interested in sponsoring your programme. Are you looking for one main sponsor or can you offer specific opportunities to a variety of sponsors – these could be category specific for example Technology, Communications, Financial Services, Travel, Legal etc. Can a sponsor offer value in kind or cash only? In essence you need to decide what your vision for a successful sponsorship programme is.
Define sponsor opportunities
Examine your organisation from a sponsor’s perspective to identify what benefits you can offer. Be open to collaborative discussion on ideas sponsors may have. Some key areas sponsors are interested in are:
Raising Brand awareness
Brand association
Sales opportunities
Access to a potential target audience
Story Telling opportunities in content marketing
Access to insights by being involved with your organisation
Opportunities for staff engagement
CSR and opportunities to give back
Understand measurement of success
Be clear on what your metrics for evaluating success are aside from just revenue. Make sure you also understand how a potential sponsor will be evaluating success from their perspective – for example RoI (Return on Investment), Brand awareness impact etc. Understanding sponsors goals and how they will evaluate the success for the sponsorship is key for the long term success of your sponsorship programme.
Create a compelling pitch
Investing in a professional, impressive sales pitch is important to gain attention from potential sponsors. The pitch should include:
· High level overview of your organisation – size, scale, impact, successes and value proposition
· Sponsor opportunity overview – what audience and benefits you can offer a potential sponsor
· Testimonials – feedback from customers that showcases your impact
· Demonstrate an understanding of the sponsors objectives and how you can help them achieve their goals
· Outline the specific opportunities and benefits you can offer a sponsor but be open to collaboration and discussion of ideas/opportunities the sponsor may have
· Understand next steps – make sure you are clear on the ask and that the sponsor is clear on the opportunity
Identify target sponsors
Developing a list of potential sponsors to target is worth investing time and effort in. Targeting the right person in the right organisation that is ripe for your sponsor opportunity will shorten the sales cycle. Here are some tips on identifying potential sponsors:
· Review your existing network to identify quick wins will yield better results than cold calling
· Find potential sponsors with objectives closely aligned to your offering
· Ideas generated from a competitor review
· Existing commercial relationships
· Organisations looking to target the audience you can offer
· Existing suppliers or organisations that can fulfill a need/gap through value in kind
Put support systems are in place
· Resource – do you have the necessary resource in place to manage the work required to implement a sponsorship strategy? Do you have the necessary skills within your current organisation, do you need to hire, can you outsource to a consultant?
· Contracts – who can prepare a sponsorship agreement for you?
· PR Support to enable the successful launch of the sponsorship to generate coverage in the media
· Marketing Support – if content, social media, events, photography, video are required to support the sponsor agreement while most of this will be managed by the sponsor organisation you may wish to also leverage the benefits of the sponsorship internally and will need resource to manage this.
· Relationship Management – resource to manage the sponsorship once it’s secured and to ensure all elements of the sponsor agreement are managed
Summary
By following these steps you will have defined objectives for your sponsorship strategy and have a clear implementation plan to execute upon. Now all you need to do is get started.
For helping defining a sponsorship strategy, developing a Brand strategy or in any area relating to Strategic Marketing feel free to get in touch.
Comments