Get Corporate Sponsorship for your Event

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Corporate love events as they get an opportunity for direct audience engagement. Sponsoring an event also gives them exclusive access to the consumers and helps them build an emotional connection. A successful event experience often reflects on the brand and creates long-lasting associations with the audience.

For event managers, getting corporate sponsors on board helps in organizing large-scale events . Additionally, getting the right brands and offers on board not only attracts the audience but delivers real value to them. In spite of what seems like a match made in heaven, many event-corporate sponsorship do not take off because of a mismatch of outcomes or faulty approach.

Here are six tips to overcome this bottleneck and design a compelling proposal that helps event managers to attain corporate sponsorship

1. Find the right fit

The very first step in finding corporate sponsors is finding the one that is right ‘fit’ for your event or vice versa. If your event, no matter how big or well planned, if it does not meet corporate’s goals, they will not get onboard. Event managers should first understand the company’s profile, its marketing/advertising objective, and sponsorship goals. Then the viability of the event to offer a matching branding/promotion/engagement strategy should be thought out to create a deliberate sponsorship strategy.

2. Create a Sponsor-oriented Proposal

A corporate sponsorship arrangement is a mutually beneficial business arrangement. As such, your proposal should focus on needs and objectives of the sponsor and how your event will deliver in terms of demographics, brand positioning, and media exposure. Begin with a thorough research about which events they have sponsored before and what deliverables meet their branding and business objectives. If possible, get a discovery session with a corporate team and discuss in detail about what sponsorship terms you can deliver.

3. Approach with specific deliverable

ROIs will be on top of the mind for the corporate sponsors. Offering measurable deliverable in terms of brand visibility and audience engagement that justify your sponsorship pricing and convince the corporate. Giving specifics of audience profile, footfalls expected, and access to analytical tools will make your event highly desirable. Giving clear-cut benchmarks also gives an air of professionalism and helps the companies make a quicker assessment about whether your event is a good fit for them.

4. Craft your approach

For Corporate Sponsorship, it is important to work with the right person - preferably a decision maker. Find out how much influence the advertising/marketing team has on decision making or whether the executives are calling all the shots. Avoid the first contact through email - nobody has the time or patience to invest in your proposal in the midst of a hectic workday. Let the first approach be over a call and in person with the purpose of laying the groundwork, and then follow it up with an email with the details of your proposal.

5. Think out of the box

Direct engagement with a targeted consumer demographic is the overriding reason why corporate sponsors go for events. So, brands are increasingly expecting interactive and real-time engagement over traditional logo and banner placements. Take advantage of tech innovations like event apps to offer out of the box options like live polls, clickable banners, sponsor showcase etc. Let the companies give out samples at the venue or integrate their products/services into event experience.

6. Give adequate time

It is important to keep adequate time cushion for negotiations and finalizing the terms of corporate sponsorship. Always remember that the companies are not writing a cheque for your event. They are offering sponsorship for specific deliverable. It will take time to, first of all, decide the terms of engagement and then get it approved through the chain of command. On event manager’s part also approaching a corporate sponsor involves detailed research and designing custom sponsorship packages.

Many a time the event managers are hesitant to approach corporate sponsors because of the size of the event or lack of experience. But, if you assure quality engagement and match your event deliverables and demographics with brand objectives, you can always find a corporate sponsor.

If you are searching for corporate sponsors for your events and want to design sponsorship packages that result in a mutually beneficial relationship, check out  Onspon.com - India’s leading online marketplace for sponsorship.