One of the 8 drivers of sponsorship success is the quality of your sponsorship program. When was the last time you took a good hard look at what you’re selling?
If your sponsorship program lacks value, you’re propping up a façade, which ultimately undermines your confidence.
It’s a new year and time to review and upgrade.
When I work with clients to improve their sponsorship results, this review is comprehensive and wide ranging, the details of which are beyond the scope of this post. For now, however, I’ll suggest three places where you can focus, depending on where you are with your sponsorship program’s life cycle.
Generic has got to go.
If you’re new to sponsorship or if your organization’s sponsorship program includes generic offerings, like Gold-Silver-Bronze, here’s where you can make a big difference. Generic programs are antithetical to what is valuable about sponsorship.
Actions: Fully develop your sponsorship program and work with your sponsors or prospects to develop and co-create opportunities with them. Your job is to help your sponsor stand out, engage with, and contribute value to your event, initiative, or organization.
Focus on business objectives.
When you develop a sponsorship proposal, are your ideas and recommendations meeting the sponsor’s objectives? How do you know?
Action: Be sure your business development process enables you to uncover precisely what the sponsor wants to accomplish and what success looks like.
The big bundle
Are you stumped about how to create valuable offerings when what you have to offer is small? One of my clients had this very problem, too. They had well-branded and highly visible events and initiatives. There actual attendance size, however, frankly was anemic and surprising.
Actions: Turns out there were several issues they needed to address. But here’s one suggestion I made that you may find valuable, too. Find the pattern among your events and initiatives and bundle them together into something meatier.
When you create ideas for your partners that maximize the sponsorship medium and combine your sponsor's business outcomes with deep connections to audiences plus a healthy dose of creativity, you will deliver enormous value for your sponsor.
If you’d like to hear more suggestions like these, join me on January 31, 2018, at 11 a.m. for a webinar, entitled An Executive Update: 10 Tips for Your 2018 Sponsorship Success.
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