Ask a Girl Scout the secret to successful cookie sales and she might answer, “Thin Mints®, Caramel deLites® and Peanut Butter Patties®.”
Why? Because she knows her customers. She understands what they value.
Whether you’re creating event sponsorship packages or selling iconic cookies, success rides on understanding your customers and what drives them. But unlike a Girl Scout, you may not have decades of data pointing to sponsorship benefits with universal, irresistible appeal.
For some prospective sponsors, it’s all about attendee engagement and lead generation. For others, it’s brand awareness and thought leadership. Every sponsor has different marketing goals, key performance indicators (KPIs) and expectations for their sponsorship investment.
So to create event sponsorship packages that sell like Thin Mints, do your homework and get to know your prospects and what they expect from event sponsorships.
Research and Reflect
Start with high-level research and reflection about the event and sponsorship landscape. Look at elements like:
- Data from past events: Look at post-event surveys and metrics, participation and feedback to see what’s worked for sponsors and what hasn’t. Use these insights when creating and ranking this year’s sponsorship benefits.
- Competitive landscape: Check out sponsorship options at similar events to get ideas and develop your unique selling points.
- Your attendees: Review registration forms, surveys, direct feedback and social media profiles and engagement to learn about your attendee demographics and psychographics. The more you know about your attendees, the better you’ll be able to find and attract the most appropriate sponsors—those eager to engage with your audience.
- What sets your event apart: Why should a business sponsor your event over another one? Why should they allocate dollars to your sponsorship packages over other marketing activities? What does your event offer that no other event or tactic can match?
- Digital event management tools: These platforms simplify the sponsorship process. Check out apps like A2Z Events with features that make it quick and easy to create compelling sponsorship packages.
- Mobile apps that event attendees know and love: According to Freeman Trends Report Q1 2024, 44% of event attendees say event apps improve the entire experience.
This general research should help inform what and how you sell to your pool of potential sponsors. But remember, each prospect is an individual. Ultimately, you’ll be selling, creating and negotiating sponsorship packages for one prospect at a time.
Step into Sponsors’ Shoes
With shrinking marketing budgets and staff, sponsors are under intense pressure to get the most value out of their allocations. Their recommendations and decisions will be scrutinized, and the outcomes will impact their careers, coworkers and businesses.
That’s why you need to build a rock-solid case to give them the confidence to sponsor your event. Start by:
- Asking prospects about their brand and marketing strategy and sponsorship KPIs and goals.
- Learning about their products, customers, sales cycles, growth plans and past sponsorships.
- Soliciting their input. Maybe they have a great idea for a speaker or activity for the event. Involving sponsors in the planning process helps them feel invested and committed to the event’s success. So give them a proverbial seat at the table.
- Studying their industries to catch up on trends, challenges and opportunities. You want each prospect to know you understand their business and its challenges, and why and how they’ll benefit from sponsoring your event.
- Talking to your sales reps and referring to your CRM, web and social analytics, especially if your customers are potential sponsors. This can give you insight into how customers speak and what’s on their minds.
- Referring to your notes from previous sponsorships to review each returning customer’s selections, feedback and results. This allows you to further personalize your recommendations while strengthening the relationship.
When you have a solid understanding of your prospect’s situation, you can align sponsorship benefits to their goals and requirements.
Clearly, a cookie-cutter approach won’t cut. So, consider offering different types of sponsorship packages like tiered, a la carte and custom options.
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Three types of sponsorship packages: Tiered, a la carte and custom
You and your team have clear goals and KPIs for your event, right? Likewise, each sponsor has targets and expectations for the return on investment (ROI)of sponsoring your event.
The trick then is to create sponsorship packages that hit the sweet spot between each sponsor’s goals and requirements, your event’s key metrics and your attendees’ delight. Here are three approaches:
Tiered sponsorship packages
Tiered sponsorship packages are customary offerings that work for many of your sponsors. With multiple levels and price points, this package format will allow you to target a wide range of prospects.
The simple, structured approach makes it easy for sponsors to understand the relative value of each tier’s increasingly exclusive perks—and may even nudge them to level up.
You can use tried-and-true “Platinum, Gold, Silver, Bronze” tiers or get creative with names. If you’re putting on a gardening expo for example, your categories could be “Rose, Orchid, Crocus, Hydrangea.” But the content of each tier is more important than its name.
Compelling sponsorship packages offer value and increasing exclusivity at every level. To ensure it, you can list all the possible perks of sponsoring your trade show or expo, conference or corporate event, assign a relative value to each and rank them from highest to lowest or vice versa. For example:
- Title sponsorship/naming rights
- Prime logo placement options
- Speaking opportunities
- Exclusive product showcase or integration
- VIP access and networking
- Exclusive exhibit, demo and networking spaces
- Interactive experiences
- Digital marketing integration
- Branded swag and merchandise
- Co-branding opportunities
- Content creation and distribution
- On-site signage options
- Exclusive pre- and post-event invitations
- Event tickets
- Press release inclusion
- Recognition in digital and printed event programs
- Social media promotions
The art and science of pricing tiers
There’s an art and a science to pricing the tiers in your sponsorship packages. You’ll need to consider your costs and the value of each tier of course. And also the market and competitive landscape, including how sponsorship packages are priced at similar events and whether it’s a sponsors’ market or an event organizer’s one (supply and demand).
One pricing approach is to multiply your event’s cost per attendee by the number of attendees, and charge a percentage of that for each tier. For example, using the gardening expo example above, you might charge 10% for a Hydrangea tier, 20% for Crocus and up to say 40% for a Rose tier.
Another approach is to simply add up and total the value of the benefits in each level. This gives you the flexibility to offer add-on and mix-and-match perks and upgrades.
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A la carte sponsorship packages
Some sponsors may prefer to create their own sponsorship packages choosing from the perks available in your tiers. With this option, you create a “menu” listing each benefit with its various options and prices. Sponsors can then pick and choose as long as each perk is still available—the most exclusive ones will be limited to top sponsors.
To make it easier for sponsors to select benefits, consider organizing your menu by category, such as “exhibit options” or “branded merchandise”, along with detailed descriptions, pricing and photos or illustrations.
You might even create a few sample packages from your a la carte menu like pizza shops do with their specialty pizzas. Or you can take it a step further and craft unique sponsorship packages for each individual sponsor’s goals, like we do in the following custom package examples.
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Custom sponsorship packages
While tiered and a la carte sponsorship packages can make your negotiations and sales relatively quick and easy, they don’t allow as much room for personalization and innovation. To stand out, get creative with your sponsorship packages and tailor them for each sponsor’s goals.
Customizing sponsorship packages can be a fun, rewarding process. You get to work closely with each sponsor, nurturing the relationship and setting the stage for future opportunities. But it can take more time, so consider setting an earlier deadline for custom sponsorship packages like these:
Turnkey sponsorship packages
Ideal for the sponsor who’s too busy to deal with the details. Your team handles everything from creating banner ads on your attendee mobile app to setting up their exhibit booth, writing and distributing content to capturing leads and printing their collateral materials.
Lead gen sponsorship packages
These packages grant sponsors direct access to attendees and VIP events, dedicated meeting and networking spaces, speaking engagements, lead tracking and opportunities to host workshops and lead sessions.
Product demo sponsorship packages
Perfect for sponsors who want to showcase products with hands-on experiences. Freeman Trends Report shows 75% of attendees say demonstrations and hands-on activities are the perfect way to learn technical information, so designate booth space in a high-traffic location and include scheduled demos in your program listings.
Also place the sponsor’s demo videos on your app, website and social media.
Product integration sponsorship packages
Best for sponsors who want to incorporate their product’s capabilities into the event production. Depending on the business, you could use their technology, products or services to plan, prepare and produce your event, giving prominent credit to the sponsor.
Media exposure sponsorship packages
Offer packages with prominent inclusion in pre- and post-event marketing, PR and media kits, social posts, and production and distribution of content like interviews, videos, blogs and podcasts.
Attendee engagement sponsorship packages
Sponsors love opportunities to mix, mingle and even workout and play with attendees. Depending on the sponsor’s brand and your audience, you could develop intimate salons, performances or book discussions.
Friendly competitions, wellness and recreational activities and puzzles and games. Or even polls, all led by sponsors and supported with branded hints and supplies.
Corporate social responsibility sponsorship packages
Great for sponsors who want to promote their commitment to the greater good. Develop “green” branded and co-branded merchandise, sustainable utilities and features like reusable drinking glasses, water refilling and recycling stations and locally sourced, organic food and drinks.
Include opportunities to lead sessions and distribute content on sustainability as it applies to their industry or area of expertise, sponsor or host a community service project or accept donations for a relevant charity.
Brand visibility sponsorship packages.
Pull out the stops on high-impact branding with professionally designed digital and on-site signage and collateral, opportunities to brand high visibility areas like charging stations, prominent mentions in your event promotions, top of page digital and printed logo and ad placement, branded scannable badges and exclusive rights to sponsor a keynote session, networking lounge or valuable feature like WiFi, entertainment or food service.
Thought leadership sponsorship packages
For sponsors focused on building credibility and supporting your industry. Provide opportunities to speak, host workshops, sit on panels, lead sessions, author whitepapers and create and distribute content like e-books, podcasts, videos and webinars.
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Use past success to prove future ROI
How do you prove the value of sponsoring your event? The more evidence of prior success, the stronger the case your prospect will profit from sponsoring your event.
So connect with past sponsors to find out about their post-event results and ROI. Tally up your previous events’ numbers, examples and revenue, including ticket sales, audience demographics, event marketing plans, website and advertising spend and media impressions and engagements.
Gather these proof points into an online portfolio or short video featuring items like:
- Thank you notes and messages
- Media clips and news articles
- Past sponsor KPI measurement reports or ROI analyses
- Prior event attendee information, media spend and reports
- Testimonials by sponsors and attendees
- B-roll footage from the event
Pitching sponsorship packages is more effective when you can deliver your presentation live, virtually or in person. So rather than email the proposal and portfolio or video, schedule a meeting to walk prospects through the elements together. You can leave it with them afterwards, when they’re in a better position to share it internally.
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Help sell it up
Depending on your prospects position in their company, they may need to get buy-in from others in their organizations. You can help them make the case internally by providing talking points, collateral materials and pitch templates that highlight why sponsoring your event is a strategic use of marketing dollars.
Include bullet points, statistics and visual representation — illustrations and photos, charts and graphs — that provide quick, digestible proof points of how your proposed sponsorship package aligns with their strategy.
For example, if a prospect’s main goal is to launch a new product, add a graphic showing 87% of event attendees say discovering new products is the most important part of an event, according to Freeman Trends Report Q1 2024.
If they’re focused on brand visibility or credibility, highlight Freeman Trust Report’s research saying 64% of attendees have positive impressions of brands they interact with at events.
But even with a powerful proposal, your prospect may meet resistance from colleagues. So offer to rehearse or role-play the presentation, anticipating questions and preparing responses together.
Conclusion
Your prospects know sponsoring events can help them achieve their marketing goals: Allied Market Research reports 80.4% say in-person events are their most powerful marketing channel.
You just need to show them how sponsoring your event will hit their KPI metrics like Thin Mints satisfy a Girl Scout cookie craving.
To do that, you need to know what they want. So take the time to learn about each prospect’s industry and business, strategy and goals. Then tailor sponsorship packages to satisfy their sweet KPIs.
Creating targeted sponsorship packages is a lot easier when you have technology like A2Z’s Sponsor Management. The app’s user-friendly tools and features make quick work of attracting and converting prospects. So, schedule a demo today and simplify sponsorship sales going forward.
