When you’re hosting an in-person event, adding virtual delivery effectively doubles your sponsorship opportunities — so it’s certainly a smart decision for easy value-add. If your in-person event has been cancelled, and hosting online is now the only option, don’t fret — online delivery provides countless opportunities for online event sponsorship packages. We’ve got the tips you need to help build the perfect revenue-generating event sponsorship package that keeps them coming back year after year.
5 Offerings for Online Event Sponsorship Packages:
There are countless ways to offer revenue-generating online event sponsorship packages that are highly effective and trackable. While the true number of event sponsorship package options is dependent upon the software platform that your organization uses to deliver your event online, these are the most widely used options to get you started!
1. Session Sponsorship
The first quick and easy sponsorship package you can offer is to sponsor an individual session or panel. You can up the ante by having the speaker mention the sponsor at the beginning of their talk, especially if the speaker has personal experience using the sponsor’s product.
2. Video Advertising
Traditional “TV” advertising — it seems everything comes full circle nowadays, and that’s especially true with the evolution of event sponsorship packages. You can leverage video advertising in a lot of different ways, including both short and long form video ad space.
You could start and end your sessions/panels with a 10–15-second ad. Alternatively, you could break up your 90-minute keynote speech into two 45-minute segments with a 3 minute “prime time” advertisement. Encourage your sponsors to give attendees a time sensitive opportunity with an urgent Call to Action — something along the lines of giving attendees a 20% discount on the product but it expires two days after the event.
3. Logo Placement
Logo space is one of the simplest, yet most lucrative, packages you can offer. By giving dedicated space to a sponsor on the homepage, the hub of activity, they will be visible to everyone who is tuning in to stream your event! You could also include all sponsor logos in an “Our Partners” section with each logo linking to the individual sponsor’s website. This is really easy to achieve when you have the right software for your virtual conference.
4. On-Demand Content
Were some of your interested attendees unable to make it to the event? Perhaps there was only a single session they were interested in? By recording your virtual event, you can offer individual sessions/panels as on-demand content to your attendees. Depending on how many downloads you project (or have historical data to show), you can use this strategy to upsell a sponsorship package since the content will be receiving more views than a one-time event.
5. Stretch Goals
Use stretch goals as a way to get your event sponsors to help you promote your event! By creating unlockable goals based upon attendance numbers, you can create a win-win for both you and your online event sponsors (i.e. 1,000 attendees = 20% off product X and 1,500 attendees unlocks a FREE eBook).
Another way to achieve this is when a sponsor signs on, have them agree to leverage social media to plug your event 3 times per week for 3 months leading up to the event. This way, you will receive increased registration revenue and the sponsor will have more visibility due to a larger audience.
How to Sell Online Event Sponsorship Packages
Key value propositions:
Reports
Make sure that you’re providing measurable reports that demonstrate sponsorship ROI. With a virtual event you can track how many people actually log in to view the content (and often, which specific sessions they view). This gives you an advantage over old-school in-person events where there are less measurable ways to know the impact of sponsorship. This is one of the many reasons why hosting a virtual event (or a hybrid event that’s both in-person and virtual) is a great way to maximize both your and your sponsor’s bottom line.
Insights
Piggybacking off reports, it is your responsibility to show creative insights that might not necessarily be readily apparent from broadstroke reports. For example, you could look at the engagement data of a session that included a video from a sponsor. Did learners drop off, or stay on? Ask your sponsor if they saw an uptick in interest on their end directly after — is there a correlation? If so, you can leverage this soft statistic when demonstrating the value of your online event sponsorship packages.
Long-Term Value
You can double down on event’s ROI abilities by offering online event footage on-demand once the event is finished. This means that advertisements continue to have value longer than they normally would. If your content is gated, only highly relevant audiences will pay to view the sessions. This means that you’re able to deliver highly targeted, and thus more valuable, ROI.
