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Sponsor Appeal: 10 creative event sponsorship opportunities

Claire Ding - March 7, 2016

Regardless the size, organising events are a costly affair. Venue rental, sound equipment hire, catering, and photography are some of the big cost items, just to name a few. Ticket sales alone rarely make the cut in helping an event breakeven with the need to rely on other sources of income or cost-cutting measures, including in-kind and cash sponsorship.
When approaching businesses for sponsorship though, we must bear in mind that they too have a return on investment to meet in dishing out cash or in-kind products or services. Sponsorship is essentially a part of their marketing spend and strategy for either customer acquisition or brand awareness. Logo placements, social media shout-outs, in-event attributions are some typical ways event sponsors are given credit.
More likely than not, you’re competing with many other proposals for sponsorship. How can you make your event an appealing alternative marketing channel for businesses and stand out with a unique proposal? We’ve come up with 10 creative opportunities for sponsorship at events that you can offer.
Sell fan engagement
Every event has a target audience made up of a particular demographic with specific interests. Enable sponsors to engage with your attendees even after the event.

1. Does your sponsor have an email database they want to grow? Offer your attendee email list so sponsors can continue to engage with them after the event. Do look up the local regulation on the privacy of personal data beforehand and put in place the necessary terms and conditions of ticket purchase to encompass giving away of personal data or provide an avenue for attendees to opt-out.

2. Leverage the ability to create any ticket category you want on Peatix to provide exclusive product samples or discounts by sponsors for product exposure and event-related conversion to customers. Making it a ticket category is a gated way of curating attendees who are really interested in what’s on offer. The key to making this work is exclusivity so limit the amount of tickets available per category suggested below.

  • Create a ticket category for which when purchased provides ticket buyers with an exclusive set of major discounts to your sponsor’s products or services, we’re talking 40%-50% off. Let attendees have a sneak preview of the type of discounts they’ll be getting and the brands involved so as to generate interest and entice ticket purchase.
  • Create a ticket category which includes an exclusive goodie bag with products from your sponsors worth substantially more than the ticket price itself. Doing so both entices ticket sales as perceived value of the ticket increases and provides your relevant sponsors with a more accessible and packaged way to give out product samples.
Amplify the logo
Go beyond logo placements in a printed booklet, because honestly, who really reviews those? Offer to place your sponsor’s logos in more visible areas at your event.

3. Leave a deeper impression on attendees by printing your sponsor’s logo on common place items that attendees will use during an event and be exposed to for an extended period of time, like a pen, a coffee cup, a free tote bag, and what have you. In this way, the brand remains visually present at the fore.

4. Goodie bags are prime ad space that you should use to include your event’s name and sponsor logos. Give your goodie bags an upgraded look using canvas tote bags that your attendees will be proud to tote around during and even after the event – that’s free advertising for your event and sponsors!

5. Food is often a staple at events, and makes for a hefty sum. Aim to have it sponsored instead of footing the bill! Most, if not all, attendees will help themselves to food during an event which makes it a valuable place for sponsors to have their logo present.

6. Groups on Peatix enable you to build a following for your event. Grow your group to a substantial size, of which you can use as a tool to pitch for sponsorship. Under the group function, soon as your event goes live, an email is automatically sent to your followers to notify them of a new event. Include your sponsor’s logo in your event banner which then appears in the email notification and also on your Peatix event page so members of your group will see it when they click-through to the event.

Read: How to get sponsors for your event: 4 questions to consider
Elevate the sponsor
Sponsor representation at an event need not be impersonal. Enable them to give a face to their brand and add greater dimension to how they are relevant to attendees.

7. Give sponsors opportunities to speak, moderate panels, or conduct workshops where relevant to display their thought leadership within a field, hence convincing attendees of your sponsor’s credibility and therefore increase trust in their brand.

8. Provide sponsors with screen or stage time to play a video, conduct a product demo, or essentially give them creative freedom to showcase their brand through a programme segment at your event.

9. Have booths where attendees can fiddle around with your sponsor’s product to see how it works. Curate and limit the number of booths to make it a prestigious offering to sponsors and help keep it relevant for attendees lest your event turns them off by becoming too much of a marketplace.

10. If your sponsor has the expertise to provide advice that attendees will seek for, you could set up a contest to win an exclusive consultation with sponsors. This gives sponsors an opportunity to showcase their know-how and demonstrate how their product can provide a solution to an attendee’s pain point. For example, an attendee at a talk for creatives may find it valuable to speak with an expert on hiring creative talent should your sponsor be a recruitment firm.

The type of sponsorship opportunities you can offer would very much depend on the nature of your event, be it a seminar, concert, workshop, meetup, and so on. Try adapting and including some of these opportunities for sponsorship into your proposals to entice sponsors to the value you can provide with your event to their bottom line.
Have other creative and successful ways of incorporating a sponsor’s presence into events? Inspire us in the comments below.

 

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Claire Ding

Claire Ding is the Community Manager at ticketing platform Peatix in Singapore. She runs a community event for organisers, Backstage Pass , where organisers connect with others and learn tips on event management. Quite the thrill-seeker, Claire's gone skydiving, bungee jumping, and enjoys anything that puts her on edge (quite literally), it's no wonder she's in the business of events with never a dull moment!

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