In traditional live event planning, sponsors market their brands throughout the event largely with in-person offers, like product demonstrations, giveaways, and raffles. With the shift to more online events, your sponsors may be wondering if and how virtual event sponsorships can still be beneficial for them and allow them to reach their desired audience.
Shifting your event strategy to include digital sponsorships can be an innovative way to differentiate your brand. When you are working with potential virtual event sponsors, here are 4 valuable benefits to communicate to them.
1. You gain data-driven information access
What’s in it for sponsors: Although in-person live events allow for more casual conversation and natural marketing of products, the shift to digital opens the door for better analysis of your customers. Sponsors are able to engage and get more valuable data from potential customers easier than ever before.
How to maximize a sponsor’s interest: provide your sponsors access to as much data as possible from the event as a value-add. Sponsors can assess engagement through clicks, impressions, comments, or any other virtual actions taken by the event attendees. Level of engagement can give pertinent and personalized information to sponsors, giving them valuable insight into their marketing efforts and learn how their potential customers are engaging with their content. In comparison to in-person events, using tracking tools can offer a much clearer picture on how interested customers may be. (An important note: due to privacy reasons, be extra careful to honor the privacy and contact details of your attendees, unless that has otherwise already been agreed upon.)
2. You expand your audience reach
What’s in it for sponsors: With in-person events, travel concerns (cost, time) are just a few factors that go into who attends an event. During virtual events, attendees are able to realistically tune in from anywhere in the world. Virtual events can offer a broader reach with greater potential for attracting geographically-diverse attendees opening the door to a relationship with prospects nationally and internationally that erases the time and financial constrictions of travel.
How to maximize a sponsor’s interest: Let your virtual event sponsors know not just that they can tap into an expanded audience of potential customers, but also the overall demographics of the audience attending your event. Information like job titles, company names, and past sponsors can often swing the pendulum in a favorable direction.
3. You can gain more insight into your ideal audience
What’s in it for sponsors: As the reach of your virtual event can be much more widespread, the diversity of the expanded audience can also help your sponsors gain insight about their ideal marketing personas. By collecting demographic information and analyzing click habits, sponsors will gain clarity about the different customer personas that engage with their brand. For example, if people from California have significantly higher clicks on a certain marketing effort, this may indicate a high-value market for the sponsor. Or, maybe a certain age group is engaging more consistently with the sponsor’s content. Sponsors would then evaluate these trends to further personalize messages for the different subsets of personas.
How to maximize a sponsor’s interest: Leverage your event sponsorship as a market intelligence opportunity. Explain that persona development is a great benefit of virtual event sponsorship, allowing sponsors to identify demographic and message preferences for their target markets. This information is incredibly valuable, and can lead to more personalized and targeted messaging for specific markets or groups in the future.
4. Virtual event sponsorships are more affordable
What’s in it for sponsors: There is a strong argument for the ease and affordability of digital sponsorships when you remove costly expenses including travel, staffing, or promotional giveaways. This can leave the sponsor with more of their budget devoted to securing reliable data-driven information tools for the reasons mentioned above.
How to maximize a sponsor’s interest: Don’t try to position virtual sponsorship as the same as an in-person sponsorship, because it isn’t. Instead, consider leading with the cost savings of digital sponsorships and the increase in attendance that virtual events are generating. If you are from or working with a brand that focuses on sustainability, highlight how virtual sponsorships are also much better for the environment!
Sponsors are adjusting their perception of what event sponsorship entails, so these benefits for shifting to virtual event sponsorships should not be overlooked. With the added inclusion of data-driven information, sponsors can have a larger reach and identify more targeted audience personas often with a lower budget than live events. Now that sponsors are aware of these benefits, check out this article on how to incorporate sponsor engagement virtually.
For more tips and ideas to make all your events, whether they’re virtual, hybrid, or in-person, a smashing success, contact us today.
