The Perfect Sponsorship Marketing Guide to Boost your Brand (Part 1)
In a highly competitive marketplace, one of the most informed decisions you can make is to boost your brand through sponsorship marketing.
Digital marketing is superb, but there’s no reason you should underestimate the power of sponsorship marketing to push your brand to the next level.
Your brand can achieve so much with sponsorship marketing if done right. And that’s why this guide offers useful tips for boosting your brand through sponsorship marketing.
What is Sponsorship Marketing?
First, let’s look at what sponsorship marketing is. Sponsorship marketing is when one brand connects itself with a facet (usually this is an event) of another brand. This event could be a sports game, a performance or a conference. However, brands can also decide to sponsor a television show, a charity, or even a celebrity.
How does Sponsorship Marketing Work?
Typically, the sponsor provides assistance in the form of money or other resources. In exchange, the sponsee aids in the promotion of the sponsor’s brand and reputation.
Benefits of Sponsorship Marketing
Sponsorship marketing offers several benefits for your brand. Here are some of them.
Increased Brand Awareness
Through sponsorship marketing, your brand gets introduced to a wider audience. Think about this: the bigger the event you are sponsoring, the more social media mentions and press you’ll get leading up to, during, and after the event.
This is why it’s important, before choosing an event to sponsor, that you do adequate research to ascertain the level of traction the event garners especially in terms of quality customers and the press.
Successful Lead Generation
The beautiful thing about sponsorship marketing is that it attracts the proper clients while also allowing you to demonstrate your brand’s human side.
You may market your products, learn more about your customers, and build a mailing list of qualified leads by attending an in-person event.
In essence, to establish significant brand loyalty, emotional ties are required.
Increased Sales
While traditional marketing and advertising cannot be easily eliminated, it does not provide a true experience for consumers that want to feel connected to a brand.
The stronger the bond with customers, the more likely they are to make an initial buy and remain loyal.
Therefore, sponsorship marketing is effective at generating new leads and driving sales.
Kinds of Sponsorship Marketing
Sponsorship marketing can take different forms. Let’s look at a few of them.
Sports Sponsorship
Sports sponsorship is when a brand chooses to link itself with a certain sport usually in the hopes of increasing brand exposure.
Whenever you come across a sports game, you’d often see logos of different brands everywhere: from billboards to team uniforms and commercial breaks during broadcast games.
Some of the most common types of sports sponsorship include:
- Event Sponsorship
- Stadium Sponsorship
- Shirt Sponsorship
- Team Sponsorship
- Athlete Sponsorship
- Broadcast Sponsorship
TV Sponsorship
TV sponsorship is one of the effective ways by which your brand can reach a wider audience. It’s highly likely that you’ve just – or recently – watched a TV show sponsored by either a popular or an emerging brand.
When it comes to TV sponsorship, your brand can decide to sponsor an entire TV channel or a specific programme to optimise your integrated marketing efforts.
Now that we’ve looked at some of the kinds of sponsorship marketing that exist, it’s important to note that the totality of sponsorship marketing for your brand does not revolve around what you do but around how you do what you do. Therefore, here are a few guidelines to follow.
Create value, not an objective
To get sponsorship marketing right for your brand, your focus should be on creating value for consumers instead of a definite marketing objective. Yes, you read that right.
Although it is quite clear that the ultimate goal of sponsorship marketing is to boost brand recognition, creating value for consumers should be your main focus if you want to get a good return on investment (ROI).
Focusing on overtly selling your brand as opposed to creating a memorable experience for consumers will not yield the conversion that you desire.
Estimate the value you offer
Every effective sponsorship benefits both the promotional partner and the sponsor. Take note of these benefits that you provide for your partner (it could be an increase in viewership or followership) to increase your negotiating power and also in case you are overcharged.
