If you are looking for ways and hacks to improve your brand and relationships with your customers or want to gain publicity in order to attract more buyers, then sponsorships can be an effective way to do so. By sponsoring an event, cause, team, an individual, or any entity that your target audience connects with, you can get your prospects to perceive you in a positive way. This can cause more leads, improved public relations, and more loyalty from your consumers.
But what exactly is a sponsorship? In this article, we will be discussing all about sponsorship and how you can use sponsorship to grow your brand.
What is sponsorship?
A sponsorship is a business relationship involving two parties- a sponsor and a sponsee. The former provides the latter with funds or resources in the return for rights to exploit commercial success. The sponsor is typically a brand or a company and the sponsee can be an event, a non-profit organization, a sports team, or an individual.
The sponsor benefits from sponsorship in the form of publicity, media coverage, and better reach. It helps the company by growing its brand name.
The sponsee benefits by receiving funds and resources that they utilize to successfully conduct the event or boost their performance.
Sponsorship Vs Advertisements
An advertisement is a direct and clear marketing method to grab the attention of buyers. It is solely done for commercial success and to drive in more leads. An advertisement involves only one party- the brand itself.
On the other hand, sponsorships are a more subtle and indirect way of selling your products. It is not done just for commercial success but also for building the credibility of the brand in the eyes of the people. Unlike advertisements, sponsorships involve two parties- the brand and the sponsee.
These days, advertisements have become very common and obvious. Customers are well aware of the true motives of advertisements. Therefore, it has become difficult to drive in leads via ads. For this reason, sponsorships should be considered for generating leads over direct advertisement methods.
Sponsorships are indirect and they capture the minds of the audience by creating an emotional bond between the customer and the brand. Sponsorships cause curiosity among the audience to find out more about your product. This makes sponsorships, an effective marketing strategy.
History of sponsorships
The history of sponsorship dates back to ancient Rome where elites sponsored gladiator matches and tournaments in an attempt to improve their image in the eyes of the public. Many of the art forms in the Renaissance period, were also sponsored by wealthy and upper-class people who were patrons of the craft.
Corporate sponsorship has existed for the past 100 years but it was rare and in small amounts. It was in the 1980s and 1990s that corporate sponsorship boomed. This period saw enormous growth in the amount of money that companies invested in sponsorship. Since then, sponsorship has grown rapidly.
Today, almost every event or tournament is sponsored by various brands. Also, many non-profit organizations and social causes are linked with enterprises that help them by providing adequate resources.
Benefits of sponsorships
Sponsoring an event or cause can yield high returns for your brand. It leads to media coverage, publicity, better reach, and visibility of your brand name. If you sponsor an event that your customers enjoy or connect with, you will establish an image of goodwill and trust among them. It will also establish the credibility of your brand and people will have an increased intention of purchasing your product. The various benefits that sponsorship provides are as follows:
Provides preference to your customers to use your products–
Sponsorships help to convey the message that you share similar interests as your clients or support similar causes. If customers are regular viewers or strong supporters of your sponsee, then will surely take your brand into con consideration while purchasing similar items as your brand. And if they are huge fans of your sponsee, a sports team, for example, they will surely prefer to purchase your products over other brands.
Provides marketing benefits–
If you sponsor a popular event that is widely viewed, then you will receive a lot of commercial attention. Your brand name will be associated with the event and the media will refer to it whenever they cover the event. Also, with the wide reach that the event holds, your brand name too will reach a large section of people.
Even if you are not able to sponsor a big event and are willing to sponsor small ones, you can surely get media coverage from the local newspaper. Any event will have its patrons and viewers. So, sponsoring on any scale- big or large will fetch you reach and visibility.
Establish healthy relationships with other brands-
A popular event is often associated with more than one company. By sponsoring such an event, you will be able to strengthen your relations with the co-sponsors. You will get to meet new people who share similar interests as you and share a common target audience. This will allow your company to collaborate with them in any future projects and open the doors to brand growth.
Establishes goodwill and credibility-
When you sponsor a social event, it benefits you in two ways.
- The first one is the direct and short-term benefit of setting the image that your brand is about more than just acquiring profit. Supporting a social cause proves that you are concerned about the greater society and wish to bring about a change. This results in a healthy relationship between you and your customers. They start perceiving you as a driver of goodwill.
- The second one is indirect and long-term. Supporting a social cause helps the cause itself. By providing ample resources to the movement related to the social cause you help the movement to grow and gain success. This will lead to a more prosperous society where people can invest more in your products and services.
Points to keep in mind while sponsoring an event:
Sponsoring an event is not as easy as it seems. You have to keep in mind various points while sponsoring an event. These are listed below:
Understand your audience–
Understand what interests your audience and what social causes they support. Spend time researching the passions and hobbies of your target audience. Then choose an event related to those interests that has a large viewership. If you are considering a social cause, then find out which social causes your customers care about and wish to contribute to.
Do not just pick any event that you find fancy and think can reach a wide number of prospects. This will be problematic as your brand name will reach people with contrasting interests and passions. You will not be able to channel your brand name to a particular sect of the society as a result you will not be able to create an impact in the minds of your audience. Hence, you must always sponsor only those events that your target audience can connect with.
If you find it difficult to shortlist the topics or the events that your customers are most hyped about, then you can take the help of a tool like Audiense. Audiense allows you to identify your target audience and collect data about their interests. It does so by analyzing trends within the target audience and discovering which influencers they connect to the most. It provides you with data about the nuances of your audience, helping you to understand them better. This will let you choose which event or social cause you should sponsor.
Branding Impact-
When you sponsor an event or social cause, it is always important that you stand out from other sponsors of the small events of the same events, and an effective way to event sponsorship is leveraging any chance to individualize your message and ensure the what you offer is completely different from other offers.
Connect with attendees digitally-
After you have provided your sponsorship to an event it is time to spread the word about your sponsorship. Make sure that your target audience gets to know that you are sponsoring an event that they connect with. For this, you need to post information about your sponsorship event on your pages that are present on various social media platforms. Also, send out e-mails to your newsletter subscribers informing them about your sponsorship in order to maximize the results of your sponsorship campaign.
In order to make sure better reach your target audience on social media, you can consider using Socialbee.
With Socialbee, you can manage all your social media accounts from one place. You no longer need to open various apps one after the other to post the same content. Socialbee lets you post your content on various platforms at once. It also lets you create a schedule for all your posts across different platforms. It will also suggest you the right time to post your content to attain the maximum possible reach.
Another great thing about Socialbee is that it comes with a wide range of popular integrations like Buffer, Canva, and Hootsuite.
Conclusion
Sponsorship can go a long way in creating a credible and reliable image of your brand. Through sponsorships, you can reach out to more people, generate more leads and convert more people into users of your products. Sponsorship is an effective marketing strategy to grow your brand. It has more efficacy than normal, generic advertisements in attracting prospective buyers. It also sends out a positive message about your brand and distinguishes you from others.
By keeping in mind, the points discussed in this article, you can try and sponsor events or causes that resonate with your brand and your customers. I hope this article was helpful and provided you with some insight into the world of sponsorship. Please pen down your thoughts in the comments.
