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Is Your Sponsorship Working?
The growing cost of advertising has forced many smaller enterprises to
look towards sponsorships as a means of getting their brand across,
especially for local businesses who view sponsorship as a contribution
to their community as well as an avenue of promotion.
The worth of a sponsorship isn’t always easy to determine. You can get a
good feeling seeing your company’s logo circulating around a car racing
circuit or on the backs of a junior football team, but are you really
getting your money’s worth? If so, what’s the real return you’re getting
on your investment?
Because it’s a part of your
total marketing effort every sponsorship needs to be evaluated and its
contribution to the business identified. Perhaps the money could be
better utilized elsewhere. Maybe there are better sponsorship
opportunities you should consider.
It’s not always easy to do but as much as possible you need to apply the
same sort of criteria to sponsorships that you do to other marketing
activities like advertising. This will mean using different systems of
evaluation for different businesses; usually each business will have to
set its own criteria for evaluation.
These are some of the aspects that need to be considered when evaluating
sponsorship opportunities and getting the most from them.
The Total Audience
Your exposure is naturally limited to the number of people who attend an
event. If you sponsor a one-off event like a concert or community picnic
you can get a head count from the organizers, preferably supported by
ticket sales.
If you sponsor an activity that has additional flow-on exposure –
perhaps an event that’s televised for example, the audience figures will
grow. This doesn’t mean that your sponsorship will have as great an
impact on the television audience as it did on those attending the
event, but it will add to the overall value.
The Percentage of Impact
It’s also necessary to calculate just how much of the total impact
you’ve had. Let’s say you have your logo on the uniforms of a football
team. There are two teams on the field and the members of the team you
sponsor have four logos on their uniforms. In very simple terms you’re
getting around 1/8th of the action.
If you sponsor a race car with four sponsors’ identification and there
are twenty cars in the event you’ve got about 1/80th of the action. This
is a rough way of looking at it but your sponsorship isn’t the only one
vying for attention.
Of course, if you manage to sponsor the winner of an event your
recognition factor increases significantly. That’s why sponsors of
champions always pay a lot more than those who sponsor the ‘wannabes’.
The Frequency of Exposure
Repetition will give any sponsorship greater value. Many exposures over
a number of events build awareness and have longer-lasting value than a
single exposure. If you’re going to get into sporting sponsorships
putting your support behind a team for the full season is a good way to
go.
The Multiplier Effect
A combination of sponsorship and advertising can give you a ‘multiplier’
effect where one builds on the other. Sponsor a presentation by a local
theater group and support it with an advertisement in the program and
you’ll be consolidating the impact of your expenditure.
Sponsoring the team on the field with logos on its uniforms can be
supported by advertising signage at the ground. This kind of synergy can
multiply the impact on the audience that attends.
Activating the Sponsorship
There’s a general rule-of-thumb that for every amount spent on
sponsorship an equivalent amount needs to be spent to activate it. This
can mean using funds to pay for your customers to attend an event you
sponsor, PR activities to highlight your association with the event, and
any other efforts that will call attention to the event and your
sponsorship of it.
Reciprocal Benefits to the
Sponsor
If you sponsor an event that’s put on by a group with a mailing list, be
sure to negotiate the chance to send everyone on the list a message
about your sponsorship. Perhaps make them a special offer or just have
an awareness-building prize drawing at the event. Most sponsorships
offer this kind of benefit, and it has real value so don’t fail to make
use of it.
And Finally, Research
Most sponsorships are conducted to raise awareness and create or improve
the image of a business. Conducting market research to get a benchmark
before the event, then following up with further research after the
event will tell how effective your sponsorship has been. This is the
best way to obtain metrics that can answer the question of whether your
sponsorship is having the impact you want – and pay for.
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