Considering embarking on a sponsorship investment? With the right strategy, focused approach and a proactive event partner, your participation will deliver results. From our five years of experience, we’re sharing a few tips to discover how awards sponsorship is a superb way to generate leads, build your brand and ultimately give you an excellent return on your investment.
Be one of the first
In this case, early-birds really do catch the worm; many in fact. By getting involved with the event from the very beginning, you will benefit from the following:
- Have first pick of the category or package that is best aligned to your brand and services.
- Maximum time to plan your marketing campaign.
- Preferential package rates. Awards organisers love to have their sponsors in place as early as possible and will encourage this with discounted prices. Here at the Incentive Awards we are offering 10% off all sponsorship packages signed by 13th May 2022.
- Secure the best table at the event. Place your product information in front of key industry decision makers and influencers.
Desired outcomes
Before making the decision to sponsor, determine what you want to get out of it. What is the desired outcome and how can you achieve it? What does a successful partnership look like for you? For new entrants to the market, it’s maybe all about making a noise on the awards night. However, for many it’s the pre-event strategy that counts, building a campaign with benchmark goals and desired deliverables. Whether it’s focused on branding, lead-generation or a combination of all, it’s important to have a clear strategy, work closely with the event planner, to ensure that the event delivers on your expectations.
Start Planning
Here at IA we work with all our sponsors to devise a campaign schedule in the build-up to and after the event, a schedule that dovetails in with any existing activities or launches. By planning the campaign you will maximise the opportunity to connect with our audiences and align your marketing activities. You will want to know what kind of social media posts and emails you will be mentioned in so that all your messaging is aligned.
Thought-Leadership
You can show the audience your area of expertise by:
Producing quality, genuinely beneficial content pieces will ensure your campaign is underpinned by industry thought-leadership, which in turn will attract followers and help to attract new prospects.
Agree in advance what sort of topics would work best for the target audience and set manageable expectations around the delivery of the content. Weekly pieces may be too much but the regularity of bi-weekly or monthly will ensure consistency and help retain readers.
Written content might include blogs, bios, video interviews, profiles, opinion pieces and industry observations.
Get creative
Awards are what you make them. Over the years there have been some fantastic examples of companies taking an innovative approach to their campaign, one accentuates their brand and service proposition
The most successful sponsors create a campaign that has branding at its heart. Brainstorm with the event organiser to see what additional branding options might be available. Think creatively, do something different that will stick in the minds of the event attendees.