A while back, I wrote a blog entitled “If the Answer is a Sponsorship Formula, You’re Asking the Wrong Question”. Ever since, I have had a steady stream of people requesting the questions sponsorship professionals should ask. So, I’ve now done a sponsorship SAQ (should-ask questions) for both sponsors and rightsholders, covering the most important questions our industry tend to ignore.
This is THE big question, and while many sponsors do ask it, most don’t really dig for the answer.
If you answer this question with anything having to do with the sponsorship itself, you’ve got it wrong. You aren’t sponsoring it for awareness. You aren’t sponsoring it because it’s a good cause. You aren’t sponsoring it because it’s a bargain. You aren’t sponsoring it because it’s iconic or prestigious or well-matched. You are sponsoring for only three reasons:
Everything, EVERYTHING you do with sponsorship – as a whole and individually – is about those three things. If you can specify exactly what you are trying to change – all tying back to your overall brand or company objectives – suddenly, everything else will fall into place. You’ll know how to leverage your investments. You’ll know how to measure the results.
When most people think of “resources”, they are really thinking “money”. Honestly, money is the least of your concerns, as it is possible to leverage sponsorship fantastically for far less money than you probably think (10-30-ish% of the value of the fee, in most cases). Instead, you really need to think in terms of all of the resources you’re going to need:
This is another big question. A sponsorship doesn’t have to be huge to work, it has to have a critical mass of meaning and passion. Your target markets have to care, and if they care a lot, it’s a big opportunity. You will be able to do a lot with it, including extending the meaningful timeframe and the geographic footprint. On the other hand, if they’re indifferent, or they couldn’t give a rat’s bum, your leverage plan simply won’t work. Upshot is that a smaller, passionate fanbase is better for your brand than a larger, agnostic fanbase.
For more on using meaning and passion to drive your sponsorship results, read “Disruptive Sponsorship: Like Disruptive Marketing, Only Better” (white paper).
Buy-in is like a magic potion for sponsorship. It multiplies results, shortens required lead-times, amplifies creativity, and spotlights potential issues before they undo you. The problem is that you have to get the stakeholders on-side, and after decades of the typical sponsorship being not very good, there is often little understanding of the real power and potential of the medium.
The answer to this question will be different from one sponsor to another, but in my experience, it comes down to one or a combination of these things:
Going back to the “why do we do this” question, the real value of your investment(s) can only be reflected by measuring changes in perceptions and behaviours. Check out this blog for more: Sponsorship Measurement: How to Measure What’s Important.
Many rightsholders concentrate on getting sponsorship for the programs or events where there is a revenue shortfall. This really is folly, as is packaging the same old benefits because you always have.
Where a sponsor will see value may be very, very different than where you think it is. You need to figure out:
Two tools that can help you are…
This is THE question for rightsholders. You need to get out of your headspace and into the specific sponsor’s that you’re targeting. What if you owned that company and could do anything? What would you do with it? How would you use it to change perceptions and behaviours? The answers to those questions will form the core premise of your offer. Everything else – including the highly customised benefits list – will be built from those big ideas.
You may want to see my tutorial, “Sponsorship Proposal Basics in About 15 Minutes” for more on this process. For the whole process of how to develop compelling offers (and so much more!), I also have a self-paced, online sponsorship training course, covering the whole sales process, with lots of inclusions, check out Getting to “Yes”.
This is a big problem, but one that is not that difficult to solve. It’s going to take proactivity and creativity on your part, but one or more of the following four strategies should move most sponsors.
If you have a sponsor who is simply not interested, take their money, keep trying, but resign yourself to the fact that they may eventually leave you because they’re not getting what they need from the sponsorship. It will be their own fault, but use the money while you’ve got it.
These are hard questions, but they are the questions that must be asked by sponsorship professionals if you want to get the most out of your efforts. Anything less and you’re letting yourself down.
You may also be interested in my white papers, “Last Generation Sponsorship Redux” and “Disruptive Sponsorship: Like Disruptive Marketing, Only Better“. I’ve also got self-paced, online sponsorship training courses for both sponsors and rightsholders. Get the details and links to course outlines and reviews here.
If you need additional assistance with your sponsorship portfolio, I offer sponsorship consulting and strategy sessions, sponsorship training, and sponsorship coaching. I also offer a comprehensive Sponsorship Systems Design service for large, diverse, and decentralised organisations.
Please feel free to drop me a line to discuss.
© Kim Skildum-Reid. All rights reserved. To enquire about republishing or distribution, please see the blog and white paper reprints page.