The other day, I had someone ask me how to ensure a sponsor’s sponsorship portfolio was “balanced” across sponsorship categories. Her concern was how to ensure that there was an even spread of sponsorship across sports vs charities vs community events, etc, particularly given that sports sponsorship tends to be more costly.
Oh, the alarm bells all of that set off!
Now, there are a lot of ways to balance a sponsorship portfolio, but balancing categories isn’t one of them. When building (or auditing) a sponsorship portfolio, it’s all about what sponsorships are most relevant to your target markets, and will be leverageable for the greatest benefit to the brand. Those can fall into any category, and trying to hit some fixed figure for arts vs community vs sports is making a rod for your own back.
The other implication was that there was some percentage in the community/charity category that would tick a box for the sponsor, making them “responsible corporate citizens”. Suffice it to say that simply spending money on community/charity sponsorships to “tick a box” is doing both your brand and the organisation a disservice. Treating it like a real sponsorship and leveraging it properly is vastly better for your brand and the organisation you’re sponsoring.
Okay, back to this whole portfolio-balancing thing and how to do it.
You should ensure that your sponsorship portfolio is geographically balanced, so that you have sponsorships that are relevant across all of your priority regions. Note, I did not say “taking place” across all of your regions, because that isn’t strictly necessary. It is absolutely possible to use leverage activities to create real relevance across multiple regions, nationally, or even globally, using sponsorship of an event, team, or other property that is physically located somewhere very concise.
Creating that relevance across regions is a bit of a trick, but can make a smaller sponsorship punch way, way above its weight. Some of the keys to making this work are:
You also need to ensure that your portfolio is balanced across your key brand timeframes. If your brand sells evenly year-round, that may be a twelve-month spread. If you have specific sales epicentres, such as end-of-financial-year sales or a summer-centric brand, your portfolio should reflect that.
Again, you can use leverage techniques to extend the timeframes around whatever you sponsor, because as long as fans care about the property, or the larger themes around the property, it is leverageable.
There are many, many other options to extend the timeframe. For more on using larger themes around a property to extend its leverageable value for your brand, see “It’s Not the Size of the Sponsorship, It’s What You Do with It”.
Looking at your overall objectives for the brand, you need to ensure that your sponsorship portfolio is leverageable across all of them. That doesn’t mean that every sponsorship has to achieve every marketing objective, but every sponsorship should move you toward several of them.
This shouldn’t be difficult, as one of the most beautiful things about sponsorship is its flexibility. As long as the property has some relevance for your target markets, you can use creative leverage to make it achieve almost any marketing objective you have.
This does, of course, require cross-departmental buy-in. If you need a process for building that buy-in and multi-dimensional leverage plans, I strongly suggest you get a copy of The Corporate Sponsorship Toolkit, which goes through a bulletproof process step-by-step.
When assessing your portfolio, I want you to stop thinking in absolutes.
Don’t think of a local festival as being necessarily a local sponsorship. Don’t consign that warm-weather sport to being a summer sponsorship. And definitely don’t think your portfolio needs to hit some fixed balance of categories. Invest in relevance. Invest in fan passion. Let leverage balance the rest.
You may be interested in my white papers, “Last Generation Sponsorship Redux” and “Disruptive Sponsorship: Like Disruptive Marketing, Only Better“. Want to build your sponsorship skills and strategies fast? I’ve got comprehensive online sponsorship training 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.
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