Never Assume
It’s real easy to come up with a list of potential sponsors for an event. After all, if you just identify your target market and then figure out which companies would be a good fit, you have filled your sponsor bucket, right?
Wrong.
On the surface maybe it looks like a great match. But have you done your homework? Do the companies you’re targeting even engage in sponsorship marketing? (Note that “they should” does not count.) Do they sponsor events similar to yours? (Are you a folk festival targeting a company that mostly sponsors sports events?) If they do sponsorship, is your market one that they target? Does your event offer something different that they can’t find elsewhere, such as greater reach, a highly targeted demographic, or a unique way to engage that demographic? Do you even know what your demographics are?
Many events do not know their demos, and if that’s you then do a survey. You can do that onsite or online or both. Having some demo data on hand will do wonders for increasing your viability to draw sponsors, because for them it’s all about numbers, or “metrics” as they say these days. The more info you can offer, the better.
The moral of the story is: when it comes to sponsorship, never assume.
Posted Tuesday May 27, 2008
in event marketing/sponsorship
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