In an ever-evolving marketplace, we are continually assessing and realigning your activation strategy as necessary to ensure steady growth with your sponsorship program. Sponsorship gets a bad connotation for not being effective and left just as a brand or ego play. It still happens but it is something we are actively working against by proving unique value that can only be found through the right partnerships. It’s our focus to demonstrate how much engagement you can gain from a sponsorship when you approach it with a few foundations.
Collaborating with internal marketing departments is where it all begins. We overheard the head of marketing at a global sponsor that retained the help of a focused agency and wanted to relay it here.
"We were looking for fresh ideas and innovation to leverage our sports marketing partnerships further and decided [the right agency] could bring us that new perspective. [They] have helped us focus our strategy, design unique top-tier partnerships, and elevate the customer experience delivered by our activation.”
-Chief Marketing Officer, Fortune 500
- How do you focus your strategy?
- Design unique top-tier partnerships?
- Elevate the customer experience with activation?
Let’s get started right here:
Define what you need before you get sold an asset you aren't sure what to do with.
It is important not to go looking for a solution before you have a problem. Similarly, don’t invest in sponsorship assets until you have an understanding of what it is you are trying to accomplish. Sketching out the right mix of assets first will ensure that you have exactly what you need, not what the team you are sponsoring thinks you need. Sometimes the most obvious assets like branding might not be as effective as having the right access to engage your customers with.
Guests join in to a virtual meet & greet.
Develop creative ways for non-traditional business units to leverage and integrate sponsorships.
The most apparent business units to leverage sponsorship assets are your marketing and sales teams. Start there, but don’t stop there. Engage your customers with your assets or bring your partners together by using your assets creatively. There are many opportunities to build your employer brand by showing some love to departments that do not always get to see their work outside of the office such as human resources, engineering or administration.
Understand where your customers want you to be so that you can meet them there in a creative way.
If you are actively marketing a brand in a place where your customers are not already, you are going to need to do extra work to convince your customers to go there. Better to study where your customers already are are and simply meet them there. You just saved yourself a whole lot of work and then from there, you can start building creative ways to engage them and make their experience better.
Updated for added value.
