The concealed limb down a palmy lawsuit isn’t conscionable large speakers, a chill venue, oregon sold-out tickets. It’s besides the sponsors who bring successful important gross portion adding credibility to your event.

When big-name sponsors enactment their logo connected your lawsuit materials, they’re fundamentally saying: “This lawsuit matters.”

We cognize this firsthand due to the fact that lawsuit sponsorships person been a large portion of our selling strategy. We’ve spent an estimated $500,000 connected them, sponsoring everything from intimate manufacture meetups to monolithic planetary conferences.

Tl;dr: If you’re moving events, you perfectly privation sponsors like us.

But however bash you person companies similar ours to unfastened their wallets for your event? I spoke with Elysa Han, our events selling manager, to larn what we look retired for successful lawsuit sponsorships.

Consider this your insider’s usher to winning lawsuit sponsors.

For sponsors, each dollar spent connected sponsorships is an concern that needs to present returns. Here’s what is driving our sponsorship decisions:

• Hunting for our perfect customers — We privation to conscionable imaginable buyers face-to-face. Increasingly, we’re looking for the large fish: enterprise-level decision-makers who tin motion disconnected connected important contracts. If your lawsuit attracts our people demographic, you’ve already won fractional the battle.
• Creating in-person connections — We crave the qualitative insights that tin lone travel from someone’s eyes lighting up during a demo oregon proceeding their symptom points directly. Human connections archer america things that integer analytics never could.
• Build a person narration with our existing customers — Sometimes our clients are successful the manufacture and they tally events too. Supporting their events brings america closer.
• Planting strategical marque flags — We’re looking for visibility that makes an impression, not conscionable monolithic logos plastered connected walls that nary 1 remembers.

We’re not automatically choosing the biggest oregon astir prestigious events. The size of your lawsuit matters acold little than however it aligns with our goals.

Here’s however we measure events to sponsor:

• Audience alignment — We measure some size and quality. Who precisely volition beryllium successful the room? What decision-making powerfulness bash they wield? Which industries bash they represent? However, size isn’t everything. A smaller lawsuit with 90% perfect-fit attendees volition bushed a monolithic lawsuit with 10% relevance every time.
• Lead procreation imaginable — Similar to the above, we’re looking astatine the prime of opportunities astatine the event. How apt are these attendees to go our customers? Are they representing an enterprise-level lawsuit oregon are they conscionable beginners to SEO (or adjacent integer marketing?)
• Real feedback — Elysa digs done Reddit threads, LinkedIn comments, and conversations connected X astir the event’s erstwhile editions to find unfiltered feedback astir the event. Past attendees (and adjacent sponsors!) are your astir credible oregon damaging selling tool.
• Organizer’s vibe check — Your effect to our questions reveals volumes astir however you’ll grip the existent event. Are you transparent astir attendance numbers? Do you dodge questions astir past sponsor experiences? Sometimes the deciding origin is successful that infinitesimal erstwhile our events squad says, “Something feels disconnected astir these organizers.” In those cases, we travel our gut.

By the way, these are not acceptable successful stone. There are times erstwhile we interruption our ain rules too.

For example, we precocious sponsored Nas Summit successful Singapore. While it was a sizable conference, it was an lawsuit for some existent and aspiring content creators who, connected paper, are miles distant from our perfect lawsuit profile.

In fact, by our ain calculations, 62% of lawsuit attendees were unfamiliar with our brand.

So, wherefore did we constitute the check?

The main crushed was that the worth proposition was excessively extraordinary. For a humble investment, we received the aforesaid worth arsenic what would person outgo 5X successful different events. We had a booth, societal media shoutouts, disposable branding (e.g., connected the media wall), and adjacent lawsuit tickets.

Even though it didn’t lucifer our criteria, we couldn’t walk up an exceptional offer. So, we turned it into a brand consciousness play instead.

The fastest mode to suffer our involvement is to fell down vague claims similar “well-attended” oregon “industry professionals”. We privation to spot everything laid bare, truthful tell us:

• Exact attendance numbers from erstwhile events
• Detailed demographic breakdowns that spell beyond occupation titles and see things similar seniority levels, institution size, and more
• Candid recaps of what happened successful erstwhile editions
• Clear and broad sponsorship information that spells retired precisely what we get for our investment

Elysa besides likes to hop connected find calls with the lawsuit organizers to larn much accusation and get a consciousness for the radical involved.

What benignant of sponsorship accusation bash we privation to see? Here are the packages we’ve seen truthful acold (that mightiness pass yours):

• $2,000 - $3,000 — Only ocular branding (e.g., logos connected signifier and website)
• $5,000 — Visual branding + tiny on-site booth
• $10,000 - $20,000 — Visual branding, bigger booth space, and afloat attendee registration list
• >$20,000 — All of the above, but with an adjacent bigger booth space. Also includes a speaking slot. You whitethorn besides get to see your swag successful the conference’s goodie bags.

One thing’s for certain: each sponsorship bundle is conscionable a starting constituent for negotiation. We’ve ne'er accepted a sponsorship bundle precisely arsenic presented, and neither volition astir sponsors.

As the organizer, you should expect that and beryllium flexible. Just due to the fact that you’ve structured a sponsorship bundle that mode doesn’t mean it has to beryllium fixed that way. Sponsors whitethorn person fund constraints and whitethorn privation branding opportunities that are antithetic from what you’ve thought of.

For example, they whitethorn not conscionable privation ocular branding but besides shoutouts connected your owned media channels, similar the website, societal media, and email newsletter. Or they whitethorn privation their standees to beryllium connected stage, unneurotic with a monolithic logo.

Or they whitethorn privation other shoutouts connected signifier for their marque oregon for attendees to cheque retired their booths.

If you’re moving your lawsuit much than once, the cardinal is getting the sponsors to return. That way, you don’t person to perpetually deliberation astir acquiring caller sponsors.

But however bash we determine if we privation to sponsor the aforesaid lawsuit repeatedly?

The astir important origin we look astatine is our team’s post-mortem. Within days of the extremity of your event, the on-site squad conducts a brutally honorable appraisal that covers:

• Whether the attendees matched who we were looking for
• Who we talked to and whether they were imaginable endeavor leads
• (If we had a booth) Whether the booth was positioned wherever you said it would be, whether we got the promised ft traffic, oregon were you stuck successful a country wherever cipher came
• Whether our swag was fashionable oregon everyone ignored it
• Whether the lawsuit ran smoothly oregon had tons of logistical nightmares

Here’s an illustration of a study done by my colleague:

If we bash not person an on-site team, i.e. we sponsored lone for marque awareness, past we’ll cheque feedback connected societal media.

We besides springiness tons of bonus points to lawsuit organizers who are proactive. The champion organizers we’ve worked with:

• Send regular email updates — They update astir the advancement of their events, the speakers they’ve secured, different brands that person sponsored, etc.
• Help america maximize value — They assistance with branding, logistics, and different opportunities to summation our ROI.
• Take afloat ownership — We’ve had lawsuit organizers willingly connection america discounts for the adjacent variation due to the fact that they were personally disappointed they didn’t get america the results they thought we would.

Ultimately, sponsorships—not conscionable for events but for creators too—are each astir relationships.

Don’t beryllium amazed erstwhile I accidental this but sometimes we sponsor an lawsuit due to the fact that the organizer is an enterprise-level imaginable oregon customer. And sometimes events springiness sponsors discounts due to the fact that they spot them arsenic a semipermanent spouse and privation them to instrumentality regularly for each aboriginal editions.

Making definite your lawsuit is profitable is important. But don’t hide that relationships tally the world. Expect to beryllium flexible and negociate towards a win-win for some you and the sponsor.

Final thoughts

Securing lawsuit sponsorships is each astir creating communal value.

The astir palmy lawsuit organizers recognize what sponsors are looking for and physique packages that present existent results. By being transparent with your data, flexible with your offerings, and proactive successful your communications, you’ll physique relationships with sponsors that past beyond a azygous event.

Remember: sponsors similar america are looking for ROI, but we’re besides looking for partners who recognize our goals and are committed to helping america execute them.

Trying to signifier an lawsuit instead? We besides organized our ain league and wrote up however we did it: