Tag Archives: audience

How to find a sponsor for your brilliant idea or event.

Lifes2good cycle sponsor

5 ways to check that you have the right attitude towards finding a sponsor.

We made a presentation recently to a group of NGOs about the difference between a sponsor and donor. The audience comprised sponsorship seekers and/or fundraisers, so the presentation was customised in its content.

It is not our intention to revisit the presentation here, but we would point out that the main discussion running through the session was that of attitude. Our objective was to change the attendees’ attitude towards sponsorship and fundraising by demonstrating the difference between the two.

As a result of our half day session, it appeared that we were successful in that most attendees recognised that sponsorship is a joint marketing activity as opposed to the giving nature of companies supporting a fundraising campaign.

Recently, we wrote a blog post on the topic of sponsorship engagement (here), in which we offered various tips for sponsors and some for sponsees (sponsorship seekers). Today, in this blog post we would like to continue our sponsorship theme by writing about a sponsee’s attitude when approaching potential sponsors.

Let’s start at the beginning. Event owners, in any category, should have one focus only, and that focus should be on producing an event that will keep their audience engaged. Ultimately, it is the consistent positive experience of the audience/attendee that, over time, turns them into appreciative and loyal fans because their passion is being satiated. If the owner then wants to enhance the fan’s experience in some way, they may well search for a sponsor/partner to assist them.

It might be easy to write standard proposals for a Top 100 Companies list, but be warned – this is usually a complete waste of a sponsee’s time, due to lack of relevancy.

Do your homework first.

The very first step for all event owners is to know exactly what type of event they have and what it is that they can offer potential sponsors. The second step, building a target list of prospects, is not an easy one. Our own methodology for this stage is to compile three sub-lists and then merge them into one.

Our lists would include, a) what companies/brands would appear to be a ‘good fit’ with the event from a positioning point of view. The next list, b) is one of personal contacts/relationships that you (or your team), have with the first list of companies particularly, or with any other companies. The third list, c) outlines brands that are currently active in marketing to the same audience as the event

The third step is adopting the right attitude before meeting any potential sponsor. As mentioned above, a sponsorship is a joint marketing activity so here are some tips as to how to have the right business attitude to sponsorship.

  1. Do some background research on each potential sponsor – find out about their culture, product lines, brands, competition, marketing channels.
  2. Prepare to be a valuable business partner by using your experience of the event/fans – match their vision, mission and goals with yours. Understand their audience.
  3. Discover what they are saying in public about their business objectives – if a public company, the annual report is a mine of information; research their social media.
  4. Identify ways for them to turn your event into a business opportunity – the partnership must be a win-win-win for the sponsor, the sponsee and the audience.
  5. Make sure you can show how you will measure success – assign responsibilities, fulfilment reports, benchmarks, audience research etc.

Event owners must be committed to the implementation of activation strategies and to ensuring that the sponsor gets the credit where applicable. In this regard, the importance of a fulfilment report cannot be over emphasised. Not only will it show that agreed milestones have been met but it can also help sponsors justify their investment to an internal audience. Furthermore, it can show where the basic terms were exceeded and it can be used as a basis for renewal discussions.

Sponsees must commit to agreed activation plans and to ensuring that the sponsor gets the credit.
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Determine if your event offers real value to a sponsor.

Let’s put ourselves in the shoes of the sponsor, for a moment. All companies have business objectives and they use various marketing tools to help achieve them and grow their business. Sponsorship remains one of the more useful marketing tools in this regard, in my opinion. This is mainly in response to the fact that customers are expecting more personal engagement from brand touch points.

We all agree that every company wants growth (better results), with minimum costs and in the fastest way possible. Therefore, wouldn’t it make sense for event owners to focus on helping companies to make informed decisions on sponsorship opportunities and not just on an event that requires funding?

If a company decides to go the sponsorship route it will be because they perceive some element of real value, by doing so. A real value is where the sponsor believes that they are getting more from the sponsorship than just the financial cost they are paying to be involved.

Typically, a sponsor’s objectives might not have anything to do with the event at all. For example, objectives could be all or any of the following:

  • Awareness, visibility and/or testing of a new product/service
  • Increasing brand loyalty/reinforcing brand values
  • Stimulating sales/meeting trade partners / entertaining prospects
  • Building a relationship with the sponsee / motivating staff

The point here is that generally, the benefits being offered to a sponsor have to be carefully selected so as to match the sponsors’ expressed and unexpressed wishes and expectations.

Doing the homework, as suggested above, will highlight your commitment to the prospect. It will also show that you are interested in their partnership, rather than just their funding. By researching their identity and culture, it demonstrates that they are not being dealt with in a standardised way.  You can be sure that the best sponsors are looking to see that the nature of the event, matches their strategic business objectives.

Tangible benefits should be matched with the sponsor’s expressed and unexpressed expectations.
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Tips and Timesavers.

Much time is spent agreeing on the tangible benefits that can be offered to a sponsor in terms of content and value. We list a sample of them below, but the real challenge is to match what you have, with a sponsor that can use them.

  • Naming rights: Can be in the title; a physical section of the event (including online) or even for an agreed length of time.
  • Image rights: If not part of the naming rights it could be the placing of logos, trademarks, signage, clothing, route signage etc.
  • Merchandising: The sponsor can make its products/services available to the event fan base through sampling, demonstration or display.
  • Print and promotions: All print items to support the event should carry the sponsor’s mark and any promotional activity, online or offline should also promote the sponsor.
  • Staff benefits: Staff of the sponsor may receive special offers such as tickets, membership, celebrity introductions etc.
  • Hospitality: Tickets, reservations, green room VIPs, special seating, priority services, exclusive transport, accommodation, celebrity introductions etc.

The potential list of tangible benefits is almost endless, depending on what the sponsor wants/needs. The trick is to be efficient and relevant. Be efficient by offering only those benefits that a sponsor might want and be relevant by matching the benefits with their target audience.

Conclusion.

Looking for a sponsorship has become almost mainstream for many event owners/ organisers. My personal peeve is when I hear some event committee member saying “we need a sponsor to support our event.” These are probably the same people that send out standardised requests to 100 companies and are surprised when nobody replies.

If you want to fundraise for your event, by all means, go ahead and ask for support. If you want a sponsorship partner you’d better be able to deliver on their business objectives.

At the risk of repeating ourselves, here is what we believe a sponsor seeker should do;  understand exactly what your event is and who it will benefit; define a list of benefits that you can offer a sponsor; try to differentiate and offer exclusivity; make your proposal about their business (not your event), and agree a joint plan of activity.

Above all – listen, learn and be professional because these are the things that show you care about a sponsoring partner. Believe us when we say a sponsor knows a good partner when they see one.

“We hope you have enjoyed our marketing tips and timesavers blog” – Aidan & Jim.

Would you like to be notified by email when we publish new content? If so, just let us know by clicking here.

Of course, we can always meet face-to-face, just leave your details here and we can grab a coffeet, cheers.   Jim – O’C&K

 

Ringing in the marketing bells of 2015.

marketing-businessman-2015

It’s time to break old marketing habits and embrace new methods of engagement.

Hands up who has read a 2015 predictions article, in the last week? Yep, I thought so – almost everybody. In this post, we might refer to one or two trends but in general we will discuss what we’ve learnt from our own marketing interactions, in the last year.

Heading into 2015, marketing has become a key word again because, as a business discipline, it appears to be finally moving out from its perceived buzz-word shackles. As we move into a new year and the tsunami of new technologies, channels and platforms continue to wash over us, the ability of marketing to tell a brand’s story, in an engaging way, is becoming even more important to business growth.

Why is this important? Because, in general, people won’t put up with any brand communication that wastes their time anymore. There are a lot more pressing factors in people’s lives nowadays and brands need to be able to empathise and understand this environment. As mentioned in previous posts to this blog, companies that treat people as humans, with honesty and relevancy, will come out tops. Organisations need to focus on empowering people with a little more control over their lives.

‘Organisations need to focus on empowering people with a little more control over their lives’
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Marketing’s time in the sun.

It is being said, with more frequency, that customer experience is the new source of differentiation for businesses. We agree and believe that this will only intensify over the coming years. How brands analyse and use customer data correctly, and not just pay lip service to it, will determine if they get a return on their investment (ROI) in data analytics. Marketing activity is central to realising this ROI.

I suppose you cannot talk about customer experience without mentioning, ‘digital’. The challenge for brands is to integrate responsibility for all customer touch points, during their purchase journey, under the one umbrella. To us, it makes sense that it is a marketing umbrella that’s used. More importantly, and probably controversially, a marketing strategy should include all customer-facing technology as well. Those internal silos need to be broken down, as nobody knows customers better than the marketing team.

One of the biggest challenges facing the marketing function is to be more disruptive (in a constructive sense), internally. For many years ‘marketers’, myself included, simply  implemented campaigns (advertising, sponsorship, CSR etc.) rather than investigating some form of ongoing innovation. With the marketing team’s new ‘time in the sun’ it needs to stand up and lead the revolution towards putting the customer at the centre of all business operations. The secret of marketing is to understand the psychology of your audience.

Marketing can play a key role in the growth of a business because it is the motivating factor for new customers – for example:

  • Getting people’s attention and interest
  • Getting them to buy your service instead of a competitor’s offering
  • Making them loyal and to become brand advocates
‘The secret of marketing is to understand the psychology of your audience’
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Is listening the new marketing trend for 2015?

As is said by many, brands need to be smarter about their marketing and evolve it, because their audiences are more knowledgeable and in control than ever before. Here are a few areas where a marketer can focus on, in the coming year.

  1. Personalisation – people will accept information that is relevant to them personally
  2. User experience – know how and where a prospect gathers information, and their influences
  3. Communities – think of each relevant community member as a potential brand advocate
  4. Advocates – personal engagement with influencers, will create a WOM ripple effect
  5. Storytelling – People like and remember stories – make yours a compelling one

So, how do we go about dealing with these five customer-focused areas? Simple – use the three ‘Ls’ – listen, listen and listen. You will only understand this if you accept the notion that your customer expects a customised experience. They do because it is being fuelled by digital, mobile and a resultant sense of empowerment.

When planning ahead, that old marketing chestnut of ‘awareness’ must be taken as a given rather than a focus and thereby modern vanity metrics should become less of a distraction. If real brand engagement is to match customer’s expectations you will need to know, in real time, what those expectations are. Therefore, we need to listen more.

Tips and Timesavers.

Let’s be honest, running a business can follow a fairly simple model. Make / provide something that people want and tell them about it. Thereafter, your satisfied customers tell other people about it and eventually a loyal community is developed. If it is that easy then why isn’t everyone successful in business? Because, it is still, all about the brand and the skill that is required to develop a powerful one.

Increasingly, you must be a thought leader in your business category so as to differentiate your brand. In this regard, and looking ahead to 2015, we would suggest that brands:

  • Get emotional – use the emotional values in your business category for positioning
  • Be authentic – your brand story must reflect the category’s realities by being ‘believable’
  • Be relevant – there is no point in using many online sources unless they’re engaging
  • Be brave – people expect you to be using technology to customise their experience
  • Be conscious of privacy – people will expect greater security in relation to their data
  • Outsource – use the expertise of others to make yourself a thought leader

Of course, there is not much new in what we are suggesting above but, as a wise person once said, ‘if you want to do something new, you must stop doing something old’.

We don’t like finishing on a negative note, but it is worth mentioning a few business pitfalls to avoid in 2015 and beyond.

Don’t think that you know everything about your business category or that the bit you do know is still true. There is also a danger that you might believe that whatever has made you successful to date, will continue. It helps to  look outside your own category of business. The two obvious lessons to be learned, from recent years, are thinking that a) your next big competitor will come from within your industry and b) there is no need to be online because, it doesn’t apply to your industry.

“Aidan and myself wish you a brand engaging, technology-embracing, profit making and smarter outsourcing 2015.”

“We hope you have enjoyed our marketing tips and timesavers blog” – Aidan & Jim.

Would you like to be notified by email when we publish new content? If so, just let us know by clicking here.

Of course, we can always meet face-to-face, just leave your details here and we can grab a coffeet, cheers.   Jim – O’C&K

 

Ways to build a desirable brand

Your brand name in lights

“We want to create value for you by sharing marketing tips and timesavers” – O’C&K.

A desirable brand emanates from a customer’s positive experience.

There is plenty of evidence out there to prove that when brands are managed pro-actively, they can become valuable assets for a business. What I want to chat about in this post is how you might arrange the building blocks of a desirable brand so that it appeals to potential customers. Let’s face it, people tend to pander to their desires. It must follow therefore, that they ‘desire’ particular brands or else they wouldn’t remain as customers or offer repeat custom. So, if  their positive experience of your brand is making them think, feel or act differently, then you have found the holy grail of business – a loyal customer ready to become an ambassador for your brand.

Many company owners will admit that growing their business, on a day to day basis, is a challenge that requires their ongoing attention. That, in itself is fine but in this unprecedented era of customer power, it is far easier for customers / prospects to ignore you, than ever before. As a result, owners are being forced to change from being focused on their business to being focused on their customers. This might not be an easy transition for most but, if they’re not being smarter about marketing, they might well end up having a great business which no one knows nor cares about.

Balancing the energy required to make a brand customer- focused and to make the business profitable is not easy for a business owner. One option is to outsource if you don’t have the in-house experience. Whether you decide to outsource some of ‘the energy required’ to professionals or decide to do it alone, in this post I want to outline an audit process to help you. Based on our own set-up experience in O’C&K, I believe that there are 4 basic areas you should consider initially; –  yourself, your audience, your competitors and your desirable brand experience.

Knowing Yourself

Whether you are an existing business or in a set-up situation, something must have spurred you into action originally. It may well be an incident in a previous employment, a monetary need or a passion that you have always wanted to explore. You might simply be basing your business idea on particular strengths that you have amassed or inherited. Whatever the motivation, try and visualise how it might be infused into your brand. When attempting this, one thing to be conscious of is the personality trait that your business ‘idea’ will require – if you don’t match personally, join with somebody that does. If you’re lucky, your personal story can be brought to the brand, to make it more human and interesting. A ‘beating the odds’ story, your training, your experience, specific talents, your personal background are all good places to start. Ask yourself, does your experience ‘fit’ with the brand you can visualise.

For instance, between Aidan and myself (O’C&K), we have at least 50 years practical experience in the communication business. Aidan specialises in creative concepts and marketing management and I my background is in creating and implementing sponsorship and corporate giving programmes. It is these specialities that we are building the O’Connor & Kelly business around. Initially, when discussing our projected brand personality we had to determine what makes us unique, what our core beliefs that will make our brand desirable, our commitment, whether we could incorporate our hobbies and what emotions people attach to us, individually. It was only after this ‘soul searching’ that we could agree on the actual service we could offer, the goals and the message.

Knowing your Audience

Here is a list of characteristics that you might use to build a profile of your audience. Gender, age, generational values, income levels, where they live, marital status, children and their interests. If they are online, any blogs they read, websites they visit, TV shows they stream and social media activity. It would be great if you could determine career / education levels. Only face to face contact may be able to determine the following, but it can be researched if they are active online – know their frustrations, their hopes, why they might need your service, where they ‘shop’ and is there anything that you have in common with them already.

Knowing your Competition

There will always be someone in your niche that offers the same service or something similar to you. All you have to do is know who they are. When you do – then just apply the same questions to them as you did to yourself (see above), to determine how much of a competitor they really are. For example, how do they describe their offering, is it the same in price and quality? Are they better at something, are they chasing the same audience, is their identity professional and are they online? What is their marketing activity like, their tone, their colours and their style? Are you hearing anything about them from your audience, are they catering already for the same need that you have identified and in your opinion, are they a desirable brand?

Knowing your brand experience

I have said in many posts to this blog previously that branding is way more than a nicely designed business identity. In our most recent post, here, it was emphasised that it is the participant’s experience before, during and after an event that drives return business. Similarly, it is the experience that your audience encounters which creates the ‘desirability’ of your brand. You must build the goodwill if you want WOM promotion by your customers.

Tips and Timesavers.

Here is a sample checklist of some elements that may form part of your planned brand experience:

  • being accessible – opening hours include being online.
  • keeping your word – doing what it ‘says on the tin’.
  • making them feel special – delivering more than they expect.
  • helping people – being informative and a good citizen.
  • being honest and gracious – seeking feedback and acting on it if appropriate.
  • having fun – looking after the customers that ‘look after you’.
  • being accommodating – being consistent and reassuring

Only when you have decided on your values etc. and what your customer is going to experience, should you embark upon creating a business identity and how it will be used. More than likely you will employ an outside agent (you should) to do this, and O’C&K are very well equipped to help you with this should you so decide. Basic elements would include a logo, an ID package (design style, colours etc.) and a web presence. Please resist the urge to go overboard with the design element and bear in mind that you will probably be adapting to your audience as your business grows.

Two final things, 1) give your brand a face and preferably one that is recognisable, be that yourself, an employee or a mascot and 2) infuse everything you’ve decided upon under ‘knowing yourself’ above, into your brand. We have a guide, here, on our website that might be useful to you when planning a marketing strategy.

When all is said and done, a business that delivers a community- like understanding that, ‘we are all in it together’, will be seen as an authentic and desirable brand to do business with.

If you have any other tips or timesavers please leave a reply below. If you’d like to receive similar content, just subscribe by clicking through the pink button, on this page.  Of course if you want to get in touch, leave your details and perhaps we might meet for a chat, cheers.   Jim – O’C&K