Don’t You Want Increased Brand Awareness, Loyal Customers, and Quality Leads?

Consider looking for opportunities to sponsor a local community event!

In my previous post, I discussed the importance of incorporating local events into your business marketing strategy. Since I think it is SUPER IMPORTANT, I’m taking it a step further and highlighting the importance of one particular aspect of your marketing strategy - event sponsorship.

Sponsoring events is an untapped marketing channel because you can’t immediately calculate the return on the investment in serving as a sponsor for a local event (it’s a long term investment) and sometimes the budget just isn’t there to sponsor on a large scale. The good thing about sponsoring an event however, is that it doesn’t have to mean spending tens of thousands of dollars per event. There are many different types of sponsorship that can provide exposure for your business for only a few hundred dollars! You just have to seek out the events that fall in line with your budget.

So why sponsor a local event? I want to highlight a few reasons:

1. People are looking to spend their money on experiences over material things. So, if your company is part of the experience, they will pay attention to your brand and that will go a long way for awareness and building a loyal customer base.

2. We live in a digital age (duh!) and people share their every waking moments online. By being at events where your target market is, you are opening yourself up to gain visibility among a larger, even more desirable audience as they share all the positive moments of their event experience with their social networks.

3. By sponsoring an event, you automatically gain a partner (in the form of the hosting organization) in your effort to build brand awareness as you’ll be using their platform and their audience (which is why it’s important you sponsor an event in line with your company mission and vision).

4. You save money - imagine the cost of sponsoring an event (that could reach thousands) versus executing a direct marketing campaign to reach a similar size audience?

5. When people see an organization sponsoring an event (especially local community events), people view you in a more positive light because they see that you are committed to enriching the local community. Who wouldn’t want a spike in their already positive reputation?!

All in all, sponsoring local events should be something that you regularly consider. Every single event is unique and it’s important you find those that are in line with your company goals and brand voice. Don’t immediately discount the idea of sponsorship because you think it’ll cost too much money or isn’t worth the investment. Remember, anything worth having is worth waiting for and sponsoring events is a long term investment that will be beneficial for your company in the long run.