Let’s talk about landing event sponsors. As a professional event planner, you know how valuable event sponsorships can be for your events and your business. But landing those sponsors and cultivating great relationships with ongoing partners can be challenging. If you’re struggling to bring in the support, funding, and event sponsorships you want, keep reading. These are just a few of the common sponsor-landing mistakes you could be making.
1. Waiting Too Long to Seek Out Event Sponsors
Unfortunately, many event planners wait too long before seeking out sponsors for their events. It can take weeks or longer for some companies to authorize sponsorship participation. And timing alone could be why you’re missing out on these opportunities. Start preparing your sponsorship packages and plans early on in your event planning process. Start outreach as soon as you land on official event dates, times, venues, and themes.
2. Not Preparing an Attractive Sponsorship Offer
Asking for sponsorship to your events should never be a “yes” or “no” question. Instead, it should be a multi-tiered, well-designed, and attractive platform with several appealing offers. Create levels of sponsorship that include incremental investments and corresponding event perks. Sweeten each opportunity with loads of added value, too. These might include free tickets to the event, front-row seating to entertainment, or boosted advertising benefits. Make choosing any one of your sponsorship opportunities a no-brainer decision.
3. Spamming Your Sponsorship Opportunities
You could be making the mistake of spam-blasting your sponsorship offers to anyone and everyone. Don’t be broad with your targeting. Instead, carefully recognize your event attendees and select potential sponsors who routinely target those attendees with their own services. Match great-fit sponsors with your event, and be precise about soliciting your offers. Overdoing it with mass emails and mass social media posts won’t net the results you need.
4. Forgetting About Small-Scale Sponsors
In all your sponsorship-landing efforts to bring in the big supporters, you could be missing out on those incredibly lucrative smaller sponsors. The meat and potatoes of your sponsorship roster will almost always be your bronze and silver-level sponsors. Don’t spend all your event planning time chasing one outlier when you could be landing ten small to medium-sized sponsors who could bring just as much support.
5. Not Including a ‘Premium’ or ‘VIP’ Level Sponsorship
Probably one of the most frequently made mistakes when it comes to securing event sponsorships is not having a high-ticket option. Always create a lofty investment opportunity chock-full of VIP-level perks. Make it a “platinum” or “diamond” offer with a big price tag and an even bigger roster of amenities. Not all of your targets will want this massive of an investment. But someone might just be interested in dominating the brand visibility at your New York event. And you won’t know if you don’t at least have a VIP offer to present.
Today’s event sponsors don’t have to be elusive or hard to land. Recognize if you’re making these common sponsorship-related mistakes and change up your approach. Learn more about landing high-value sponsors and so much more by attending The Event Planner Expo 2023!
