Sponsorship Blog

Planning an event or conference is a large task, but without a solid marketing strategy, you are not going to secure the sponsors you had hoped for. Whether you’re organizing a corporate conference, music festival or charity gala, effective marketing is essential to bringing in both attendees and sponsors. Before diving into marketing strategies, it’s…

If you read our last newsletter, you know that I am a fan of utilizing Artificial intelligence (AI) to drive business results. This month, I’d like to delve further into the untapped potential of AI to revolutionize your sponsorship campaigns. Imagine your analytics soaring and sponsors lining up, all by harnessing the power of AI.…

Sponsorship is a powerful way for brands to connect with their target audience, increase brand awareness, and generate leads and sales. But not all sponsorships are created equal. To make the most of a sponsorship investment, savvy sponsors will consider three key factors: brand alignment, scale of the audience, and activation strategies and tactics that…

Sponsorship has taken on a new dimension with AI insights & predictions. Explore the power of data & how to improve sponsorship ROI with AI.

Hosting an event can be a great way to bring people together and create memorable experiences, but it can also be a costly endeavor.

You have worked hard to craft the perfect message to your potential sponsor. You never hear back and don’t know why. it could be that they never got it. In that case, your email deliverability needs some work.

In today's fast-paced business world, time is of the essence. But when it comes to making sponsorship decisions, many companies find themselves taking their time to ensure they're making the right choice. Why?

There are a ton of cool ideas out there. Many very bright people reach out to me with their concept thinking that a sponsor will provide them with the funds they need to launch their idea. Please wipe that idea from your thinking.

Larry Weil and the Daily Ad Brief discuss sponsorship and tips to plan, buy, traffic, analyze and report on sponsorship media.

If you have responsibility for your event sponsorship revenue, you have made major adjustments with a virtual environment.

Digital Event Bags were used for in-person events long before the pandemic and offer unique advantages for sponsors and event planners.

A digital event bag is a cost-effective, digitally measurable, and sustainable way to assist event organizers and their sponsors in delivering information to attendees. You may have heard them called a digital event bag, an online goodie bag, or an e-gift bag. No matter what name it goes by, it has the same purpose: a…

Listen to this conversation, as Hopin were joined by an expert lineup of event professionals who have extensive experience with event sponsorships — from creating in-person event activations with some of the world’s top brands to designing virtual event sponsorships that generate quantifiable results.

We have been through many ups and downs with sponsorship these past two years. Virtual events have provided a way to deliver many of our event objectives to your audience regardless of physical location. The technology continues to improve, and we are all learning more about how to put on successful digital events in 2022.…

Digital Champions - All we do is sponsorship. We help event producers attract and retain high value sponsors.

Western Sponsorship Virtual ConferenceFeb 3, 2021 “Larry provides a deep dive into the mindset, assets, and strategies that make it possible to be successful with sponsors in this environment. It is full of specific and actionable information you can start using right now.”

Here is a chance to listen in on a casual interview where Chris and Larry chat about selling sponsorship, tell a few stories, and muse about where the industry is now.

The Key To Scoring Virtual Event Sponsorships A Fireside Chat with The Vendry  Tuesday, November 10, 20202 PM ET / 11 AM PT   Moderator: Hannah Foley   Guests: Karen Hartline, Alecia May, Larry Weil, Keneisha Williams    Overview: The positives of virtual events are apparent – access to a broader audience, cost savings (in some areas!),…

In this video, I talk about email etiquette and why it can single handedly affect the success of your pitch to sponsors.

One of the most important things that people forget is that there's some sales skill required in reaching sponsorship decision makers.

The typical sponsor packages usually come in bundles, such as gold, silver, bronze. However, there is an issue with this. It is not customized. People do a lot of business through the internet and they want things that are customized. Similarly, sponsorship packages should be put together more based on customization. One of the things…

This post was originally published on the Corporate Meetings Network. Read the original post here. Written by Clare Tattersall Now almost six months into the worldwide pandemic, most businesses have pivoted from in-person gatherings to virtual events. But despite more people than ever using online platforms, companies continue to struggle with monetization, which may be essential…

When you get to the end of your sponsorship, what you want to do is get in front of your sponsor with a recap of what you provided. It’s important because it lets the sponsor know that you’re interested in how they did. Then to open the conversation about the next sponsorship opportunity, or you…

Valuation is when you attempt to determine how much should a sponsor pay for the sponsorship. Valuation and sponsorship tends to be where you roll up everything. The activations, benefits, the website, the views, all of these kinds of things get added up and then put into a quote valuation. This is not the same…

A pitch deck is your presentation and it is typically a summary of what you’re offering. It provides an introduction to who you are and what you’re about, and then offers some kind of an opportunity to connect and collaborate and is hopefully supported with a lot of data. The simple thing to say about…

Sponsorship in general is a relationship, similar to advertising. The sponsor has an expectation of some kind of commercial return, such as generating new business, brand recognition, or another measurable result. There is a primary element of access to the audience. Fundraising is more about identifying and giving to causes that people care about. Understanding…

Let’s say you have a sponsor. So, what are you going to do? In the old days you had a live event. You know, they’re going to be able to speak to the people attending the event, maybe collect some information, do a presentation. And so on. Now in the virtual world, it’s the same…

The tsunami of virtual conferences, webinars, video conference calls are wearing me out. I have been one of the loud voices encouraging my clients to go virtual and many companies are taking the change head on. But there are lots of problems. The production quality of many just are not particularly good: Have you ever…

Two weeks ago I shared this brand new presentation with a small group of digital event experts. Now I am opening it up to my connections and subscribers. It is all about creating a place for the sponsors you had at your destination events and the sponsors you would like to add, as part of your…

This post was originally published on the Eventbrite. Read the original post here.  In wake of the pandemic, many event brands are taking the steps to move online. Even if you’re one of the lucky creators who can pull it off and still make a profit, you may still wonder how to recoup sponsorship revenue from…

During a conversation with a colleague recently, she brought up a point that I hadn’t heard considered before. That sponsors mostly don’t think of themselves as a “sponsor”. Their goal isn’t to sponsor something. Their goal is to find new customers, promote or sell their products, educate prospects and existing customers, create a buzz and…

Physical event bags are a hassle. We have all been there at one point or another – you and your colleagues assembled to stuffing those event bags with items that took you weeks to collect and that attendees may or may not want.  So much time wasted and if attendees don’t want the items in…

Event sponsorship is an ultra-competitive business. Everyone says they want more sponsors. The truth is they want more money. Nothing wrong with that, it’s why we are all in the business. I hear from dozens of event producers every week who are looking for help. My first step in evaluating them as a potential client…

In this two minute clip Larry discusses the most effective approaches to making the kind of connection to prospects that will greatly improve your chances of making a sale.

Using data to grow sponsorship is often overlooked or improperly implemented. In this clip from my interview with Dan Kimball the Senior Vice President of Marketing at eventbrite.com headquarters in San Francisco we discuss tactics and trends for the successful use of data to influence and close sponsorship deals. 

The Sponsorship Guy’s Pro Tips for Finding Leads You are on LinkedIn. You are trying to find new prospects. When I enter “Sponsorship” into the search field, I get 13,805,662 results. Not helpful. By further filtering to just the United States and to the Marketing and Advertising Industry we are down to 429, 938. Still,…

Photo by rawpixel on Unsplash Have you ever completed a form that asks you for your Age, Sex, Race, and Income? Kind of feels like it is none of their business, doesn’t it? Being a 25 to 35-year-old white male is a pretty diverse group. It is hard for a prospective sponsor to draw many insights from that…

Not all data is created equal, says sponsorship expert Larry Weil. Instead, he’s sharing how to close a sponsorship deal with data points that are actually meaningful to prospects, and what insights to leave OUT of your pitch deck. You have done your homework and have used insights to identify a prospect that is likely…

Would you rather call or email a prospect? Sure, you can send off a bunch of emails, (and I’m not saying you shouldn’t) but we all know the data on email conversions. Has anyone ever responded to an email by thanking you and saying that they are ready to buy? My experience is that you…

This post was originally published on the Eventbrite blog. Read the original post here. Rules for event sponsorship success Sponsorship is a $62.7 billion industry. Its annual growth has surpassed other forms of marketing and advertising. With so much spending, your chances of winning event sponsors could be increasing — right? Sponsorship expert Larry Weil…

This post was originally published on the Eventbrite blog. Read the original post here. What’s your go-to method for contacting event sponsors? In a recent survey of event professionals, nearly half (42%) said their primary method for contacting sponsors was email. So if you said email, you’re in good company. But while email is an effective tool for…

I am often asked, what is sponsorship? It used to be a pretty simple answer. Most people think of sports sponsorships like McDonald’s and the U.S. Olympic team, or Bud Light and the NFL. There are many easy examples to see in sports, so it is a good place to start. Sponsorship has grown to…

Lots of properties contact me to tell me about what a great match they are for one of my clients. They have spent a lot of time rationalizing. Very often they are trying to make something fit because it meets their needs not the sponsor’s. So they twist and mush until they think they have…

Many of us have heard the expression that a carpenter is only as good as his (or her) tools. The application to any kind of sales, but especially sponsorship sales is pretty obvious. But you can’t talk about tools without talking about mastery. I recently had a conversation with someone who I consider to be…

It wasn’t that long ago that Sponsorship was pretty straightforward. Lots of companies were enamored with the opportunity to link their brand to a team, property or venue. Call it the “halo effect”, affinity or just the popularity of sports, celebrity, music, or cause. Plenty of free spending brands wanted to latch on for the…

Let’s not kid ourselves. You don’t want to answer the phone and get a sales pitch and neither does your prospect. So how do you sell without a sales pitch? Stop selling. Put yourself in your prospect’s shoes. If someone sends you an email, reaches out on LinkedIn, leaves a voice mail or actually reaches…