Why You Shouldn't Pursue Live Event Sponsorship

I spend a lot of time on this site discussing the “whys” and “hows” of sponsoring live events. Likewise, I've often detailed the reasons why businesses of all sizes should consider the live events as an ideal format to showcase their products and programs, reward employees and clients, and most importantly, grow their business. What I haven't spoken of much are reasons why or when you SHOULDN'T pursue an event opportunity. Although I contend that there are few marketing opportunities as rewarding as live “experiential” marketing, there are a few reasons why someone may want to forgo an opportunities.

You're trying to be current/hip/edgy/– the classic “all the cool kids are doing it” mentality is a relatively safe position to take in most forms of traditional marketing. In those instances, you often have a longer time period in which to gauge public response to your campaign, as well as the opportunity to make program adjustments based upon the reported metrics. Events, however, are an entirely different animal. Your program window is usually for a very limited amount of time, and the expense of most live programs in both fees and operations cost means a field roll out of an untested idea is much riskier than in traditional marketing.

This in itself should not discourage pursuing live marketing opportunities. However, in addition to knowing the risks involved, you should be honest with yourself as to whether such an opportunity makes sense for your business. Just because the biggest, hippest player on the block has rolled out a great new sponsorship program doesn't mean it's a good idea for you, or a great idea in general. They may simply have deeper pockets and a more careless marketing director.

You don't know the “real” audience – Any business owner will tell you that it makes no sense to spend marketing dollars on people who will never purchase your product or service. However, when discussing their “target” demographic, many of these same business owners have only defined their audience in the broadest of terms – gender, age, and income being the primary qualifiers. In many traditional mass-marketing outlets, this information is often sufficient to develop a successful blanket program that will generate enough response to justify the expense. Events are different, in that the audience is usually highly-specific, by interest if not demographic. If you haven't dissected your audience down to their interests, your potentially missing out on a number of opportunities. Even worse, you may be spending your money on people who will never respond to your program.

For example, imagine that Wally's Widgets has decided to sponsor a local golf tournament for the first time. Based upon their traditional demographic analysis, it seemed like a great opportunity – their target audience being business owners who are predominantly older, affluent and male. However, once the tournament gets underway Tuesday morning, Wally is shocked to discover that the participants are much younger and more diverse in both gender and income than he expected. Worse yet, few have much interest in talking widgets with Wally, making for a very long, lonely, and expensive day. So what happened? Well, for starters, Wally defined his sponsorship participation based upon traditional demographic analysis, rather than considering what his audience's interests were. Likewise, Wally hadn't accounted for the fact that golf has become much more of an "everyman's" game in recent years, diversifying the participant base and further reducing the number of worthwhile impressions. Finally, he didn't consider that many business owners can't steal away on a Tuesday afternoon to play golf. In short, Wally's assumptions about the event and its participants cost him dearly.

You can't stomach rejection – as with most other forms of marketing, the goal of live event sponsorship is to achieve a return on your investment, be it monetarily or in reputation. However, the immediacy of the event marketplace causes many sponsors to expect a correspondingly immediate response. As opposed to the audience being mere figures on a spreadsheet, they stand in directly in front of you - hopefully. As I mentioned earlier, live event marketing carries with it a greater amount of risk than other forms. Although the overall success of your program may not be known for weeks (as represented by increased profits and/or exposure), a failure to connect with the audience will likely be evident immediately. If you're not prepared to risk the time, money, and stress on an untested, short-term program with no guarantee of return, you might want to consider other marketing options.

Despite the above reasons (and any others that may be had), the rewards of live event sponsorship far outweigh the risks. I recommend that anyone pursuing live opportunities for the first time talk to someone who has experience in such matters, be it a consultant or another business with experience. As always, our email is always open should you need insight.