Sponsoring events produces direct community engagement, increases the visibility of your brand, facilitates heightened consumer perception, and allows direct engagement with target customers.
You reach audiences more directly and discover insights not only into what they’re seeking but about how effectively your products are received. This tends to produce a notable Return on Investment, or ROI. As a bonus, you’ll get a chance to network with adjacent non-competitive companies.
Key Reasons Why Sponsorship is Important for Long-Term Success
Sponsorship plugs you into a community; you engage with the IoT ecosystem. You’re not an abstract profit-generating enterprise, but a friend and a partner. We introduced key advantages in the opening, we’ll explore each in detail here:
- Fostering Engagement with the IoT ecosystem
- Enhancing the Visibility of Your Tech Brand
- Enhancing How Target Consumers See Your Brand
- Achieving ROI From the Sponsored Event, and Going Forward
- Finding and Working with Non-Competitive Businesses Adjacent to Yours
- Meeting Target Consumers, and Greeting Them: Putting a “Face” to Your Brand
Fostering Engagement with the IoT ecosystem
Maybe you are sponsoring a local event, or you are planning a roadshow. Now you are targeting a local market. You invite customers and prospects to your event, and you advertise in local publications. Thousands of people see it, it allows you to co-brand with local customers benefiting both you and your customers brand. You can include the local startup community; they’ll appreciate the additional visibility. Sponsoring events positions you as a thought leader to be respected and appreciated, and the local community collaterally values your event.
Enhancing the Visibility of Your Tech Brand
Any brand involved in sponsorship will be more visible and you can expect an uptick in business. Sponsors can leverage products or services toward the smooth progression of the event. Maybe your sponsorship includes presenting on the main stage at a local event. Perhaps you just set up a meeting room to have one-on-one discussions with clients or prospects. Either way you should put banners with your logo and services throughout the event.
Enhancing How Target Consumers See Your Brand
Sponsoring events connects your brand with the brand of the event that you sponsor. So, you want to be selective with the events that you sponsor. Do your customers want to be associated with the event? And are your prospects or your customers’ customers frequenting the event? And how about your services: can you interest the companies that attend the event or the attendees of the event in your services? Then you have an opportunity to position your company as a thought leader. Business is changing so fast; new technology is popping up left, right and center.
There is a shortage of thought leaders with operational understanding of the new technologies. This then creates an opportunity to brand your company as a cutting-edge technology company and to position your company as a solution provider your prospects need to work with. Your customers and prospects will see your brand as an ally in their personal interests. And beyond being seen as a technology advocate, you’ve actually functioned in that capacity.
Achieving ROI From the Sponsored Event, and Going Forward
ROI develops when more traffic is absorbed by your business, directly or indirectly. The costs involved with sponsorship are just marketing expenses, and they may produce more ROI than direct marketing. With direct marketing, maybe you’re putting products or services in front of more people, but there’s no mutual investment. When sponsoring events, you’ve got “skin in the game”, as do attendees. So, they’re more likely to engage with you if they encounter your brand at such an event than if they just encountered an ad on YouTube.
Finding and Working with Non-Competitive Businesses Adjacent to Yours
Your IoT company has adjacent vendors who operate in the same industry but don’t directly compete with you. Such businesses are likely to be involved in events that you sponsor. If they are, that represents a networking opportunity. Sponsoring events helps you find partners in a particular field. You can direct consumers to their products, and they can do the same. The event you sponsor helps get that ball rolling.
Meeting Target Consumers, and Greeting Them: Putting a “Face” to Your Brand
Physical attendance is to be recommended. Certainly, getting a few banners in a local publication, that’s good marketing; but combine that with sponsoring a local tech convention. Set up a booth and meet target consumers in droves. They get to see you as a tangible option, rather than abstractly.
The “Virtual” Angle: Generating Leads
Leads can be generated at many sponsored events, but the quantity and quality will depend on the event. If you organize your own event, you have control over the quantity and since you will focus on your target market the lead quality is likely to be very high. So, it is worthwhile to strategically sponsor that which is conducive to your particular brand. That said, the greater your visibility and outreach, the more potential of drawing in new leads generally.
Don’t Neglect Virtual Events
Sponsoring sports events or tech conventions requires more investment than other sponsorship opportunities, but the modern tech sphere gives you the potential for similar reach at an exponentially smaller cost. The virtual angle makes that possible.
If you sponsor a virtual conference or summit, you have increased opportunity for direct customer engagement, expanded audience accessibility, high ROI owing to low investment cost, clear and relevant analytics, leads that are more qualified than in non-digital events, sales cycles that can be minimized with data collected during the event, and the potential to transition events as your brand develops similarly.
Notable Speed-Defining Virtual Events
Something else that’s a big advantage of virtual events is speed. And in today’s world, speed is the name of the game. You can launch a virtual event that reaches thousands (or millions, depending on the size and reputation of your company) in one evening. Physical events have logistics to consider, like event space, collateral vendors, safety, concessions, and depending on the size of the event can take up to one year or more to organize. This Forbes article has some insights to consider. So if you are planning a sizeable summit or conference to discuss today’s technology trends, a virtual event is your only option.
Sponsoring Events Can Help Your Business in Terms of Visibility, Relevance, and Profitability
Sponsoring events has many benefits. You increase community engagement, ROI, visibility, brand awareness, and the list goes on. Definitely, if you haven’t considered this cost-effective, profitable marketing tactic, you should. For more information on marketing strategies to produce ROI, IoT Marketing can help explore a variety of strategies that complement your brand.