How to Get Guests Interested in Event Sponsors

If you showcase your event’s value, you will attract the right brands and sponsors to support your event. The challenge, however, is to provide your sponsors with a clear way to get their message through to guests that makes sense for your event.

In general, sponsors agree to finance your event to increase brand awareness, generate leads, and gain access to potential customers or clients. But focus too much on the sponsors, and you may find yourself overloaded with logos and brand videos while yourguests are waiting for the action to happen.A successful event partnership means you need to help sponsors make a splash with your audience without sabotaging the clarity of your event.Here are a few recommendations that will ensure an exchange of value between your sponsors and your guests, so that neither has to sacrifice their event experience.

Share interesting, valuable insights

Sponsors can add value to the attendees’ experience and lives by actively participating in the event!Standing up to directly sell or advertise the sponsored brand/product can have a negative effect of course - guests are not attending the event to be sold to, and may feel trapped sitting through a blatant pitch.Instead, invite sponsors to make a presentation or talk and share knowledge that your audience will find interesting and valuable. Channel a TEDtalk and provide insights that would surprise and engage guests.Before the event, brief your sponsors and share information you have about the attendees: explain the demographic, what their challenges and interests are, and brainstorm a good talk that ties in something insightful for guests to the value of the sponsor giving the insight.If your sponsors build the discussion around true value, relevant insights, and genuine connection, it can enhance the event for everyone.

Introduce a brand experience activity

According to Brand Experience: A New Era in Marketing, 9 in 10 marketers agree that brand experiences deliver more compelling engagement.As the study highlights, “Each and every audience touchpoint is an opportunity. An opportunity to engage, to educate, and to build brand affinity. There is no more engaging way to maximize those opportunities than through brand experience.”So collaborate with your sponsors. Design a special event activity that will showcase the sponsors and add value to the guest experience!Whether a brand-related game, photobooth, expert panel, or virtual reality activity, sponsored experiences engage your attendees at a personal level.It creates a memory, rather than just a company name, which creates a stronger and more genuine association with guests who participate.

Add free value

Everyone loves free stuff.It’s a classic marketing tool: when you introduce free samples or packages,your guests will gain access to potentially valuable products or services for free, while your sponsors increase their chances for exposure and leads.As an event professional, you are in a crucial place to advise your sponsors on how what makes your guests tick. You can tell them how best to ask for brand advocacy (via social media, for example) in exchange for free trials of the product, VIP membership, or other goodies.Be sure to coordinate the entire dynamic with the event moderators and staff too, who will help inform the audience about the opportunity. This creates a win-win interaction between your sponsors and event staff.

Final thoughts

When communicating with your sponsors on brand advocacy, always consider the guest experience. It's clearly a bad practice to overload an event with logos or irrelevant sponsors trying to sell products or services if that's not the goal - plus it rarely benefits anyone involved.If you truly want to add value to both your sponsors and assistants, your event has to seamlessly tie brand and guest experience together.