How Sponsorship and Experiential Work Together

Sponsorship and Experiential Teams Must Work Together

Each component of a sponsorship marketing program must work together, from the start of negotiations until the final consumer interaction.

Because experiential marketing – sometimes called event marketing – requires some unique skills and mainly takes place in the field, we have seen cases where the experiential team is not fully integrated into the process.

At times, it can even seem like the experiential team is working at odds with the rest of the marketing program, simply assigned tasks which they fulfill as best they can, usually drawing on past experience with vastly different products or services.

Considering that the experiential field teams are the ones directly interacting with your consumers, this is counter-productive, to say the least.

You can head this off by making sure everyone fully understands the program’s strategic goals.

Not only does sharing the “big picture” prevent problems in execution, it allows every member of the team to draw on their experience and creativity to suggest ways to improve the program.

It’s well worth the cost of a comprehensive kickoff meeting to identify:

• -       What message we are communicating.
• -       Which consumers we want to reach.
• -       How we ideally would like them to respond.
• -       The nature of our relationship with these consumers going forward.

This allows the field teams to focus on quality, rather than quantity, for example.

One-hundred well-qualified responses will be worth many times as much as 1,000 unqualified interactions.

This will make your Return on Investment calculations both easier, and more accurate. With a proper understanding of the value of each consumer interaction, you can make better decisions about the types of events to stage, the best tactics and the most appropriate budget allocations.

Share your goals, not just your tasks, and you will reap the benefits.

Short- and Long-Term Vision

Target Both Short- and Long-Term Results

We have talked about how your marketing programs must be linked to goals in order to help you evaluate and eventually maximize their performance.

It’s important to understand that your goals should demonstrate both short-term and long-term vision.

Short-term results are obviously very important, particularly those that deliver results to the company’s bottom line.

But components of your marketing program very likely will be geared toward the longer term – especially if you have multi-year marketing agreements such as sponsorships or naming rights deals in place.

Think about desirable future results – such as preserving and increasing marketing share.

Beware of setting goals such as “brand awareness” or “share of voice.” These are too generalized to generate much enthusiasm among your team, or indeed from the executive suite.

Compare that to the goal of capturing marketing share in an under-served geographic or demographic area. In contrast with “share of voice,” this is a measurable result that can guide both day-to-day and long-term decision-making.

The process of defining and quantifying your short- and long-term goals and assigning budget to each can be termed “marketing mix modeling.”

How much of your marketing budget is going toward short-term results? How much is building toward a strong market position in the future? Are the proportions appropriate, given the company’s position in the marketplace? If not, work toward rebalancing the budget.

As an example of an appropriate marketing mix, one of our clients, a global manufacturer of office supplies, signed a long-term sponsorship with one of America’s best-known universities.

• Short-term, the deal delivered an immediate win in terms of access to the university’s significant office-supply needs.
• Longer term, the deal offered benefits well beyond the ivy-covered walls, as the corporate business-to-business sales force was able to leverage the sponsorship assets nationwide, and even globally, given the university’s renown in the sports world.

The resulting ROI on this sponsorship was very high in context with other deals of this magnitude.

Designs of Experiments - Optimizing Investments in Real Time

One of the strengths of Experiential Marketing or Event Marketing is its ability to deliver measurable results in real time.

This lends Experiential Marketing to a Six Sigma process called Designs of Experiment, or DOE.

A well-constructed DOE allows you to “test drive” a tactic or series of tactics before committing all your resources. This type of objective comparison allows you to select the best option, and best of all, to know what type of result to expect from your program.

I have seen cases where two ideas that both sounded equally brilliant on paper achieved dramatically different results in the field at the DOE stage.

So how do you create an Experiential Marketing DOE? It must start with these two questions:

• -       What do we hope to achieve?
• -       How will we define success?

From there, you can brainstorm activities that could potentially drive consumers toward the desired response. There may be many options, and your experience and insights will help to identify those with the best chances of success.

However, the beauty of the DOE is that it lets you test some ideas that may seem far-fetched or at least less obvious than your normal approach.

Since you are not going to dedicate a large budget at the DOE stage, your risk in trying these ideas is very low.

With several possible winners in hand, it’s time for field testing.

Here are other important considerations:

• -       Clearly define the data you will be gathering.
• -       Target quick returns – after all, this is the strength of Experiential Marketing.
• -       Control the independent variables where possible, so that you feel comfortable making comparisons. You don’t want to be at the mercy of capricious weather, for example.
• -       Use your weighted objectives to compute Return on Objectives scores from each project.
• -       Be ready to quickly roll out whichever tactic performs the best.

Gather the data, compare the weighted results against the execution cost in order to determine Return on Investment, take your Return on Objectives scores into account, fine-tune if needed, and roll out the winning plan as quickly as possible.

Then bask in the admiration of your peers.

 

How Experiential Marketing Fits Into Your Plan

Let Upside Dictate Your Experiential Marketing Budget

Armed with an understanding of Experiential Marketing, which brings your brand into close, personal contact with consumers, you next must decide how this tool fits into your overall marketing program.

These factors should be taken into account:

• -       Whether you will be able to leverage a Sponsorship investment and/or other elements of your marketing program
• -       How long your messaging has been in place (maturity)
• -       Potential budget range
• -       Potential benefit to your brand

Of these, the most important factor to consider is the potential benefit. In many cases, the dollar-for-dollar benefit of experiential marketing can outperform all other elements of your marketing program.

It’s important to recognize that Return on Investment, as important as it is, should not be the only factor in consideration. For example, it is comparatively difficult to reach and influence mass audiences with meaningful Experiential programs. This is where mass media shines.

But once that mass awareness platform is in place, whether via mass media or Sponsorship, Experiential can often be the best way to turn a consumer’s interest into purchase and loyalty.

Analyzing your marketing performance at this fairly granular level allows you to make informed decisions on budget allocation, based on performance and Return on Investment.

Some of the best Experiential Marketing programs I have seen share one or more of these elements:

-       They turn passion into action. If there is no passion, what is the consumer’s motivation? Hint: You don’t want it to be price discounts.

-       

      They place the product or service into direct, emotional contact with the consumer. Literally allow your potential customers to embrace what you have to offer.

-       

      They generate positive energy and enthusiasm. This is a magnet, drawing other consumers to your event, and eventually into your brand circle.

-       

       Create brand ambassadors, armed with the tools they need to generate word-of-mouth (both literally and virtually) for your brand. Make it easy for your new fans to spread the word.

The more of these components you can build into Experiential Marketing, the more results you will generate. Let the potential for results dictate your budget.

What is Experiential Marketing?

Experiential Marketing – Your Most Valuable Tool

Sponsorship marketing has many moving parts, each of which must complement the others:

• -       Brand association, commonly called “the sponsorship”
• -       Media marketing support
• -       Sales activity support
• -       Experiential marketing

For a marketer, perhaps the most valuable of these on a per unit basis is experiential marketing, sometimes called “event marketing,” because it most frequently is associated with one or more events.

It’s more valuable simply because it’s far more impactful for a consumer to experience a brand than to hear or see information.

This goes back to that old adage:

Tell me, I’ll forget.
Show me, I’ll remember.
Involve me, I’ll understand.

The better you can help your target customer to understand your brand, the more value you create. This is reflected in the Return on Investment calculations we use.

When planning an experiential marketing program, ask yourself these questions:

• -       Does the activity complement the sponsorship?
• -       Are we exposing not only our brand, but our specific products and services?
• -       To what degree can consumers get hands-on with our offerings?
• -       Can we use the consumer’s affinity with the sponsorship to create an ongoing relationship?
• -       Is it possible to extend the impact beyond attendees using social and other media?
• -       As a consumer, what’s in it for me?

The better you integrate these elements, the more value you will realize from each event.

Therefore, static signage will have less value than an interactive kiosk, which will have less value than a display staffed by professional marketers, which will have less value than a display which provides each participant with real, tangible value that is directly related to the products and services you are offering.

Higher numbers of people may see the static signage, but it is nearly impossible to make up the reduced value in sheer volume.

However, since signage can be a relatively small line item in the budget, and can both extend the exposure to those who couldn’t attend your display and reinforce the experience for those who did, it can provide positive value.

Mine all of the value you can, and you’ll realize a strong ROI on your experiential marketing investment.