Editor's Note: Take a look at our featured best practice, Digital Transformation Strategy (145-slide PowerPoint presentation). Digital Transformation is being embraced by organizations across most industries, as the role of technology shifts from being a business enabler to a business driver. This has only been accelerated by the COVID-19 global pandemic. Thus, to remain competitive and outcompete in today's fast paced, [read more]
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Seeking a sponsorship may look like an organization-centric benefit. But when activated, the same sponsorship works for all three pillars of the business. This includes the audience for whom the event is built, the organization that arranges the event, and the sponsors who sponsor the event.
When a company accepts to offer a sponsorship, it includes itself in the organization’s event or project. This is mainly because it cares for the event’s cause, and second, it finds the event easy access to its target market. The sponsor may agree to provide funds to execute the event or showcase its services during the event free of cost.
Sponsorships are a great marketing strategy for businesses that want to grow and engage with their audience, in turn, building trust and reliability in their services. In simple words, it is a gateway to attract new customers to their businesses.
Gone are the days when sponsorship was just about adding logos or displaying the sponsor’s physical banners all over the event venue. With technology in place, the bandwidth for marketing has expanded and the cost for it has reduced significantly. It’s all included in the digital sponsorship.
What Is Meant by Digital Sponsorship?
Digital sponsorship is sponsoring the event on a digital platform like a website, or social media. It’s a way for the sponsors to market themselves among the online audience. It’s more likely that more people log in to an online event with the flexibility of location and at a single click as compared to an event hosted in some physical location. Hence, digital sponsorship is more likely to cater to a larger audience.
When a company agrees to offer digital sponsorship, it might offer what the target audience is looking for. For example, consider a publisher accepting to offer a digital sponsorship to an online book club. This book club is going to talk about their recent book, so the publisher might give free copies of their published book to some lucky winners from the book club. This will help the publisher(sponsor) to market their books to their target audience. The event organizer gets to add more value to his book club by sending out free copies. The audience benefits by having a free copy of their next anticipated read.
What Is Meant by Digital Sponsorship Activation?
Digital sponsorship activation means bringing the sponsorship into effect by rewarding the target audience. This can be done by first taking a survey of the audience and having a clear understanding of their needs. Next, the event organizer can list down prospective sponsors who can provide valuable assets that sync with the audience’s needs. This is a crucial step for digital sponsorship activation. If the audience needs and the sponsor’s assets mismatch, the whole thing can turn futile.
To further leverage the marketing game, sponsors can use experiential marketing. It is a strategy where the sponsors catch their audience’s attention throughout the event in a manner that the audience will enjoy. An example of this would be bringing in a speaker the audience would love to have, and arranging a live session with them. Or perhaps, do a QnA session online that targets the topics of the audience’s interest.
The Importance of Digital Sponsorship Activation in Today’s Age
Digital sponsorship activation is a must in today’s generation where the majority of people are hooked to online platforms. It is beneficial than the traditional sponsorships in more than one way. Let’s take a look at it.
Virtually Collaborate with Multiple Brands and Organizers at the Same Time
While digital sponsorship activation brings the audience online, it also brings multiple organizers and sponsors together to create and amplify the same result. There is a variety of assets offered to the audience which instantly lifts the value of that event. For example, if the event is about sports, then an important match can be broadcasted on a digital medium rather than the TV. The sponsors may include their ads, send out some coupons, and give access to live photos and video clips by putting their logos somewhere up. It can be anything that increases brand awareness for the sponsors and promotes sports fan engagement.
Digital Sponsorship activation has increased among sporting events. The primary reason is that sports fans can directly communicate with the sponsors and indulge in their assets over a single platform.
Generates Revenue for Both Organization and the Sponsors
Since such a sponsorship facilitates connection with the fans one-to-one, the fan engagement rate is higher and the profits generated are more. Let’s understand this with an example of digital scratch off cards, a type of digital sponsorship activation.
Digital scratch off cards are like the physical scratch off cards but granted on an online medium. They are great to build sports fan engagement. A fan may win one of these cards after attempting a sports quiz on the same platform that hosts the sporting event. These cards are made attractive and flashy to increase excitement among the fans. When the fan scratch this card, he might get exclusive vouchers, rewards, access to some premium content, etc., all aligning with the fan’s interest and related to the sponsor’s brands. This way, the fan indirectly generates revenue for the sponsors and for the organizers by purchasing the event tickets in the first place.
Conclusion
In today’s world of technology, where almost everyone uses the internet, digital sponsorship activations are a boon to both organizers and sponsors to generate an endless stream of revenue.
Digital Transformation touches practically every function in the entire organization. This thus requires an unprecedented amount of coordination among people, process, and technologies throughout the organization, leading to a difficult Transformation program.
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