Let's Have a Candid Talk About Sponsorships

If you have a business, your marketing dollars are finite. You need to use that money to bring you the most bang for your buck. If you have money to blow and where you spend it doesn't matter, more power to ya. If you are the marketing professional for that business, your job may balance on where you decide to spend your employer's money. Sponsorships may be out of the good of one's heart but ultimately, a business wants a return on investment (ROI) and event planners have the responsibility to offer that opportunity.

As a marketing company, we get asked to help event planners to get sponsors. The first thing that I ask in order to decide if we will become involved is, what is your marketing budget and what are you offering to help your sponsors to get a ROI? If Maestro becomes involved and are approaching potential sponsors, we are putting our agency's reputation on the line and in fact endorsing the event to provide you the best chances at getting an ROI through ensuring that you are seen. Many event planners rely on word of mouth for their event which is the worst plan to have. Especially when the sponsorship dollars requested is significant. Why? For a $5000 sponsorship, we can digitally advertise you to 500,000 to a million potential buyers. Will word of mouth reach that many? Hardly. We know, in the past we have learned the valuable lesson of working with these event planners and they ALL have fallen short which causes great angst among those businesses who sponsored the event. In fact, many will not sponsor that event again and some of the marketing staff from these businesses were let go.

Each event planner has the responsibility to make sure that at a minimum, the event is seen by hundreds of thousands of people. I expect no less than 500,000 to see the event through advertising if an event is offering $2500 or more for sponsorships. If it is a yearly event, I expect that businesses are seen on social media throughout the year on the event's social media pages. This is to easy to do and an auto-scheduler for social media can accomplish this. A sponsor package should include the following:

1. Advertised on traditional media - newspaper, popular local magazines, radio or TV.

2. Social Media - no less than 100,000 impressions

3. Digital advertising - no less than 500,000 impressions

4. Email - no less than 10,000 emailed

Much of this can be easily accomplished for an event planner with strategic partnerships or trades with these advertising platforms ie: "you can be a sponsor if you donate space on your advertising platform." TV, Social media and digital advertising especially have hard costs that require money to be spent and are more difficult to be traded. Print many lower their costs to the amount necessary for the printing (wholesale) of their publications but in return get the amount of sponsorship based on their traditional fees.

What can we do if you want to be a sponsor of an event? If you are interested in a sponsorship for an event, we can negotiate the fees for you so that you not only will get the sponsor package you desire but we also use a portion of the funds to advertise you and the event so that you have the best opportunity for a ROI. We will also advertise you on some of our platforms which reach thousands of potential buyers in the South Sound.

To spend 2500k or more on an event with less than 5000 people attending is never the best use of your advertising dollars. In fact, you will never get a ROI unless you have high dollar products such as cars or homes that you sell. The facts are in the numbers. If you advertise regularly then you know that with a certain number of people that see you, a percentage of them will buy your products or services. With less than 5000 attending and word of mouth advertising, your chances again of an ROI are slim.

What can we do if you are an event planner? We have several of our own platforms, websites, social media, and email that we reach tens of thousands of people in the area. Organically for events we have delivered 40k to 150k impressions on social media alone dependent on the amount of time given to promote the event. We offer digital advertising at cost which means that you pay significantly less. We can do significantly more to ensure that your event is seen. We have contact information to thousands of local business owners (decision makers) that we can approach to be sponsors which also ensures that the event is seen. We offer all of this in trade for a sponsorship though digital advertising has a fee.

If you are a potential sponsor, get your moneys worth and demand that the event is properly advertised. Consult with us if you have any questions about an event.

If you are an event planner, contact us and lets meet to discuss how we can help you, after all its practically free.

Feel free to contact me at ceo@maestrostrategicsolutions.com or 360-545-3874 (7 days a week)

Ranger Dave

Dave Maestas "Ranger Dave" is the CEO of Maestro Strategic Solutions with annual marketing sales of almost 2 million dollars, manages 300+ social media pages and groups with 100k followers and members. He is also is the Chief Financial Officer (CFO) of the Tacoma Events Commission that produces the Tacoma Freedom Fair, 125,000 in attendance and over 1.5 million impressions through advertising, the Gray Sky Blues Music Festival, Orting Pumpkin Festival and advises other large events in the area. Dave is also a co-owner of the West Coast Italian Radio Network with a radio show broadcast to 50k local listeners out of Seattle. He is a retired Special Forces "Green Beret" with 15 of his 20 years at Joint Base Lewis McChord. He knows how to reach the largest market in the South Sound, the military with guerrilla marketing tactics that strive to help their clients get a ROI, 7 days a week.

Member:

Thurston Chamber

Lakewood Chamber

Tacoma Chamber

Several other large networking business groups both locally and nationally.