Earning 'found' money: The digital sponsorship starter kit

Just yesterday, I experienced one of the best of life’s little pleasures. It was laundry day and I was wearing my last-resort pants. You know the ones — pants you only wear while waiting for a better option to be clean and dry. And when I reached in my pocket, I felt the crinkling of cash and suddenly there were two five dollar bills in my hand. No matter how much it is, found money always makes my day. And we think it could make yours, too. 

 What is a digital sponsorship?

Your sponsors and exhibitors partner with your organization because they want exposure to your audience. Your audience is made up of their best potential customers. That’s why your partners send teams and bring exhibits by the truckload.

A digital sponsorship is an advertising package that offers your partners the same reach, only in the digital space, and with considerably less effort and expenditure. Digital sponsorships are a smart addition to sponsorship packages, or as a standalone offer outside of the confines of an event. One important type of digital sponsorship is what we call sponsored retargeting.

Retargeting is the practice of showing targeted advertisements to people who have visited your website. When someone visits your website, their visit enables you to serve them ads on other sites throughout the web. These ads can remind them to register for your event, promote a certain session or speaker, or ... promote one of your event partners! That last idea is sponsored retargeting.

In short, sponsored retargeting allows your event partners to advertise to your digital audience across the web. And, of course, your partners pay you for the privilege. 

Sponsored retargeting should be an essential element of your event strategy. Yes, it is a new and low-effort source of revenue. And who can refuse turnkey revenue? But what’s more important is the symbiosis sponsored retargeting creates. Exposure to your audience is valuable to your partners, and your partners’ products and services are likely to be relevant to your audience’s interests. Sponsored retargeting is an efficient way to unite these two causes and earn passive revenue.

 Types of sponsored retargeting packages

There are three main types of sponsored retargeting campaigns that we’ve seen work well: pre-event, post-event, and year-round. These are good starting point packages to propose to your event partners. Their goals will determine what kind of package they’re interested in.

A pre-event package shows your partners ads one to two months before the event, and is great for helping a partner build brand awareness, drive traffic to their booth, or promote their workshop or special event, like a happy hour.

The post-event package shows the partners ads in the weeks after the event wraps up, and is a great opportunity for the partner to nurture or generate leads, reach the people that they didn't meet at the event, or give special offers to their targeted segment.

A year round package shows your partners’ ads to your audience outside the context of your event. It gives your partners the opportunity to get exposure to your audience to stay top-of-mind, or drive sales, outside of the event cycle.

 How to price sponsored retargeting packages

Like most advertising packages, we recommend selling sponsored retargeting by impressions. The number of impressions, and the price of the packages, will depend on your audience, your partners’ goals, and the length of their campaigns.

As a general rule, we’ve seen our customers have success by offering sponsored retargeting packages in the same price range as their least expensive booth. Putting digital sponsorship packages within the familiar context of physical sponsorship packages helps some event partners visualize the process better and can increase buy-in.

For more personalized pricing ideas, visit feathr.co/demo and we’ll be happy to book a one-on-one conversation to go over your revenue and pricing potential in detail.

 Selling your sponsors on the idea

Sponsored retargeting doesn’t quite sell itself, but it comes close. If your partners value your event, they will inherently understand the value of advertising directly to your audience. Your audience is, after all, a ready-made segment with a high probability of being interested in your partners’ products and services.

Your main job will be answering two main questions for your partners:

1. What is the value of sponsored retargeting?
2. How will I be able to use it?

We’ve created a handy guide to answering these questions as well as some common objections, which you can read here.

To simplify your approach, try prioritizing only high-value partners at the beginning. You won’t need to sell as many packages, but you will still land big fish and develop statistics and social proof for future sales.

Do your event partners have a persistent habit of asking you “what’s new this year?” We’ve found that to be a great opportunity to pitch sponsored retargeting packages.

Another approach we’ve seen our customers succeed with is including a digital element in traditional event sponsorship packages, either built in to the total price of sponsorship or as an optional add-on when negotiating sponsorships.

No matter how you sell them, sponsored retargeting packages are a novel way to increase revenue streams, both for your events and year round. You don’t need Feathr to sell digital sponsorships, but the Feathr platform makes it simple to run and track campaigns, so that you can get that found money in your pockets quickly and easily.

 Major revenue potential

To illustrate just what digital sponsorships could mean to your bottom line, we created a simple tool that gives a unique estimate of the potential revenue Sponsored Retargeting could add to your events. 

Click here to test it out →