Sponsorship Marketing 101: Building Partnerships That Work

Online and digital marketing can teach us a lot about which assets are actually of high value in the sponsorship landscape. To all newbies in sponsorship marketing: we’ve all been there - gropingly exploring this fascinating sphere and sought professional guidance. This article is dedicated to you - the ones who are interested in sponsorship marketing basics. We talk here about a simple, yet powerful tool for advertisers who want to make a solid connection with their audience. 

Today, we will learn how sponsorship helps in establishing successful partnerships and achieving specific marketing objectives. Not wasting a minute, let’s start!

What is Sponsorship Marketing?

We will drop all the complicated explanations and use simplicity as it’s a core value of Entyx. Sponsorship marketing is a form of partnership where advertisers invest in events, fund teams, jump in brand partnerships with streamers to increase their brand awareness and create a strong bond with the audience. Advertisers normally measure the success of sponsorship strategies through analytical tools. 

Sponsorship is not just about visibility of the brand. Best part is that advertisers of any scale can become sponsors if the process is well-curated. Sponsoring high-profile events gives brands a platform to offer the target audience priceless experiences that money can't buy. Any sport event sponsorship focuses on so-called passion points that build a strong association in every fan’s mind with the brand. But how does it work? 

Why Sponsorship Marketing Works

The answer lies in the psychology of every human being: if you’re treating my tribe nicely, you’re my friend. Sponsorships are directly connected to emotional branding. It works when a brand gains association with something significantly important for the target audience. As an advertiser, you definitely want to build profound customer connections. It can be successfully achieved through cybersports, regular sports, music concerts, events, and social matter initiatives. Advertisers profit from creating unique fan experiences because emotional bonds straighten the audience's trust and loyalty. Brands become part of gaming culture and fans will treasure such once-in-a-lifetime moments for the rest of their lives. This is way more powerful than giving out discounts, because they are in a short-term happiness folder and will be forgotten. But how can you forget a special meeting with your idol at an event, organized by some brand? 

Think of Nike. What immediately springs to mind? We are pretty sure that the iconic Jordan shoes first come first, and then the “Just Do It” slogan. Nike sponsored a great number of teams and sports events, so it encrypted the connection in our minds. And whenever we think of buying sports equipment, our consciousness draws Nike items. The same works with tech companies like Intel, which sponsor cyber sports events and teams. Sponsorship helps brands play on the emotions of their target audience and create the most powerful triggers because they make us feel happy at the moment and create memories - this is priceless and no one can take it away. 

The Basics of a Successful Sponsorship

Sponsorship opportunities are incredible, they help advertisers bring in new audiences and make an event look super legit. 

Before you start doing something in business and life, you have to figure out why you are doing it. What are your objectives and expected outcomes of this or that action? Successful sponsorships as well begin from accurate answers to those questions. Advertisers should map their sponsorship goals and desired results before entering the sponsorship landscape at all. The aim can be: to increase brand awareness, boost engagement, or drive more sales. 

The next step is one of the most important things you can do: choosing the right partners. You do want to find streamers whose mission and values match yours. You are looking for somebody who shares a similar audience set to what you have. Somebody who is targeting a similar audience and can be a loudspeaker for you, otherwise such a partnership will not grant you an expected ROI. 

So how do you get great partners (streamers)? The way to think about it is to identify it into stages:

1) You want to select the right partner relevant to your marketing objectives.

2) You proceed to sponsorship planning: a list of measurable key results like the exact amount of clicks, mentions, and views. 

3) You want to pitch them directly or use an intermediary like AI Marketing Platform Entyx, which matches you with streamers you’ve picked.

4) You want to lock it in, execute, and get the most value out of that sponsorship. 

Last but not least, own it. Own the entire process. This will make a fundamental base of your collaboration, ensuring your expectations from this sponsorship meet the reality. 

Measuring the Impact of Sponsorships

Historically, and we are talking as recently as 15 to 20 years ago, the concept of sponsoring a sport was largely in the context of a handout. So effectively the expectation from the sports asset or entity, team, or athlete, being sponsored was that they needed money, or they needed a product. The understanding on the other end by the company or corporate sponsor was that they were going to get a visibility opportunity through branding or advertising to offset their basic initial investment cost of the sponsorship amount itself, but there would be no real ROI (return on investment). So it was almost kind of seen as a handout. 

However, through digitization, global reach, and artificial intelligence, there's been a switch from a handout to an actual return on investment. So for a lot of banks and venture capital firms, the primary premise of the sheer existence of those businesses is to generate a return on investment and effectively make money. 

In terms of effectiveness the average sponsorship should return $2 to $4 for every dollar spent, ranging up to $7 per dollar spent on a well-activated deal. You might want to ask how that happens. 

Well, it takes a lot of brainstorming, strategy, and planning. It is paramount and fundamental that, from the get-go, the right match is made between the corporate sponsor and the sports asset. So much so that we're not going to be calling it a sponsorship, we're going to be calling it a strategic partnership. So initially, from the outset, the right match needs to be made. Expectations need to be managed and that relationship needs to be effectively curated.

You may be overwhelmed by the idea of measuring a campaign's success, analyzing the efficiency of sponsorship, and calculating ROI all by yourself. To evaluate if you invested in the right partnership, an advertiser should pay attention to the logo in a frame duration, brand mentions, and engagement level of the audience (as a bare minimum). 

Luckily, technological advancement pushed boundaries and the world received progressive tools like Entyx. Our AI Marketing platform collects the data and shapes it into AI-driven reports. Having such insights, advertisers easily measure Media Value, and sponsorship ROI and get a 360-degree view of the best-performed campaign elements. Sponsorship analytics make sure advertisers have all critically important data at their fingertips, and they can use it anytime to improve their future engagements. 

Making Sponsorships Work for Your Brand

Hope that after reading this article you’re convinced now that sponsorship marketing is a powerful tool for brands of any scale. Successful sponsorships depend on the right choice of influencers, teams, or events as well as on setting goals and using AI analytics. 

AI’s presence in cybersports has taken an unexpected turn in sponsorships, revolutionizing how brands engage with fans. AI algorithms now tailor sports advertisements during games, making them relatable and captivating for specific audiences. Delve into how AI transforms sponsorship strategies, illustrating both the evolution and unforeseen challenges. 

Entyx AI platform wants to liberate you from manual jobs and offers a unique AI-driven approach to help you succeed. We make sponsorships accessible, understandable, and efficient for everyone. Do you want to learn more? See you in the next article.