Keep sponsors happy and deliver value for money at your virtual event

From conferences and exhibitions to festivals and award ceremonies, the events industry relies heavily on sponsorship as a revenue generator to enable events to take place. And importantly, sponsors enjoy the benefits that come with partnering with carefully selected events and sharing their brand and key messages with relevant and engaged audiences.

Depending on the type of event, sponsorship packages can vary, providing different degrees of brand recognition and exposure. From simple logos on-screen and in the event literature, to complete branding of stages and activation experiences, it is essential that event organisers give sponsors plenty of opportunities to showcase their brand, with creative options that suit different clients and their budgets.

When transferring your event to an online experience, you may be wondering how best to incorporate your much-needed sponsors and ensure you are providing ‘value for money.’ We’ve collated some creative ideas that have worked well for our clients and will help you give your sponsors the credit and recognition they need:

Like any show, you can break up the content with ad-breaks using videos from your sponsors. Engaging videos are a great way to relay key messages and information as well as showcasing products and services in an interactive way.

We recommend only offering this option to your headline sponsors and ensuring that the advert sections are short enough not to distract from the main conference agenda. Each advert should be around 10 seconds long to maintain engagement.

The adverts don’t need to be heavily produced either, your sponsor could just say a few lines to the camera with their logo in the background, or perhaps your team could create the video and talk about the sponsor on their behalf.

One of the main benefits of working with a professional team when live-streaming your event, is the option it provides to add additional on-screen messaging and branding to your broadcast. A scrolling marquee is a section that runs along the bottom of your broadcast (just like it does on the news channels) – and are a great way to include sponsor information, such as company name, website, social media and brand messaging.

There are also options to add company logos as an overlay on the broadcast, which may work well if you want to highlight different sponsors during different sections of the day.

As with usual ‘in-person’ events, a compare or host who manages the links between presentations and talks can follow a pre-written script including thanks and name-checks of your sponsors. This is one of the easiest ways to acknowledge your sponsors and could be done either live or through pre-recorded segments.

It’s still worth considering producing branded backdrops – especially if you are planning a hybrid conference. If some of your event hosts and speakers are in the venue, you can still create branded backdrops that can be captured on camera. From simple roller banners to full bespoke sets, our team can create and safely install the branding and ensure that the cameras capture everything you need when broadcasting your event.

Whilst printed materials won’t be relevant for virtual conferences, you will still need to communicate to your delegates and provide information via email before and after the event. It’s simple to add in logos and information of your sponsors into your emails, with clickable links to their websites for further information. You can also create social media posts promoting your sponsors, using dedicated event hashtags and be sure to use branded graphics for your social media headers and imagery.

In lieu of goody bags and exhibition stalls for your delegates which are often packed with promotional items and offers from your sponsors, consider a ‘virtual goody bag’. Virtual goody bags include things like online discount codes or vouchers that can be redeemed in-store – there are companies that can help you to put these together, or you could also manage them yourselves through your email system and social media.

If your sponsor could add value to the content of your conference, why not consider inviting them to speak on a panel or give a presentation? The speaker could dial into the conference and present live, giving an incredible opportunity to showcase their knowledge and skillset to the audience whilst naturally promoting their business.

This organic inclusion is a good way to avoid a ‘hard-sell’ advertisement and can also add value to your attendees but, it is important that you only reserve this option for those who can genuinely enhance the content of your conference to avoid your delegates disengaging.

In addition to including your sponsor logos in the live webcast, you can also include acknowledgements in an introduction to the recording of the video which can be accessed on-demand. Your event production company will be able to support you with production of this and placing it into the recording.

These are just some of the ways you can include your sponsors in your virtual event, allowing them to meet their objectives whilst ensuring that much-needed revenue is raised for your event.

If you are planning on transferring your event to a digital platform and looking for expert technical assistance and advice, our team are on hand to help. We can support you to plan and deliver your event in the digital arena utilising our extensive knowledge, experience and equipment. Contact our team today to get started…