Sponsorships have a direct and long-lasting positive effect on a company’s brand awareness and strategy. By offering the advantage of a sponsorship opportunity within the life cycle of your event, you are offering your exhibitors the ability to boost their company’s name recognition and exposure to their target audience: their current and future customers. An exhibitor’s sponsorship also broadens awareness of your event within new communities, such as the customer base of the sponsoring company.

Your event’s website and communication materials emailed to attendees provide multiple opportunities for registrants to see sponsorship information and click to learn more about the sponsoring company. As your event’s website traffic and registration increase in the months leading up to the event, the sponsorship achieves a broader reach. Onsite, sponsorships bring your exhibitor’s brand to the forefront of attendees’ attention.

How to begin:

• Move beyond the basics of sponsorships. Offer more than just signage.
• Highlight benefits to your exhibitors, not just the elements of the sponsorship. Focus on your exhibitors’ needs and offer solutions.
• Customize the sponsorships you offer into categories. This will help your exhibitors identify what they want to accomplish and whom they want to reach. 
• Get consultative. If the opportunities you currently offer don’t meet your exhibitors’ goals, engage them on a customized solution that does.

The next step: 

Create the components of your sponsorship packages. Don’t forget these key areas:

Registration Emails: Feature the sponsoring company’s name and logo with a link to their website.

• Registration confirmation

• Check-in email 

• Show-day updates

• Post-event email

• Receipt email

Banner Advertising: Offer dynamic advertising based on your attendee demographics.

• Registration websites

• Attendee registration resource center (portal for registered attendees to manage and upgrade registration details, book a hotel, download a receipt, network with other attendees, generate a Visa invitation letter, access their CME, etc.)

• Onsite check-in and self-registration screens

• Customized screensavers on workstations

Badges and Holders: Feature the sponsoring company’s name, logo and a QR code.

• Real estate on the front and/or back of the badge

• Educational sessions and printed tickets 

• Custom badge holders or lanyards at the event

Registration or Cyber Café Workstations: Feature the sponsoring company’s name and logo.  

• Landing page for cyber café or CEU certificate generation. CEUs offer additional exposure by being available onsite and post-event.

• Signage for the workstation or cyber café screens

• Custom-branded mouse pads for the computer stations

Onsite: Feature the sponsoring company’s color scheme, name and logo.

• Branded t-shirts for the onsite registration assistants or line monitors. The sponsoring company’s name and logo are then easily recognizable to each attendee receiving service.

• Onsite recycling bins placed around the hall for recycling paper or badge holders

Post-Event: Offer image-based ads with a link to the sponsoring company’s website. 

• Attendee thank-you email

• Exhibit Tracker (customized email and website for attendees that provides a list of the exhibitor booths they visited)

• Inquiry page for your next event (creates a prospect list and gives attendees the ability to receive notifications of when registration opens for your next event)

• Event Surveys