We have discussed in previous articles on the benefits of sponsorship as part of the engagement with customers and stakeholders of your company. Do check out Part 1 and Part 2 to get a better understanding of how to maximise and stretch your sponsorship dollar further.
One of the key challenges has always been in quantifying what kinds of returns you can get with a potential event or venue sponsorship for example. In this article, we suggest some practical ways that Investor Relations staff can measure the impact of sponsorship to gauge its overall effectiveness and ROI:
Resources for an in-depth understanding of a company’s business
- Website analytics: Track website traffic and referral sources during and after the event to see if there was an increase in traffic and engagement with your brand.
- Social media monitoring: These days, with social media, it is much easier to obtain data related to likes, shares, mentions, source, referral sites etc. for your brand during and after an event to measure the level of engagement and sentiment among the target audience. The data is highly precise and in real-time, allowing for messages and campaigns to be tweaked and optimised along the way.
- Surveys: Conducting surveys before and after an event can be helpful in tracking changes in brand awareness, perception, and purchase intent. Results obtained can help in understanding the effectiveness and impact of the company’s sponsorship on their target audience. For example, the company can measure the level of brand recognition among event attendees by conducting on-site surveys or engaging with attendees at your booth for activation.
- Lead tracking: Set up lead tracking mechanisms such as special offer codes, landing pages, or lead capture forms to track the number of leads generated from a sponsored event. You can then measure the quality of these leads by tracking the conversion rate.
- Sales data: Track sales data before and after the event to see if there was any noticeable increase in sales or revenue generated from an event. You can then compare this data to the cost of the sponsorship to calculate your ROI.
Overall, the key to measuring the benefits of event sponsorship is to set clear objectives and define the metrics that are aligned with those objectives beforehand. By using a combination of the methods outlined above, one can quantify the impact of the sponsorship and make data-driven decisions on the basis of ROI, cost per lead, cost per acquisition, brand uplift etc. with respect to future sponsorships.
