In short. Sell the audience, not the event. A sponsorship proposal works when it names who is in the room by role and sector, says what the sponsor will be able to report internally afterwards, and commits to delivering that. Logo-placement packages fail because nobody has ever been promoted for a logo on a banner.
Most sponsorship proposals are written from the organiser’s point of view: here is our event, here is how wonderful it is, here are three tiers named after metals. They convert badly, and the reason is that they answer a question nobody asked.
What a sponsor is actually buying
Somebody at the sponsoring company has to justify the spend to somebody else. That is the whole transaction, and everything that works follows from understanding it.
They are not buying your event. They are buying a defensible answer to “why did we spend four thousand pounds on that”. Usually one of:
- Access to a specific group of buyers. The most common and the easiest to serve.
- Credibility by association. Being seen to support the local business community, the sector, the cause.
- Recruitment. Badly underrated. Many firms will sponsor a room full of people they would like to hire.
- Intelligence. Being in the room where their market is talking.
Find out which one before you write anything. Asking is allowed and almost nobody does it.
Why logo packages fail
Bronze, silver and gold, differentiated by logo size and number of mentions, describe what you will do rather than what the sponsor will get. Nobody has ever defended a budget line by saying their logo was 40% larger than the other logos.
They also price on your effort rather than on value, which means you end up charging the same for a room of forty procurement directors as for a room of forty students.
Build it backwards
Write the sentence the sponsor will say internally in three months, then design the package to make that sentence true.
“We were in front of 60 operations directors from manufacturers in the East Midlands, we had 14 substantive conversations, and 4 are now in our pipeline.”
That sentence tells you what to put in the proposal: who is in the room by role and sector, how many, and what you will be able to evidence afterwards. It also tells you what to leave out.
What to put in the proposal
The audience, in numbers and bands. Expected attendance, broken down by seniority and by sector. If you have run it before, use real figures from last time, including the attendance rate against registrations. Honest numbers are more persuasive than optimistic ones, because the sponsor has read optimistic ones before.
What the sponsor gets to do, not be. Speaking is worth more than a banner. Hosting a table on a topic is worth more than speaking. Being introduced to six named people they want to meet is worth more than all of it, and costs you nothing but attention on the night.
What you will report afterwards, specifically. List the measures. This is the part almost nobody includes and it is the strongest thing in the document, because it tells the sponsor they will have something to take back. What to put in a sponsor report is the list to commit to.
What you will not do. Say plainly that you will not hand over the attendee list. It sounds like a concession and it is a selling point: it tells the sponsor that your audience trusts you, which is why the audience is worth reaching.
What to offer that costs you nothing
- A table host slot on a topic they know about
- Naming the newcomers’ welcome, which makes them the friendly face
- Six introductions on the night, agreed in advance, made by you personally
- The post-event report, properly done
- First refusal on the next one
The introductions are the single most valuable thing on that list and the cheapest. Ask the sponsor for six names or six roles, find them in the room, and walk the sponsor over. Nobody does this and every sponsor who has had it renews.
If attendees can see who is coming in advance, this gets much easier, because the sponsor can pick the six themselves rather than describing them to you.
What to charge
We are not going to give you a number, because sponsorship rates vary by audience, region and sector by an order of magnitude, and a figure invented here would be worse than no figure.
What we will say about structure: price on the value of the audience rather than on your costs, offer no more than three options, and make the difference between them access rather than visibility. If a sponsor has to read a grid to see what they are buying, the grid is the problem.
For a first event with no track record, charging less in exchange for a case study and a testimonial is a reasonable trade and better than discounting quietly.
Small events can get sponsors
A monthly room of 40 is a better proposition than a one-off conference of 400 for a sponsor who wants sustained presence in a market, and it is far cheaper to commit to. Sell the series rather than the night: twelve months of being the firm that supports the room, with the audience numbers and the report every time.
The organisers who struggle to find sponsors are usually selling one evening to a stranger. The ones who do not are selling a year to somebody who already knows them.
The renewal is won in the report
The proposal gets the first cheque. What you send afterwards gets the second, and it is where almost all the attrition happens, because most organisers send a thank-you email and a photograph.
Send the numbers you promised, including the ones that went badly, within two weeks. A sponsor who receives a real report from a 40-person room will renew ahead of one who receives a glossy deck from a 400-person one.
Related: what to put in a sponsor report, and how to measure whether a networking event worked.