Sponsorship Inventory and Asset Development Essentials

Imagine walking into a shoe store with nothing on the shelves and no samples of product to try on. Now imagine being confronted by the sales person who asks you for $150 because it is his goal to sell $150 worth of shoes to you. How would you feel? Would you think you are getting high value for your money or being used to help someone make their sales goals? Selling sponsorship without an inventory is like trying to sell shoes without any product. It just doesn’t work. If you want to make $1 million then you need $1 million dollars worth of product to sell.

You simply cannot sell sponsorship if you don’t have an inventory. You can’t build an inventory unless you have identified your sponsorship properties. It can be hard to look beyond events when trying to identify sponsorship properties, so let’s take a look at different ways to build properties and sponsorship assets.

Sponsorship Property Creation

Before you can decide what to sell, you have to decide on a property. What is a property? I like to think of a sponsorship property as something that unites a group of assets, based on a shared audience and common communications goals.

Can a gala or marathon be a property? Of course! They can also be part of a broader property that unites them. If the marathon is part of a series of events used to bring together the same audience over and over, like university alumni from the legal program, then you might think of those networking events as one property and each individual event as an asset.

 

Some organizations look at their communications platform as a property in and of itself while others see it as an asset to be used by multiple properties to drive up the value of their sponsorship packages.

The fact is, anything can become a sponsorship property. Spend some time thinking about your events, your communications, your physical spaces and your stakeholders (alumni, employees, volunteers, customers etc.). What can you combine and package in new ways that allow your prospects to get in front of your audience?

Best Practices for Creating Sponsorship Properties

Building sponsorship properties isn’t necessarily innate to a lot of first-time sponsorship seekers. There are other comparable business tasks, I’m sure, but this is one of the areas where sponsorship is most unique, which means figuring out how to do it is a bit tricky.

That’s why I want to help you out by sharing a few of my premium tips for creating your own bonafide sponsorship properties.

Choose Your Property Carefully 

Remember, a sponsorship property is a related group of assets and activations. That puts a narrow scope on what you can add. Of course, don’t feel like you’re limited to only one sponsorship property.

Depending on the scope of services your sponsor seeks, you might decide to offer several properties under one umbrella.

For example, if you specialize in social media services, you might have one property related to Facebook services versus another for YouTube and TikTok.

Likewise, if you’ve worked with a broad variety of sponsors in the past, you could have properties for various niches or industries.

Throw Assets at the Wall and See What Sticks 

One of the mistakes sponsorship seekers always get caught up in is thinking they need perfect assets out of the gate. While a discovery session with your prospect will be enlightening, you might not have all the ideas right now.

And you know what? That’s okay! I like to do an informal brainstorming sesh where you and a few others on your team share all your ideas. It doesn’t matter how expensive or feasible right now. Just start spitballing.

This kind of open, loose collaboration puts everyone in a thinking mood, and before you know it, you’ll have some ideas you might be kind of excited about.

Consider a Theme

If you’re struggling to sort your assets and activations into a workable property in which to build sponsorship inventory, may I recommend a theme? That ought to make it easier for you to decide which services go where.

You can choose a theme based on season, holiday, or events that occur in your business or broader industry.

Sponsorship Inventory Development

Sometimes it can be tough to start at the top (property creation) and then move on to assets. For many organizations, starting with their assets is an easier process and then those assets can point to natural groupings into sponsorship properties.

The goal in inventory development is to build the biggest list of assets possible. While developing your inventory, avoid questions around ethics and appropriate types of sponsorship. Am I suggesting that you ignore your ethical policies? Of course not! But getting into the minutiae at this stage is a distraction and if you identify assets that you later decide are too risky, they can lead you to think of versions of those assets that are on side with your policies.

Some ideas that can help the process:

• Do a physical survey of the area and take photos. Look for logo placement opportunities and natural areas of significant traffic.
• Will you stage photos anywhere? Will photos naturally occur in a particular area (like a stage or finish line)?
• List all of your digital assets including content marketing opportunities and backlinks to your sponsors.
• Can you offer video on your website? In your e-mails? Can you record your sponsors giving information required by your audience (like registration information)?
• Sponsorship value comes from defining your audience and providing access. How can you connect your sponsors to your audience beyond simple logo placement?
• What naming rights can you offer prospects?
• What stories can you offer them to share with their target audience?
• Can you offer product exclusivity or supplier contracts?

I typically start my inventory building sessions with “logo placement” not because I think it’s valuable or the most important, but to get it out of the way! Most people think of sponsorship as all about logos. Logo placement is part of the process, but it is by far the least valuable asset around so I give the group 15 minutes to talk logos and then we banish logo placement discussions from the rest of the session.

How to Identify Valuable Sponsorship Assets

The most valuable assets are those that your sponsors want more than others. How do you identify what your sponsors want? Ask them! But before you do, make sure you have gone through your property with a fine tooth comb.

As a general rule, the most valuable assets are the intangible kind. Your sponsors can pay for logo placement and advertising through a near-endless source of opportunities. Simple branding techniques are available just about everywhere and your sponsor has no trouble finding access to your audience through traditional advertising as well as digital marketing. You no doubt have heard it said that sponsorship and advertising are not the same thing…unless you make them the same thing by not identifying your intangible assets.

 

Speaking opportunities, co-branding, product endorsement, cause marketing, thought leadership, category exclusivity, meeting celebrities or industry influencers, conversion rates and the power of your brand to influence your audience are far more valuable than even a million logo placement opportunities (unless those logo placements convey any of the above intangibles, of course).

The process of defining your property and building your inventory should be time intensive and involved but, this is time well spent because your entire sponsorship strategy depends on this stage in the sponsorship process.

Do’s and Don’ts for Valuing Your Assets

Okay, so now you’re ready for the last part of the process, valuation. This is the culmination of all your hard work, after which you will adjust which assets and activations are in which properties. Yeah, sorry, but it has to be done.

Here are my top tips for efficient valuations.

DO Use Market Research

Valuations are done with the aid of market research. Yep, that’s all there is to it. Market research is available online. Simply look up the price of a service you offer and see what others in the marketplace price theirs.

DON’T Copy Someone Else’s Valuation

The point of a valuation is not to dig up someone’s perfectly good sponsorship package with similar assets and borrow from them. That’s not market research, and it’s barely even research.

Even if you and the competitor work in similar industries and go after like audiences, you should hopefully not have identical assets and activations. That means you need to price your assets so you can strengthen your sponsorship property.

DO Adjust Your Prices Based on Service Value

You also shouldn’t blindly copy the market research prices and use them. You’re selling marketing services to a prospective customer. As a salesperson, you need to keep your prices flexible.

You’ll have to honestly assess where you should set your pricing from asset to asset. Some might be higher than market value, such as if you offer something unique that your competitors don’t. That said, every asset can’t be sky-high.

Valuing your own assets isn’t a trick to making a sponsor pay more for your services. Just because you propose your sponsorship property at a certain price doesn’t make the sponsor obligated to pay it. Remember that.

DON’T Be Afraid to Price Some Assets Low 

Naturally, some of your assets won’t be worth as much. Don’t sweep them under the rug. It’s okay to have a few lower-value assets as part of your package to bolster the more expensive ones. It’s not okay to force everything into tiers and price your way to more money by forcing the sponsor to pay.

If you find some assets that are too low-value to be worth much of anything, that’s fine! You can discard them without guilt.

DO Value Every Asset on Your List

Yeah, I know, I know. You had fun brainstorming 150 unique assets, but now you have to value 150 unique assets. There’s no shortcut here, so prepare to sit down and put the work in.

DON’T Forget to Show Your Work 

Speaking of, make sure you keep a record of how you valued your assets. Sponsors are always interested in seeing this kind of information, as they want to ensure they’re paying a fair price for your services.

You’ll also thank yourself later when you can value assets easier for your next sponsorship property, as you’ll have a guidebook of exactly how it’s done.

FAQs

Does sponsorship property creation come after a discovery session?

Yes, it does. Everything I’ve discussed today follows the discovery session. You have to know a sponsor’s needs before you can come up with tailored solutions, which is why the discovery meeting is so important.

Can I reuse sponsorship properties? 

You can fine-tune and modify existing properties, but you shouldn’t present them verbatim from sponsor to sponsor. Remember, sponsors want customized services that suit their needs, so you can’t recycle much from one sponsorship to another.

Wrapping Up 

Creating sponsorship properties and inventory is one of the most important parts of the entire process. These steps will determine which activations and assets you present to the sponsor and at what price.

That’s why you can’t hurry through. If you need to take a break during property assignment or valuations, by all means, do so. And please, document how you’ve done it and learn from the mistakes that will inevitably arise.