Virtual Events Sponsorships: 7 Ways to Attract New Sponsors

You’ve determined that a virtual event will best suit your goals, but you must still generate virtual events sponsorships revenue. How is it possible? 

With no massive onsite signage, promo screens, and specially named lounges or convention halls, how can you translate the placements sponsors expect to an online environment?

Virtual events always offer new opportunities to replace the loss of in-person opportunities for sponsor placement. This only exists when you begin thinking about the bigger picture and are willing to experiment with unique yet creative strategies.

How to Attract Virtual Events Sponsorships Like a Pro

It is essential to let your sponsors know the value you’re offering. The best thing to do is ask this critical question – what’s in it for them?

When deciding what to offer your sponsors, you must consider their goals regarding the events they attend. In short, you need to keep it interesting.

Sponsors choose events based on the leads they can capture and the connections they can make. Sponsors also look forward to the brand recognition they can build at a virtual event.

Considering all the information mentioned above, most of your virtual events sponsorship packages should center around connecting your audience with your sponsors for successful virtual events sponsorships. 

Let’s take a look at seven virtual events sponsorship production strategies and ideas that will drive impactful experiences for your upcoming virtual sponsors.

Sponsorship Website Pages

Virtual event website pages are the best options for providing dedicated space to share a sponsor’s mission, messaging, products, and brand design. 

This will help attract their target audience to attend your virtual event. This also has the potential to be one of the most high-value virtual event resources that you will be provided to the attendees. 

Pop up, Banner and Splash Ads

One effective way to secure sponsors for your event is to offer them advertising opportunities, such as pop-up ads, splash ads, and banner ads. 

For virtual events, sponsors can buy pop-up ads by choosing from high-tier event sponsor packages provided by vFairs platform. These pop-up ads are guaranteed to capture the audience’s attention as they appear on the app’s home screen.

Banner ads are also available on the home screen. Users can click on them to be directed to another screen or external URL based on the click action selected from the backend.

In addition, the Splash Ads feature is a powerful tool for mobile app administrators and project managers to create ads that pop up when users log in to the event, providing sponsors with added visibility.

Virtual Sponsor Booths

Sponsor booths are a mainstay at in-person events like trade shows and conferences because they allow sponsors to engage with attendees 1:1. Virtual events can create the same value as an in-person booth by allowing sponsors to interact with virtual attendees in a dynamic environment.

Sponsors can also gain value by sharing downloadable content. They can also highlight sponsored sessions to capture leads.

Sponsored Tracks and Sessions

One vital element in the virtual event sponsorship experience is tracks and sessions. When sponsors can create highly targeted content or entertainment within your event, they’ll feel more compelled to buy in.

 Our experts find that most of the time, sponsors will approach hosts with a formulated idea about what they’d like to share in their track, session, or entertainment. In this case, providing your sponsor with the tools to showcase their brand will be a great way to give a mutual return on investment in the partnership. 

Sponsored Entertainment Breaks

When discussing the most effective sponsorships, it is essential to mention that some of the most popular visibility to offer sponsors takes place during breaks in your event program.

One way to do it is to arrange a “mini-concert” with a performance by a live musician or entertainer. The sponsor log can be placed on the screen and seen by everyone who tunes in to watch the performance. It will add energy to your virtual event and provide a memorable marketing opportunity for your sponsor. 

Branded Waiting Rooms

Before a virtual presentation begins, you can showcase your sponsor’s logo or message to the attendees. This is especially important because just before a live keynote or panel starts is the best time for virtual events sponsorship recognition.

This enables the sponsor to be the first thing the audience sees in the virtual production. Whether it’s logos or actual video content, both provide interactive and tech-driven brand experiences for clients.

Sponsored Introductions and Video Ads

For this idea, we will draw inspiration from proven models already in established live-streaming services, including YouTube.

 For example, during virtual event breaks, you could prompt attendees to watch a short video ad the sponsor has designed. It would help if you communicated with the sponsors about what platform you plan to use for live streaming.

Also, the quality you aim for must be discussed before the event to ensure that the ads are compatible and won’t look foreign. 

The exact opportunities will depend on which platform you’re using, so be sure to check out your options as you curate your live-streaming tools and design sponsorship packages.

Sponsorship Metrics

An essential part of virtual events sponsorship is proving impact. The data you gathered during the virtual event will demonstrate the value of sponsorship. Simply put, it will tell what the sponsors got for their investment in your virtual event.

 You can use your event technology platform’s analytics and data to show how this sponsorship impacted both parties.

 For instance, with vFairs, you can pull a CSV post-event report to share with sponsors. You can also view live attendee stats and report them to sponsors. Not only this, but exhibitors can also view real-time booth metrics within their dashboard.

Essential Data to Provide Your Sponsors to Show Impact

Here are a few criteria sponsors and exhibitors can use to track how impactful their efforts were:

• Number of attendees
• Webinar attendance
• Webinar engagement 
• Booth attendance
• Content downloads
• Content engagement
• Chat metrics
• Survey results

 These data points will help your sponsors track ROI and better understand their target audiences, thus increasing the value of your sponsorship packages!

 Conclusion

Virtual event sponsorships offer organizers countless opportunities to monetize their events. While virtual event sponsorship packages are simpler than in-person event sponsorship offerings, plenty of unique ideas can be helpful in a virtual setting. 

Therefore, for virtual event sponsorships, we have outlined all the different ways you can monetize your event. You can always refer to ways to elevate event sponsor visibility to offer your sponsors the best virtual events sponsorship packages.