Yes you can put your sponsors logo on your website, that's easy. However, there are so many other fun and unique ways you can feature your sponsors on your website. What makes it even better is that these ideas also allow you to gain more visibility for your upcoming event and/or program these sponsors participate in. 

Take it to the next level by building in tracking metrics so you can validate the traffic and exposure they get from your website and the event itself.

What you'll learn:

→ fun ways to highlight your sponsors.
→ ways your sponsors can help you create content.
→ new sponsorship opportunities you can create.
→ critial online data to track.
→ paying attention on event day feedback.

Want to skip ahead? Here are key takeaways:

[4:57] Updating your header image. This is the most visible part of your website. You can create scarcity here by only having 1-2 sponsors featured and also get great visibility for your event.
[6:08] Have your sponsors write a blog post or create a video. Not only will you have content you can use the feature them but you'll also be able to share on emails and social media leading up to the event. Again giving you another way to talk about it from a different perspective.
[8:14] Put your sponsor logos in the footer. This is a great way to combine event sponsorships with an annual option to be in the footer for more eyeballs.
[8:57] Create a pop up or slide in. This can lead directly to an event registration page and allow you to create a new sponsorship opportunity. Again another way to encourage people to participate.
[10:12] Create an announcement bar. This is above your menu navigation so has great visibility! Again, with limited real estate can be a great option for an added sponsorship opportunity.
[11:32] Build a dedicated sponsor page. This can be a page that lists all your sponsors regardless of the events they participate in. It can allow for more information about the sponsor and their personal connection to your organization.
[14:15] Track your offline conversations – they are data! Write down things that are happening at the event and feedback you receive so you can use it in your follow-up afterwards to renew sponsors.
[16:04] Ensure you have analytics running on your website. Google Analytics and Microsoft Clarity will help you pull data, and pull it year over year so you can show growth. You can also show how people engage with your website.

Resources

Hotjar
Google Analytics
Microsoft Clarity

Full Transcript

[Sami Bedell-Mulhern] I'm guessing that you have events for your nonprofit. And with those events, you probably have event sponsors, corporate sponsors, or maybe you have sponsors throughout the year for your various programs and services and things that you provide. Now, having them on your website is a great way to give them some extra visibility. But there's a little bit more that you can do to really take it to the next level. So today, I'm going to be giving you some ideas for how you can use your website to really highlight your sponsors. And then ways that you can be tracking data to make sure that when you go back to them the next year, you can give them more visibility and more impact, and even maybe raise the packages for your sponsorships all together, we want to be able to give them results. And we want to show them how being engaged with our organization is a good thing and how our website does provide additional traffic and get more eyeballs on their brand and who they are.

So two parts to this episode. The first part, I'm going to share some ideas. And the second part, I'm going to help you kind of track and walk through how you can maximize and make sure that you're giving people the best bang for their buck. I know that sponsors are a big part of your income. And right now we want to make sure that we're retaining as many of those sponsors as humanly possible, we don't want to lose the right sponsors that we've been having for years to another organization because we didn't follow through or because they're getting some sort of a better picture somewhere else. So let's step up and provide better information to these partners. So that the value is there. And there's not a lot of organizations that are doing this kind of work, especially in the small to medium size space. So you're really going to step up and stand out and look way more professional by providing this information.

Now there is one disclaimer that I want to make sure we get to, when we think about data and numbers, we tend to get a little bit nervous about well, my numbers aren't big enough, or we get into this comparison game. Remember that there's a few things we want to keep in our mind, we want to understand that impressions are impressions, and they're great, but they're not action. So we want to take a look at more concrete numbers, more real clicks, more real engagement, and also kind of the pieces of the data that are just conversational and things that have been happening throughout the year and, and things that people have mentioned. So don't worry, if you feel like you don't have 10,000 people visiting your website every week, that's okay. That doesn't mean that what you have happening in your ecosystem is not valuable, and is not going to provide value to your sponsors. So I just want to get that out of your head right away, I'll probably mention it again, because it's just something that people get into, they start comparing themselves to bigger organizations, run your own race, you're doing incredible work. And your sponsors are running alongside you because they see the impact that you're making.

Okay, before we get into this episode, it is brought to you by our office hours, our digital marketing therapy sessions, you can go to https://thefirstclick.net/officehours to book your 30 minute time slot with me. I'm super excited to be here and chat you chat with you through some of these things. And we can review some of the sponsor pages and the information that you have, we can review the data, we can create tracking sheets together, whatever it is that you're needing support with, to make sure that you can take the things in this episode that you learn, put them into action in an easy way and in a way that best supports your organization. So again, https://thefirstclick.net/officehours here for you. Let's get together one on one and get this thing done. For now, let's get into the episode.

[Intro] You're listening to the digital marketing therapy podcast. I'm your host, Sami Bedell-Mulhern. Each month we dive deep into a digital marketing or fundraising strategy that you can implement in your organization. Each week, you'll hear from guest experts, nonprofits, and myself on best practices, tips and resources to help you raise more money online and reach your organizational goals.

[Sami Bedell-Mulhern] So having your logo listed on the website is a very common ad for a Sponsorship Agreement right will list you as a sponsor for x. It's usually a listing on the event page or on the program page, depending on what that sponsorship is directly related to though this is super common, but let's bump it up and take it to the next level and really start to see that impact. So I'm going to go through a few unique ways that you can feature sponsors on your website. And again, you don't have to do all of these but just do what makes sense to you.

Use me now the first thing that I want to mention is updating your header image Now, what I love about this is it's time sensitive. So you could literally put in, you know, two months before the event, whatever. And it's also space sensitive. So it could be an add on for just your title sponsor, your presenting sponsor, whatever your top levels are. And it's a great way to add that extra feature, we know that that is a spot that is seen by almost every single visitor to your website. So it's a great place to have that visibility. Now, the other great thing about a lot of these things that you're going to hear is yes, they are providing more visibility for your sponsor, but they're also ways to provide more visibility for your own program, or event. So it's kind of a win win. So it's a trigger to remind you to change the header on your website, because you need you made this promise to feature these sponsors. And also get it up on the website so people can see it. So it might be you know, your 5k with the registration button, thank you to the sponsors. These kinds of things are easy to do, and not something that we prioritize necessarily putting on our website. And we definitely want to do that.

The next thing is allowing your sponsors to write a blog post on behalf of the event. Why is this an event that they care about? Why is this the cause that they care about? Let's go back to the 5k run example, right? Maybe they are going to have a several of their team members, or they're going to have several their employees create teams for this run. So maybe it's featuring the employees that are gonna be participating pictures of them training, maybe it's their training workout and their tips for training for this run, that other people can do to get ready for a 5k. You can be creative and have fun with it. So it's a great way to let your sponsor have a little bit of their personality shine. Now, again, you can choose to do this in several ways, right, you can have it be a situation where you only allow your title or your presenting sponsor to participate. Maybe you have them do their own dedicated post, and maybe at a different level, you group them together. But either way, now you're generating additional content for your event, you have another reason to shout out your sponsors, you have social media content that you can share, that's not you talking about the event in the cause, they have content that they're going to want to share because it's about them, you see where I'm going here with this, right. So by having this be as simple as it turns into a whole bunch more of different types of content that you can use to promote the event. Now, maybe they don't want to write something, maybe they prefer to do a video, that's great to hop on Zoom and do a quick interview style, make it super casual, it doesn't need to be fancy. Now you have that long form video, you can get a transcript of it, that becomes your blog post with a brief synopsis. You can chunk up parts of the video to create short form content, or reels or shorts, to promote the event and target and share about the sponsor. Whatever makes the most sense. Don't overcomplicate it, keep it easy, but know that this is a great way to give your sponsors a ton of exposure and your event, while making it fun and personal.

You could also add your sponsors to the footer of your website. Now this is something that I would recommend, again, this is a space is limited kind of situation. But maybe you have some key sponsors that are part of multiple events or in your agreement, it's an annual kind of listing, the footer is a great place to give recognition year round to your organizations that are supporting you the most. So make sure that you're putting that into certain contracts and allowing them to participate in that way. And we'll talk a little bit when we talk about the data on how you can track some of the things in the traffic that is there.

Now, when it comes to event time, again, creating a pop up or a slide in on your website to talk about the event to get registration going is also a great way to be able to feature your sponsor. So whatever that information is having that spot right there is great. Now this could be a different level sponsorship, maybe you have a pop up sponsor in particular, because again, we're going to talk through how you can track the data there. But it's a great way to get visibility for your event for people to see more and a great way for you to control when that's shown. Is it how much time people have spent on the site? Is it on certain blog posts that are talking about the event? Or is it on certain blog posts that are talking about what the event is supporting? Is it when people are you know getting ready to close out of that tab what we call exit intent. There's so many different ways that you can control when these things show up. But it is a great way to get visibility. Now I know we tend to think that these are obnoxious and we might hate pop ups but they do work when done correctly and done in a way that That kind of matches with the user experience, and when it's most important. Okay, now the last one that I'm sorry, I have two more talks about announcement virus.

So I love a good announcement bar on your website. So again, this is above, so you have your main navigation and then your header image. So the announcement bar is going to go on top of your menu navigation. And so it really just draws your eye, it's usually a bright color, we have announcement bars that run all the time, they just change based off of what our biggest priority is. So you might have an announcement bar that says register for our 5k, with the dates presented by, you know, insert your sponsor, but again, something that everybody's going to see on every single page. So it is giving you a lot of visibility and a lot of great getting people to engage, because what I love about an announcement bar is, you know, it's one of those things where when it comes to a website, and we're like, Oh, we've been wanting to do this thing like donate or we've been wanting to find this thing, and I don't remember exactly what it's called, I don't remember exactly what it is. But it's like, oh, that's it, you get to the homepage. It's right there. It's easy. And I'm like, oh, yeah, that's what I was looking for. I'm moving on. So it's a great way to grab those time sensitive things. And people that are coming back to website for that quick thing, especially if you're running ads or doing anything like that, it's easy for them to find that thing that they've been seeing. But just kind of can't exactly remember how to get to.

Okay, so now the last thing that I was going to mention, is creating a dedicated sponsors page. So what this would look like, it's almost like a directory listing, like, here's all of our sponsors that we have, and allowing them to have a little blurb. So the blurb could be a quote from somebody about why they choose to give to you why they think the cause is fantastic, how long they've been partnering with you, yada yada, yada, um, for those that are at higher levels of giving, and again, you can determine what these dollar amounts are for you. But for those that are at maybe a higher threshold, they could even have a dedicated page, they click on that little profile, it opens up a separate page that might have a whole profile on the company, their history with your organization, again, more quotes, why they give why they engage. And similarly to the blog post, or the video really allowing them to showcase their personality in a little bit of a different fashion, making it more personal. So that if I'm coming to the site, and I'm saying, Oh, like this company is a sponsor, that's super cool. I love that company, I want to know more. Now I'm kind of building that emotional connection with that sponsor as well. So it doesn't have to just be just a logo on an event page that doesn't really connect me to who that company is, I might also see some other people that they're giving to or other causes that they support, which might make it more exciting for me to want to spend my dollars there. Because I can see that their philanthropic company, and that is becoming more and more important for these organizations. So the better you can help them highlight their giving strategies and campaigns, the better it's going to be for your visitors to convert to want to do business and support those businesses who, so that's a lot.

So let me just do a quick rundown of what all of these are. And then we'll jump into some ways that you can track. So updating your header image, allowing your sponsors to write a blog post or creating a video interview, adding the sponsors to your footer, creating a pop up to give more visibility. And now announcement bar for great impact and creating a separate sponsors page to highlight your best donors. So I'm excited for you to try these. Let's jump into some of the data tracking. So there are several reasons why we want to track this data. And that is to really give them a visual of how much impact is being seen. And this is going to really help them make decisions on their visibility because a lot of times these sponsorships are coming from the marketing department. And while yes, it is philanthropic, they do want to make sure they're seeing results.

So we're going to track things that are happening online. But you're also going to want to track things that are happening offline, like at the event conversations that you're having conversations you're having with other attendees with other sponsors, all of those kinds of things. And so what we want to do is let's just start like with at the event and kind of will reverse engineer, but at the event, you're going to want to make sure you're making notes because I as a previous event planner for nonprofits who they have is crazy. And we're not really paying attention to anything but logistics and making sure things go off without a hitch. But you're hearing little things and nuggets from people as you go. So let's say it's a golf tournament and you have some really fun experiences at various holes.

Well you know that people have sponsored those specific holes. So if you're getting offers coming back and being like, oh my gosh, that had a pup thing was really fun at home for, you know, Latos just kind of relax and calm down for a little bit, whatever it might be, you want to make note of that, that, you know, we have great feedback from this people were telling us that so that you can pass that information on to the sponsor. So they know that things were great, right. So pay attention to all of those things that are happening. And then after the event, as you're having any wrap up or follow up calls, actually make sure you're writing all of those notes down as well, even feedback that's coming from that sponsor, because a year from now, when you start talking to them, again, they may not remember how they felt or remember all of the things. But if you can kind of give them that synopsis again and say, Okay, we heard you, you said you really liked this, this and this, we're excited to bring this back again, like really tying everything back to them is going to help you in getting them to renew and hopefully increase their spend with you. So sorry.

Okay, now, when it comes to the on line tracking, there's a few things that we want to track. So we want to make sure you've got Google analytics running on your website, you want to make sure you have Microsoft clarity, and or Well, just depending on what you prefer to use. Hot jar is another great option. So these are going to be able to track user experience and how people are engaging with your website. You're also going to want to make sure that you're using tools on your website for pop ups and things like that, that track conversion. So they're going to track things like how many times that people see it versus how many times did they click to convert, and both of those numbers are going to be important for you, right? You want to be able to for your own team understand how many times people clicked on that to register, so that you can do better with your copy with your graphics, or with the parameters for how things show up. But also you can have that number of how many times was it shown so that you can show that to the sponsor, you know, and as you do this, then year over year, you can say, well, we had an increase in XYZ of impressions, which is how you can continue to start to bump up the price.

So we build in Divi, we like the bloom plugin, it gives us those analytics automatically, you can track them manually. And then in Google Analytics, you have the opportunity to really look at traffic to certain pages over time. So you can put the parameter of just you know that the header for the website change on March 1, it ran until April 31. So let's take a look at how much traffic we had on our website. And then again, you can do year over year, just to kind of show the increase in impressions and engagement. There, this is also true for your blog, you can take a look at your individual blog post.

And what's great about your blog post is it's up all the time, right same with your sponsors page. So you can take a look in the event page. So you can take a look at those on an annual basis and really compare like year over year for a whole year to say okay, or depending on what the length of term is for your contract. Here is what the visibility is like. And here's how, how many people are engaging for the sponsors page, you can even go very specific, here's how many people clicked on your logo. They should also be able to tell from their analytics, how much traffic your website referred to there's, you can't necessarily see that. So making sure that you ask them for that information for that engagement, so that they know to look at that reminder of what kind of traffic was being sent to their website from your website.

Now the other thing we want to look at with hot jar and Microsoft clarity is they offer what two different things so recordings of how people are engaging with your website, and heat mapping. So you can see where people clicked on the page, and how much they're engaging with the page. How far are they scrolling down? How much time are they spending there. Where this can come in real handy is again, you can show them a visual like hey, this is like people were really clicking on your stuff we can literally see with the heat map where people were clicking and and you can give them that exact visual, which is kind of fun. But you can also see where people are falling off. So they're scrolling so far. Maybe they're only getting to the bronze sponsors, and then they're bouncing. So you can use that to your advantage and say well hey, you know, like our sponsors that gave it this level and higher, just based off of placement, got 25% more impressions and more engagement. Yada yada yada could be really great for your sponsors page where you have bigger profiles to encourage people to step up their gift, because you know how far people are scrolling.

So it's like, Hey, if you want that visibility, you need to bump it up. So all of these things can be really helpful. Now, put them in a spreadsheet, make a spreadsheet that just has all the metrics that you're going to track and how often you're tracking. So are you going to go in and pull this data on a weekly basis, great, put those dates in, put it all in, you don't need to analyze it during the event, but then you have it when you're ready for it. I'm sure that you're probably thinking this is way too much. This is overloading I'm this is crazy.

And I know that data is not my most favorite thing to play with. But just a couple quick and easy things to put on your dashboard and Google Analytics, it's really easy. Once you get started, it's easy to pull those reports. And I promise you, it'll pay off in the end. So I hope that you will take some of these ways of featuring sponsors on your websites and tracking your data, start to put them in action. I know for a lot of us, we're going into event season or we're in event season already. So I hope that this helps with how you plan and feature your sponsors on your website. And remember that you can take this in a whole lot of directions, social media, banners, email, emails that you're sending out for the event, how many emails are you sending out? How many people do they reach? What's the average open rate and click through rate. And here we're gonna feature your email, creating that creating that space, limited space, so they want to get featured, and then really get creative with adding in some of those add ons. So yes, here's your general package for an extra $100. We'll add you to this and this or you can be on the sponsors page for the whole year, like how can you kind of think like an advertiser, and utilize the space that you have for this event to get really creative and how you give people that visibility and having the data to back it up is really going to help you with increasing and adding on some of those benefits.

I am going to go because my throat is dry, and I don't want to be coughing in your ear. And I think I gave you enough to work with here. So thank you so much for listening. I can't wait to hear about all of the success that your events are having, and all the fun that you're having with them. If you need anything at all. Just reach out to me at hello@thefirstclick.net I'm here for you. I would love to answer any questions about sponsorship. But for now, I hope that you'll subscribe wherever you listen, New episodes come out on Tuesdays. And I just thank you for taking time to listen to these episodes. I know that your time is valuable. While you're there subscribing, we'd really appreciate it if you leave us a review so that more people and more nonprofits can get these helpful tips that we know you love so much for now. Thank you so much. I appreciate you and we'll see you in the next one.