As the president of Navigate Marketing, where we specialize in the research, measurement and analysis of sports sponsorships, I frequently work with properties and brands making the most of their sponsorship opportunities in the sports world. But too often, I witness brands making some common mistakes. Here are five examples, all of them easy to make, and all of them necessary to avoid.

Investing Based on Gut Feel
Too often, a top individual in a company will decide to sponsor a property based on a personal affinity for that property, or a personal belief that the property is hot or increasing in popularity. But this is akin to playing the stock market without really researching any stocks. It’s a recipe for fiscal failure. 

Brands need to perform their own due diligence prior to investing with a property.  It sounds obvious, but this involves looking at various potential sponsorships and comparing them on a number of levels, including, but not limited to:

• The specific demographics reached by the properties.
• The opportunities for activation with each property.
• The sponsorships already in place with each property.
• How each property aligns with the brand’s identity and objectives.

By making these comparisons, a brand gives itself a much better chance to find the best possible partner for executing a successful sponsorship.

Failure to Cultivate the Sponsorship
Once the decision – and investment – has been made, the tendency for some brands is to believe that the work is done. They can sit back and let the sponsorship perform. Of course, it doesn’t quite work that way. More effort, and more money, is typically required to create a successful investment.

There is some debate in the industry over exactly how much should be spent on activation, but the general consensus is approximately two to three times the cost of the sponsorship agreement. It may be tough for a company to accept spending $2 million in activation efforts for a $1 million sponsorship, but without proper activation, the initial $1 million will likely not be leveraged properly.

Research and measurement is also necessary, and much less costly. We generally advise brands to spend between 1-3 percent of the sponsorship investment cost on research, so between $10,000 and $30,000 for a $1 million sponsorship. The exact type and timing of the research depends on the sponsorship and the objectives desired by the brand.

• For a naming rights deal, the brand can commission a sponsorship valuation before landing a partner to determine the fair market value – much like using Kelly Blue Book before purchasing a car.
• For a bank striving to entice more people to sign up for checking accounts, the research can involve tracking those numbers throughout the sponsorship and surveying people exposed to the sponsorship via a sponsorship impact study.
• For a company selling widgets, a return on investment (ROI) study should be conducted toward the end of the sponsorship term to aid in the renewal process and make a determination on the success of the sponsorship investment.

Measuring ROI Incorrectly
As important as it is to perform research and measurement, the results will be meaningless if the process is flawed.

One common mistake is measuring ROI based solely on the comparison of exposure value to sponsorship cost. While adequate exposure value is a helpful complement to ROI, measuring the incremental sales that can be attributed to the sponsorship is the more  insightful method.

This type of study is somewhat complicated, and certainly the process has yet to be perfected (and employed industry-wide). But the advances in these calculations are providing valuable feedback to brands, who are able to learn not only how much exposure value they’re receiving, but also if that exposure is yielding actual results for the company’s bottom line. If a brand is going to pay for an ROI study, it needs to make sure this method is being used.

Putting Too Much Stock in 1st Year Results
The excitement of signing a sponsorship deal is often accompanied by high expectations, especially as the dollar figure grows, and there’s an almost immediate desire to see if the sponsorship is meeting those expectations. Research and measurement efforts assist a brand in determining this, but executives tend to lack something necessary for managing a sponsorship – patience.

Very rarely does a sponsorship investment become a huge success in year one; it traditionally takes 2-3 years for a sponsorship to gain traction. This is simply a result of the time it takes to break through the clutter and become more engrained in the minds of the fans and the public.

When brands start making sponsorship decisions based on first-year performance – especially decisions that scale back activation or drastically change the long-term strategy – they run the risk of dooming the sponsorship before its had a chance to grow. That’s not to say the first year isn’t important; it just shouldn’t be the basis for an overreaction.

Ignoring the Potential Success of Investing in Sports
With the combination of a struggling economy, government bailouts and a cynical public in the past few years, there’s been an understandable hesitancy by some brands to invest in or maintain sports sponsorships. But this is generally a mistake.

Sports have been and are still a great way to reach a group of passionate, loyal customers who have the potential to help a brand grow. Time after time, it’s been proven that sports sponsorships yield positive results when managed correctly.

It’s important not to let fear or temporary public opinion prevent a meaningful partnership that will produce long-term benefits. If a brand does have the financial wherewithal to invest in a sports sponsorship – both the initial expenditure, and then the activation and research/measurement that follows – it should do so with confidence.

AJ Maestas is the founder and president of Navigate Marketing. If you have any questions or would like to learn more information about sponsorship or Navigate’s services, contact him at amaestas@navigatemarketing.com or call (312) 762-7477.

Typically we reserve our blog space for industry happenings, sponsorship education and to highlight various properties or valuable industry resources; but there’s one SponsorPark related topic we felt all of our users (both sponsors and sponsorship opportunity representatives would benefit from knowing:  how to get the most out of your membership on SponsorPark.  We want to make sure that we enable you to maximize the potential you have to generate valuable exposure, network effectively, and optimize your chances of being found; so we’re going to walk through the various outlets you might not have thought of yet; and best of all – these options are free!

1. Get active in our social networking communities: We have active communities in the following places: LinkedIn, Twitter, and Facebook (these links might not work if you don't have an account on the service).  Any of these places you can join (or follow on twitter: @SponsorPark) and setting up your own account to start is easy.  On facebook you can introduce yourself, provide a link to your proposal, and connect with other members.  LinkedIn is probably our most active community – you can connect with other sponsorship professionals, ask questions, start discussions, introduce yourself and your listing to the group; basically network with some other brilliant and experienced individuals.  On Twitter, you can follow us to learn about the industry happenings with daily updates, and have your brand or opportunity link tweeted as well – this goes out to all of our followers which continues to grow daily.
2. Request to be featured in a blog: as you might realize, we put the “Spotlight on Sponsorship” by featuring one of our Premium or Professional level members in our blog once per month.  This piece is managed and written by Stephanie Lochmiller, and her goal is to represent a wide range of properties that we support on SponsorPark, highlighting their best practices, and essentially tell a part of their story.  It’s a great way to offer your expertise to other industry professionals, earning you credibility and point to your current efforts – though as you might imagine, this space fills up fast, so if you’re interested in being considered, contact Stephanie through one of our social media outlets ASAP.  She’ll ask you the necessary questions to determine if this is a good fit.
3. Place a link to your proposal listing on your website: One of the best ways you can personally send interested eyes to your sponsorship proposal listing is by placing a link to your listing on your website or marketing materials.  We have members ask for our logo all the time for this purpose – they’ll post our logo and a quick one or two liner stating that if interested, one can check out their sponsorship proposal listing on SponsorPark.  Ensure that the landing page attached to the hyperlink is directly to your proposal (and not to our homepage), and you’re sending people who are already interested in you – otherwise they wouldn’t be on your site, directly to your sponsorship opportunities!  Here's an example of one member who has done this: Miami Beach Antique Show.
4. Get featured on our newsletter: In our newsletter that typically goes out every couple of months, we feature 4-5 new sponsorship opportunity listings (Premium or Professional level) and sponsors.  If you’re interested in this extra exposure, just let us know and we’ll consider it.
5. Sponsors – create a saved search within your profile: LOTS of sponsors have used our service to casually browse our database of targeted listings at their discretion.  But the ones who have the most luck and are the most operationally efficient are the ones who set up a saved search profile with us, so that we automatically send them results that match as they are listed with us.  That way, you will know as soon as you have a reason to review the listings, and you’ve basically used us as your full time intern to alert you of the most relevant, valuable listings according to your interests.  Save time, create a saved search criteria.
6. Sponsorship opportunities – featured listing space: Our featured listing space runs for $99 / month – it gets the most exposure of any sponsorship listing on our site since no search is necessary for it to receive more impressions, and therefore, more clicks.  But if you’d like to offer SponsorPark some unique support by generating awareness for our resource to those in the sponsorship community, we’re open to discussing a trade.  We have been involved in sponsorship summits, sponsor “pick up” parties, been featured in email campaigns and trade shows… we’re pretty open to unique ideas if you have them.  Just contact me at: info@sponsorpark.com. 
7. Sponsorship opportunities – send us a list of sponsors you’d like exposure with: SponsorPark is always campaigning towards sponsors to ensure that they know about our resource.   In these phone calls, email campaigns, industry specific event attendance, online advertising, etc. etc… we pursue between 2,000-3,000 U.S. based sponsors who have all been active in sponsorship.  But you know best who you want to get in front of – especially if it’s locally or regionally based; and it’s to our best interest to generate awareness with sponsors that you will benefit most from getting in front of.  So send us your list (preferably with a contact name/number) and we’ll reach out to them; not only for the purpose of informing them of our resource, but also to use your proposal listing as an example of what they might see when they use our site.  Everyone wins.  Keep in mind; you must be a Premium or Professional level member to receive this benefit. 

Many of you already know that the point of using SponsorPark as a service is to complement the efforts you already have in place for connecting with sponsors.  We are offering a tool that generates targeted exposure with sponsors for your opportunity, we don’t sell sponsorships; important distinction to make.  If you’re using SponsorPark already, you’ve already taken a step to get innovative and proactive about getting noticed with a targeted audience and generating heightened exposure with an innovative tool; but we want you to capitalize on all the opportunities we make available for you.  So if you have questions about what we covered here, don’t hesitate to reach out – you can contact myself through our info@sponsorPark.com email account, or reach out to Stephanie Lochmiller (New Media Manager) through our social media efforts.  We’re hearing some great stories, and we want to add yours to our list!

The day we wake up in a world where vendors are never late and volunteers always go the extra mile, contracts are scarcely looked at twice because everyone implements their part after being asked once… until then we’ll have to come up with some strategies to make sure we do all that we can to proactively prepare and react when the unexpected rears its ugly head. 

1. When delegating responsibilities, always create accountability – I believe there’s a way to create pressure that results in negative performance, and there’s a way to create pressure that results in inspired, positive performance.  Breathing down your team’s neck and barking orders like a walking time bomb only creates an atmosphere motivated by fear – they typically aren’t loyal, neither do they grow or improve.  They’re just trying not to survive.  When you create positive pressure, this results in an inspired, motivated team that wants to perform, grow ; and they’re typically pretty loyal.  Creating accountability is one way of creating positive pressure.  How do you do this?  Require smart action plans turned in at specified times, assign periodic peer reviews, give credit where credit is due (many teams thrive on receiving recognition for their efforts). 
2. Ensure cohesive role clarity – this might mean you go over details of activation the week before, have a “dress rehearsal” or step by step recap on what efforts are supposed to look like from each key player.  Is your event extremely large?  Have hundreds of volunteers?  Assign team leads who can effectively cascade information to their teams and ensure open and effective communication.  Keep in mind, so many of us that give instruction are great at talking and terrible at listening… it’s a pretty common downside to leaders who often delegate.  Ask your implementing party to walk you through what they understand of their responsibilities and their action plans.  This will underscore a cohesive understanding for who is responsible for what, and how it’s going to get done; that way when you’re waiting for that ice to show up for the drinks you’re about to serve, you won’t wonder who the heck is supposed to be there or find your implementer passing out tickets instead!
3. Confirm expectations with vendors the week before and if possible the day before you need them.  Do they need anything special from you in order to activate?  Make sure you know that before they’re walking through the door the day of their activation effort.  Do they understand what you expect to see from them pre-activation, during activation, and post activation?  Make sure this is clearly understood before D-day, and if possible, ask for a 5 minute call the day before you need them just to confirm you’re both on the same page.
4. Reference your history – unless this is a new program, event or effort, it would be crazy not to reference what happened before.  Was there a particular effort that just didn’t work?  The dumbest thing you can do is make the same mistake twice; come up with a plan B, or rethink the particular effort entirely.  I knew of one property who had to sign in their guests and confirm reservations before they would let them in, at the same time they created an incentive for being there by a certain early time.  The lines became congested, the women (it was a women’s event) became frustrated, the mood started to drop, and the volunteers were bottlenecking.  The next year they responded by creating more check in points, more lines, line hosts that entertained the guests with product presentations and trial samples while they were waiting; and there was music playing that helped set a mood.  As you might guess , their guests were much happier, much more interactive, and their vendors benefitted so much so with the product sampling, that desired results skyrocketed.  All because they uncovered a root cause of a problem, and addressed it – they didn’t make the same mistake twice.

As you can see, much of these efforts revolve around effective communication.  Establishing clear expectations, checking for understanding and responding with clarification.  These efforts will truly make you a better leader, a better activation expert, and generally speaking just keep you happier!

So while the “perfect activation world” might be fiction, we can feel like we are living there if we get proactive about the way we prepare for these efforts.  Remember, no event or program will ever be 100% lacking in an opportunity to improve on, but you can always grow and develop intelligently and with foresight.  Who knows, we might just catch you whistling your favorite tune and skipping across the street!