Sponsorship and Hospitality Best Practice Brief Sponsorship can be an incredibly effective way to build customer relationships as well as the Xerox ® brand. To help optimize our spend, Global Experiential Marketing (GEM) is here to help maximize our return on overall sponsorship investments and assure that we tell a consistent brand story. Sponsorships are about building relationships through a shared passion and experience. Here is a collection of our best practices for you to use as a guide. Objective Setting It’s important to have a clear expectation of what you want to achieve through the sponsorship and a clear plan of how and what you plan to measure. You need to ensure that the sponsorship you are reviewing provides multiple avenues to tell the Xerox story. • Criteria—Cachet of the property to extend your reach, branding opportunities, advertising, ability to interact with customers in a personal way. Also consider whether the property provides opportunities to tell the Xerox story organically. • GEM Best-Kept Secret: When we build a strong, trusting relationship between the property and Xerox, the best opportunities present themselves because there is a win-win for both parties. Customer Acquisition Ensure the sponsorship aligns with the customers that Xerox wants or has already. Map out the physical location(s) and ensure that your customers can easily use the hospitality assets contracted. Really understand the purpose behind who you are thinking about inviting and qualify their potential, while always looking to engage new prospects. • GEM Best-Kept Secret: Look at your prospect lists from previous events/engagements and use the sponsorship to continue to build those relationships. Getting on Message Find ways to link the Xerox story and the property’s goals or challenges. Be clear on the Xerox story you want to tell and be organic in how you are going to tell it. When this happens, the message about why Xerox is a sponsor is easier to tell because they mirror each other and give you an opportunity to build a messaging platform together. • Is brand awareness the only thing you really need? Probably not, you want linkages to tell the story. If there aren’t, maybe it’s just a hospitality opportunity. • GEM Best-Kept Secret: A property should be viewed as a potential customer. Understand their needs and goals in order to develop a sponsorship that will be valuable for both of us. On-Site Support Country Contacts: USA: [email protected] Canada: [email protected] XE: [email protected] DMO: [email protected]
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Sponsorship and Hospitality Best Practice Brief
Sponsorship can be an incredibly effective way to build customer relationships as well as the Xerox® brand. To help optimize our spend, Global Experiential Marketing (GEM) is here to help maximize our return on overall sponsorship investments and assure that we tell a consistent brand story. Sponsorships are about building relationships through a shared passion and experience. Here is a collection of our best practices for you to use as a guide.
Objective SettingIt’s important to have a clear expectation of what you want to achieve through the sponsorship and a clear plan of how and what you plan to measure. You need to ensure that the sponsorship you are reviewing provides multiple avenues to tell the Xerox story.
• Criteria—Cachet of the property to extend your reach, branding opportunities, advertising, ability to interact with customers in a personal way. Also consider whether the property provides opportunities to tell the Xerox story organically.
• GEM Best-Kept Secret: When we build a strong, trusting relationship between the property and Xerox, the best opportunities present themselves because there is a win-win for both parties.
Customer AcquisitionEnsure the sponsorship aligns with the customers that Xerox wants or has already. Map out the physical location(s) and ensure that your customers can easily use the hospitality assets contracted. Really understand the purpose behind who you are thinking about inviting and qualify their potential, while always looking to engage new prospects.
• GEM Best-Kept Secret: Look at your prospect lists from previous events/engagements and use the sponsorship to continue to build those relationships.
Getting on MessageFind ways to link the Xerox story and the property’s goals or challenges. Be clear on the Xerox story you want to tell and be organic in how you are going to tell it. When this happens, the message about why Xerox is a sponsor is easier to tell because they mirror each other and give you an opportunity to build a messaging platform together.
• Is brand awareness the only thing you really need? Probably not, you want linkages to tell the story. If there aren’t, maybe it’s just a hospitality opportunity.
• GEM Best-Kept Secret: A property should be viewed as a potential customer. Understand their needs and goals in order to develop a sponsorship that will be valuable for both of us.
On-Site Support Country Contacts: USA: [email protected]
Canada: [email protected]
DMO: [email protected]
Sponsorship and Hospitality
Creating Great ContentMake sure you know what story you want to tell and what you want those stories to accomplish. Be sure all your content aligns to this and use the various marketing methods available—social, web, case studies, etc.—to get that story out there. Be sure you have a plan for distribution to ensure the great content you’ve developed is shared.
• GEM Best-Kept Secret: Remember where you are. The content you are trying to communicate needs to align with the environment you are in and the clients you are engaging with.
Resources Contact
Messaging and Theme Support
Event Desk
Digital Assets SMART Centre
Registration Systems and Event Apps
Event Desk
Physical Assets (pop-up displays, stands, booth properties)
SMART Centre
Glossary of Terms SMART Centre
• GEM Best-Kept Secret: Check out SMART Centre first and see what’s available so you can move quickly and efficiently.
• NOTE: Some support may require incremental funding. Estimates will be provided as needed.
Property EvaluationDevelop a closed-loop process to track internal and external effectiveness, leads, engagements and overall KPIs of the sponsorship. This ensures you have a complete process defined to develop ROI and determine future re-investments.
• GEM Best-Kept Secret: Just because you have done it before, doesn’t mean you should do it again (or that you shouldn’t). Our business is constantly changing and we need to ensure that our strategy and the goals we have for sponsorship are in sync.
Available Tools and Resources: We’re here to help.
Be sure to leverage content assets available to you like the new corporate video on our YouTube channel.
The GEM Top 10 Tips: Sponsorship and Hospitality1. Develop strong property relationships.
Building win-win scenarios is the ultimate goal and allows you to share the Xerox story through strong brands.
2. Remember our brand values and your target audience. Ask yourself and your team if this property and the planning overall meets the Xerox brand values and allows you to reach the target audience.
3. Take into account WHERE you are. Build a customer experience that is organic to the sponsorship in which you are participating. Do not try to force-fit a program that does not make sense to an attendee.
4. Integrate, integrate, integrate. Reach out to other marketing teams to take advantage of the reach provided by multiple marketing touch points sponsorships provide.
5. Define your budget. Prior to committing to a property, be sure you have enough budget allocated to be successful. You should have enough in your budget to cover the cost of the fee, hosting, and to create and promote the experiences and stories that showcase Xerox offerings.
6. Set and share goals for your sponsorship. Define what you and your team want to achieve. Share your goals with everyone involved in the sponsorship from the property, including creative, marketing and sales teams, as it will keep them aligned and motivated.
7. Invite your customers and stay in touch. Continuous communication with your potential attendees is key to attracting a great turnout. After you send invitations, follow up with a friendly phone call or email. You can register people on the spot if they haven’t done so already. Be sure to reach out to attendees a day or two before your event as a reminder. Don’t let the relationship end when the event ends— keep it going and growing.
8. Track and measure ROI. Collect lead information and input your final registrants/attendees into your sales tracking tools.
9. Develop post-event surveys. 1) Ascertain the success of your engagement with the property and 2) Determine your customers’ interactions and experiences with it.
10. Do not invite the same people over and over again. Invite the leads that have come from tradeshows, business seminars and conferences to leverage the dollars spent from these business events to build new relationships through a shared sports or entertainment affinity.
Event tips from around the company. Consider this . . .
“Attitude has a lot to do with being successful. Staying positive regardless really helps. Things will go wrong and you just need to try to catch them before they hurt your event.” – Patricia Roy, Manager, Customer Engagement GCO
Bonus Tip: Periodically read over your contracts to ensure you are taking advantage of all assets provided. Don’t let anything go to waste.
Sponsorship and Hospitality Checklist
Pre-Term: � Leave time to engage Xerox legal in the contract review process.
� Provide the final executed contract to the GEM team for their records.
� Establish a relationship with the account manager and schedule weekly status calls.
� Develop plans to announce partnership and engage Xerox Corporate PR to review any and all partnership-related press releases.
� Develop key performance indicators for the partnership and tools to measure their success throughout the partnership.
� Determine business integration opportunities and initiate conversations.
� Assign roles and responsibilities among your team and communicate sponsorship and assets to internal stakeholders.
� Develop budget tracker.
During: � Familiarize yourself and your team with the property/event’s
sponsorship guidelines.
� Provide partner(s) with necessary materials to deliver contracted assets (e.g. brand guidelines, logos, ads, web banners, social media content, etc.).
� Gather sponsorship logos and imagery for creation of key event materials (e.g. presentations, invitations, gifts/merchandise, etc.).
� Allocate ticket and hospitality assets.
� Brainstorm and create dynamic activation programs.
� Develop and execute host and attendee surveys.
Post-Term: � Provide GEM with an evaluation of the partnership at the end
of the term, including measurements against identified key performance indicators.
� Once the partnership term has ended or comes into a renegotiation period, please evaluate the opportunity through the ESP tool.
Questions? Email us today at [email protected]
©2015 Xerox Corporation. All rights reserved. Xerox® and Xerox and Design® are trademarks of Xerox Corporation in the United States and/or other countries. BR15478
Below is a checklist of important items to think about as you prepare, plan, set up and run your Sponsorship and Hospitality event.
Questions? Email us today at [email protected]
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