Does your organization feel confident in how to make the most of sponsorship opportunities in your continuing education webinars and live event streaming? If not, you’re not alone! 72% of organizations don’t offer online sponsorships for virtual events, costing non-dues revenue and valuable partner opportunities.
Don’t let your continuing education program get left behind! Read on for three helpful tips on effectively selling and incorporating sponsorships at your continuing education webinars and live event streams.
How to Sell and Incorporate Sponsorships at Your Continuing Education Webinars
Are you ready to level up your organization’s approach to sponsorships? Follow these strategies to improve the sale and incorporation of sponsorships at your continuing education webinars and live event streaming:
1. Get to Know Your Sponsors
Start by understanding your sponsors’ goals, what benefits they’d like to see in a sponsorship package, and what audience they’re interested in reaching. This strategic approach will not only inform your sponsorship program but also align it with your sponsors’ objectives.
Consider calling them to ask these questions directly. Phone calls can foster a relationship with your sponsors. You can also conduct an online survey to reach more sponsors and establish a baseline for your data and reporting purposes.
Help your sponsors get to know your learners better with live polling options. Create custom polls and send the results to ensure your sponsors have your attendee list and specific data to make the sponsorship opportunity worth their time.
2. Offer Various Sponsorships
When it comes to selling sponsorships at your continuing education webinars and event live streams, consider the following diverse opportunities for your organization. This resourceful approach will not only attract a variety of sponsors but also make your sponsorship program more creative and engaging.
- Thought leadership opportunities: Sponsors might be interested in providing professional development opportunities, industry best practice tips, or sponsoring unique continuing education credit offerings.
Allow sponsors to jump into your learner chat and moderate the discussion by asking questions.
- Lead opportunities: Consider offering attendee information to your sponsors or generating hand-raiser information through attendee polls in exchange for your sponsor package.
Make lead opportunities easy for your sponsors. Add sponsor assets so your learners can download them later.
- Branding: Consider where it makes sense for an organization to sponsor your webinar, and be intentional with how involved you want your sponsors to be in your live stream. Do you want all your sponsors’ logos crowding the learner’s view throughout an event? With sponsorships, try creating the best experience for your learners.
Create custom branding opportunities to offer a superior sponsorship experience. Design custom HTML tabs to thank sponsors and keep them coming back, event after event.
3. Post a Sales Kit
Make it easy for sponsors to find your organization and sell even more sponsorships at your next webinar or event livestream by creating a sales kit. Begin by starting a document and detailing your organization’s description and continuing education program. Provide relevant information about your mission and member demographics so sponsors can understand your learner audience. Highlight your learning management system (LMS) by showcasing features like AI-generated closed captions, multi-language subtitles, and interactivity functionality. This demonstrates how these features boost learner engagement, leading to increased positive webinar and event live stream outcomes and a higher return on investment (ROI) for sponsors.
You’ll also want to provide a list of sponsorship opportunities, including benefits and prices for your continuing education webinars. Make it easy for companies to purchase sponsorship by providing your contact information. Consider posting your sales kit on a separate sponsorship page on your website and emailing sponsors about any new or upcoming sponsorship opportunities.
Boost learner engagement with AI-generated closed captions and multi-language subtitles to make your event livestreams and webinars more accessible.
