In today's competitive business landscape, sponsorships have become a crucial tool for title agencies to increase brand visibility, attract new clients, and stay ahead of the competition. To ensure your sponsorships are worth the investment, it's vital to create a well-thought-out budget that allows you to reach your target audience in a cost-effective manner that gets results. Below, we'll walk you through six critical components to consider when crafting your sponsorship budget.

1.  Audience

Determining your target audience is the critical first step in the sponsorship budgeting process because it will guide each decision moving forward. While we will cover multiple components to consider during the budgeting process, the ultimate goal is to reach the target audience you clarify at the outset.

At the highest level, sponsorship audiences can be split into two groups:

• • Business-to-Business (B2B): If your title agency relies on referrals from other professionals in the real estate industry, targeting a B2B audience may be right for you. You’ll want to sponsor more industry-centric opportunities, such as trade association events. Also, you should tailor the content you provide for the sponsorship to someone more educated on the details of title insurance. While B2B sponsorships have been successful within the title industry for decades, many title pros have transitioned to a different target audience in recent years.
  • Business-to-Consumer (B2C): As more and more homebuyers research the home buying process online before talking to a real estate agent, it has become increasingly beneficial for title companies to reach out directly to consumers. Especially if they are first-time homebuyers, consumers are looking for informative content to guide them through the home buying process. Sponsoring a webinar covering a topic as simple as “what is title insurance” can position you as a subject matter expert that can take some of the stress of the home buying process off their hands.

The modern title agency should target both audiences for maximum success, but make sure you differentiate your marketing efforts to each audience. The same basic informative content describing title insurance will not benefit a real estate agent who has been in the business for decades and is looking for a title agent with similar experience.

Once you determine the type of audience you’re targeting, there are two more essential factors to consider:

• • Audience Size: Smaller, niche sponsorships may provide more targeted exposure, while larger opportunities can increase brand visibility. Analyzing the proportion of your target audience in attendance is essential for optimizing the sponsorship's reach.
  • Competitor Presence: While a certain level of competition is expected, over-saturated sponsorship events may dilute the impact of your sponsorship. Strategically select events that balance exposure and competition to maximize your company's return on investment.

2.  Event Type

The types of sponsorships available have grown dramatically over the past decade as technological advancements and the pandemic changed how the world works. While title companies of the past reserved a large portion of their sponsorship budget for in-person events, there is now a wide range of options to choose from. Three of the most common sponsorship types are:

• • In-person Events: These are great opportunities to connect directly with your target audience and allow your team members to build relationships across the industry. A consistent sponsorship at an industry trade show or conference signals that your company is an industry leader. On the downside, sponsoring in-person events can be expensive. The sponsorship price is one thing, but travel costs plus the indirect costs of your team members taking time away from their daily tasks to attend an in-person event can be a downside.
  • Virtual Events: Sponsoring a virtual event, such as a webinar, is a great way to project your company's thought leadership without the additional costs of in-person event sponsorships. They also still include opportunities to interact with potential customers through Q&A sessions after the presentation.
  • Non-profit Sponsorships: Your sponsorships don’t always have to be within your industry. A great way to connect with your local community is to sponsor a local charity event, such as a park clean-up day or a gift auction. The community will appreciate your business' desire to give back, while your team members will enjoy interacting with local community members outside the industry.

3.  Brand Alignment

It’s essential to ensure that the brands your company sponsors align with your brand's values. Remember that with a sponsorship, you aren’t just endorsing a singular event or promotional activity; you’re endorsing the brand as a whole. While the brands you work with should have a similar target audience to your own to make the sponsorship valuable, some small variation in audience can be beneficial for your brand to reach new potential customers.

That's why it is so important to research the brands you’re sponsoring extensively. Look into the brand's online reviews to ensure they don’t have a history of unethical practices or other questionable issues.

4.  Success Measurement

One of the most common mistakes businesses make is waiting until after a sponsorship is complete to decide how to measure its success. Determining success before you have any results may sound counterproductive, but this foresight is critical. If you define how you measure a successful sponsorship ahead of time, you can target your sponsorship and your team's work alongside it to meet those defined goals. Without a defined measurement for success, your team may not focus on the most critical factors of the sponsorship. It will also make planning sponsorships in the future more simple since you’ll know what did and didn’t work last time!

Before setting your sponsorship budget, determine the key performance indicators (KPIs) you’ll track throughout the year to measure success. While some KPIs are based on objective data, you can also have more subjective measurements. Some of the most common KPIs are:

• • Lead Generation: Monitor the number of new leads generated during and after the sponsored event. This can include contact information from event attendees, inquiries via phone, or email and form submissions on the company's website.
  • Clients Closed: If you'd like to go further than lead generation, track the deals signed due to a specific sponsorship.
  • Online Traffic: Track increases in website traffic, social media followers and search engine rankings following a sponsorship.
  • Audience Feedback: Gather feedback from event attendees through surveys to gauge their perception of the company's presence and whether the sponsorship resonated with them.

5.  Cost-Benefit Analysis

Now that you know how to measure success, how will you compare it to the costs of the sponsorship? Remember that costs can include far more than the sticker price of the sponsorship itself. If you are sponsoring an in-person event that your team members will attend, additional costs include:

• • Travel expenses
  • Hotels
  • Food and beverage expenses
  • Opportunity costs of the day-to-day tasks your team may be missing
  • Marketing materials and branded swag giveaways

While virtual sponsorships like webinars may involve fewer travel expenses, they may include a higher opportunity cost if your team members must heavily prepare for a presentation. To determine whether these costs are worth it, conduct a cost-benefit analysis using these three steps:

1.  Assign Monetary Value: Determine a dollar amount for each success measurement based on the KPIs you choose to track. For example:

• • • Determine the average revenue per new customer you expect to acquire with the sponsorship and multiply it by the estimated number of new clients.
    • Assess the value of social media engagement by comparing it with the expenses of equivalent advertising or marketing efforts.

2.  Calculate Return-on-Investment (ROI): Divide the total monetary value of the benefits by the total costs associated with the sponsorship. If the ROI is positive, the sponsorship is worth it.

3.  Consider Intangible Benefits: While some sponsorship benefits may be difficult to quantify, they can still hold significant value. The analysis should also consider factors such as enhanced brand reputation, customer goodwill, and alignment with the company's social responsibility goals. These intangible benefits can contribute to your business's long-term success and growth, even if their immediate monetary value is not easily measured.

6.  Conversion Strategy

With the information above, you should be able to plan the perfect sponsorship budget and prioritizations. Now you need to prepare your team to put the budget into action. Your conversion strategy should revolve around the tools and tactics used to achieve the success measured by your KPIs. There is a wide array of strategies depending on your goals and the type of sponsorship you’re involved in. Here are a few examples of how you can incentivize your team or entice potential customers:

• • If you’re sponsoring an in-person event, such as a conference with a booth, offer a bonus to the team member that gets the most leads.
  • If you’re sponsoring a virtual webinar, include a call-to-action at the end of the presentation to refer viewers to your website.
  • If you’re sponsoring a charity event, focus on the intangible benefits of aligning your brand with a good cause and the relationships with fellow local business owners.

The Bottom Line

Crafting a successful sponsorship budget involves much more than just allocating funds to various events. By carefully considering the components above, your title agency can maximize the impact of its sponsorship efforts. Trust us, with nearly 40 years of experience in the title industry, SoftPro knows a thing or two about sponsorships. We also know much more about the title software solutions you need to handle all the new clients you’ll earn with your successful sponsorships! To learn more about how we can help, contact us or give us a call at 800-848-0143 today!

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