How To Maximize Your Alcohol Event Sponsorship to Reach More Customers
Many alcohol brands sponsor events when they want to promote their beer, wine, or liquor products and reach new customers. It's a great way to spread brand awareness and get in front of new customers, but event sponsorship can be limited in what it can do and how effective it can be.
Let’s look at what many alcohol brands get wrong about event sponsorship and how they can get more out of their promotions to better connect with customers during and after the event.
Basic Alcohol Event Sponsorship
When alcohol brands sponsor an event, it usually includes a few things. The brand:
- Gets logo placement on event promotional materials.
- Sets up a booth or walks around to engage event attendees.
- Donates a select amount of samples or drinks to be given away.
- Gives away branded SWAG to attendees.
This is usually where the marketing efforts associated with event marketing end.
But there is so much more that can be done from here.
Upgraded Alcohol Event Sponsorship
Here are the steps that boost sponsorship activation and make an alcohol event sponsorship much more engaging, effective, and powerful.
#1) Use smart and fun data collection tactics at the event.
Many brands get in front of their target audience at the event -- but they don’t do anything to reach that very same audience once the event ends. Many don’t even set up a data collection system that allows them to reach the engaged audience if they wanted to.
Data collection at an event is essential.
Alcohol brands must leverage their event sponsorship by collecting customer phone numbers and email addresses during the event. They can do this through a variety of fun and engaging methods.
- Host games and contests. Instead of just giving away SWAG, use contest marketing where attendees enter a contest or play a game that requires them to sign up with their email or phone number.
- Offer event giveaways and coupons. Create a desirable offer such as an event coupon or upgrade, and ask attendees to enter through a texting campaign. Text marketing works well at events as attendees can sign up even if they don’t visit your booth or engage with your promo team. The promotion can be added to event flyers or announced over the loudspeaker.
- Engage in a photo promotion. Hire a photographer to take photos at the event and require attendees to enter their contact information to download their photos after the event.
#2) Connect with attendees on their devices during the event through geofencing.
While attendees are at the event, you can find another avenue for getting your brand in front of them through geofencing.
Geofencing puts a virtual fence around the event so you can serve ads about your brand to anyone who walks in and attends the event.
Your brand is already in front of attendees at the event and then the ad engages them on their phone. This reinforces your brand one more time and increases the likelihood that audiences will interact with your branded ad. You can use that interest to drive people to your website or to any online offers or data collection opportunities.
#3) Follow up with attendees through remarketing.
When you engage in data collection at the event, you open up a world of opportunities for remarketing through text and email marketing.
You can follow up with an audience that you already know is interested in your brand and deliver engaging branded content and special offers, as well as add them to your ongoing newsletter to keep your brand at the top of their mind.
#4) Reconnect with attendees through retargeting ads.
If you drove traffic to your website with geofenced ads, you also created another way to remarket to the attendees who have already engaged with your brand. Anyone from the event that went to your website can be retargeted through Google Ads, Facebook, and other platforms.
You can also use the phone numbers and email address you collected through data collection to create ad campaigns that deliver to the people who signed up at the event.
These ads will be more effective as you are not marketing to a cold audience. You are reconnecting with a warm audience who has already experienced and engaged with your brand.
Start Maximizing Your Alcohol Event Sponsorships
Alcohol event sponsorship is a great way to spread the word about your beer, wine, or liquor brand.
But it’s not enough to just put your brand name on event posters and share samples with attendees.
It takes strategic marketing efforts to truly engage event attendees and capture customer data that allows your brand to stay top of mind with audiences even after the event is over.
If you’d like to discover more ways to get the most out of your alcohol event sponsorships, we’d love to talk. The team at MyArea Network are experts at promoting events and building meaningful sponsorships. Contact us and let’s talk about how we can make sure your alcohol brand gets a big return on your next event sponsorship!
