hi i'm andrea welcome back to my channel well i
am a real life small business marketing manager and this past weekend we had an awesome event we
were the title sponsor of a 5k so i'm going to be sharing with you in this video all of the tactics
that i use specifically even some of my vendors that i use that i really really loved on some
of our giveaways just my strategy social media wise to make the most of this title sponsorship
so if you're curious i'm going to be spilling absolutely everything that i did in the hopes
that it might help you out with your event okay well i am the marketing manager of a heating
and air conditioning company in the midwest however one of my first jobs out of college
was to be the marketing manager at the kansas city ballet and we did a ton of events and so i
kind of feel like i got a lot of experience in event management and planning as a part of the
ballet so first of all we have been sponsoring this particular 5k in our area for a number of
years but what i wanted to do this year was i contacted them early in order to guarantee that we
would be the title sponsor what that means is that our logo would be on the start finish line on the
top of all the t-shirts you really get the most bang for your buck in these circumstances when you
can be the title sponsor so having reached out to the event super early i was also able to meet with
their planning committee several times because i wanted to discuss with them all of my social
media plans that was going to save me time in the long run to not have to go through approvals and
things like that via emails i was able to just go to a couple of meetings in person and say these
are my ideas this is what i'm going to be doing on social media are you all on board and it was
it turned into a great working relationship for my exact tactics that i used and exact promotional
products that was really fun and i will warn you that if you are planning an event this year just
like everywhere else you're gonna have to order well in advance because of supply chain issues and
this is my logic on giveaways at events first of all while we had the opportunity to put a flyer
or stickers or something in every single bag that every single runner was going to get i opted to
just not waste the money i ordered a really cool yeti cooler it was the 500 one 4.99 something
like that i was going to make that a giveaway on social media and then also have it at our booth
at the event to be kind of the draw to our table we had a sign up at the event that you could sign
up to win the yeti cooler and so now i have a list of over 200 names and emails my plan is to email
that list in particular a special coupon offer in case they want to try our services another thing
that i ordered were tumblers but they weren't just any tumblers i got pretty nice tumblers
i used the company called another basket case she knows what is in what is popular what people
are loving and i will say that people at the event loved the tumblers loved there was a line to get
them these tumblers were so great at the event that people were asking if they could buy them
also another fun giveaway that i love to have at events are just these little chip clips it's a
cheaper giveaway but people love those as well of course a big old bowl of candy never hurts
anybody and honestly some of the other vendors it was crickets over at their table because they just
had a table with a display of their products or something like that honestly people are here for
a 5k not necessarily for you this is not a trades show so as a sponsor my goal is to just bring an
extra level of fun and an extra level of oh wow i'm so glad that i came here because i walked
away with this awesome tumbler and maybe i'll win a yeti now leading up to the event what i did
with social media first of all i made a facebook profile frame and that option was still available
on facebook at the time back when i did it now that's not available but i did find a workaround
if you would still like to make a facebook profile frame you should see the video that i have linked
down below as a way that you can do that even though facebook isn't allowing people to do that
right now on social media leading up to the event i did a series of giveaways i gave away entries
into the race because i got a ton of free entries because we were the title sponsor so starting a
couple months out of the event i started kicking off saying hey we are the title sponsor we're
going to be doing a series of giveaways so you have to like our page and comment below to be
involved with that i created a hashtag campaign so anytime somebody used the hashtag they
were entered to win in our grand prize and then whatever the giveaway was for that week we
made a video about our involvement with the race and had it embedded into our website and we
also sent that video out in a series of email campaigns to our customers saying that we are
a part of this event we're involved and also of course anytime i posted on social media i tagged
the events facebook page so that they would also share my posts the organic reach on all of my
facebook posts was like through the roof for that reason i also went live a couple of times during
the event to show our facebook audience what was going on at that moment once before the event
started and another time as the event was kicking off one fun thing that i forgot to mention was
that we a number of years ago decided to invest in having a mascot made our logo involves a clock so
we had a mascot made that looks like a clock and we call him ticker i tell you if your company does
any amount of events this mascot costume was not terribly expensive and it is always a draw and
i mean we have people bringing their kids over wanting them to get their pictures taken with
them and talk about branding talk about organic marketing let me tell you if you get yourself
a mascot it will not disappoint so i will leave the link below to the company who made our
mascot who we call ticker i always want to reflect on any marketing that i do in particular
events because i want to make sure that what i am doing matters to the bottom line of the company
that it is elevating the company in some way i certainly don't want to do any marketing that's
not going anywhere right first of all just for practical reasons we now have a list of like 200
emails that we didn't have before that we can market to so there's that due to the yeti cooler
giveaway second is the exposure that being tied to this 5k event helped our social media presence
immensely we got a lot of new followers and new fans because we were promoting this event that
they already liked and so now we're tied to a very family-friendly community oriented event which
is good for our brand also our employees loved it so the employees just come to have fun i think it
makes them feel good to know that they are a part of something that is helping out a charity in the
community and finally we certainly created fans i can't tell you the number of times that people
came up to us and when we said that they could have this tumblr for free they're like oh my gosh
you are the best and you know they they felt like we were giving them this special gift every time
we gave away one of these tumblers it's always great when people when you hear people vocalize
their appreciation of your company because when you say something out loud you believe it even
more deeply so when people come up and are able to verbalize to you in person that they really
love you they love your service thanks so much for being here thanks so much for supporting this
charity that goes a long way in fostering strong community ties with our customers with potential
new customers it was a huge success i think that being prepared and having a game plan well in
advance definitely helps because we could have just as easily been the title sponsor and then
not really taken it too much further than that you know just have been happy with our logo on
the t-shirts and on their banners and stuff which a lot of people do that after the event i sent a
thank you email to like the chairman the founder i wanted to let them know as soon as i could
that we would be more than happy to be the title sponsor again next year so i hope that this will
help you i hope that you aren't afraid to sponsor a 5k i think that they're great and i think that
right now people are loving getting back out into the community again being involved with things
seeing other people it was just a ton of fun i hope that you like this video if it was helpful
i hope you subscribe and i will see you soon you
