What Your Sponsors Want: An Overview of the Data

Our team spent days combing through troves of recent research on sponsors’ needs and three common challenges emerged from all of the data we sifted through.

Challenge #1: Budget Pressures and ROI

If you’re hoping for an economic turnaround any time soon, you’re likely to be disappointed, says the Congressional Budget Office. The CBO forecasts a sluggish economy through at least the end of the year, weighed down by historically high inflation and an uptick in unemployment.

Both Demand Metric and Sapio Research are forecasting cuts to marketing budgets this year as fears of a recession intensify. Sapio’s International Business Barometer reports that the marketing cuts will affect more than half of businesses.

Other research corroborates this. A recent World Federation of Advertisers study reports that three-quarters of respondents “agreed strongly” or “agreed” that their 2023 marketing budgets were under heavy scrutiny, requiring them not only to do more with less, but to demonstrate clear ROI from their marketing spend.

The Digital Marketing Institute finds that the No. 1 challenge facing marketing decision-makers at the executive level is “delivering greater ROI on the marketing budget," meaning each marketing dollar spent must be justified.

Challenge #2: Competitive differentiation through thought leadership

Irrespective of the economic climate we find ourselves in, businesses still need to differentiate themselves. According to Forrester, competition among B2B companies is fiercer than ever. An effective way to stand out from the crowd is through thought leadership, a highly effective method suppliers can use to influence decision-makers, particularly in a down economy.

A company’s thought leadership can take many forms. In our digital lives, thought leadership often manifests itself through a company’s content efforts. Edelman defines thought leadership as “content that offers expertise, guidance, or a unique point of view on a topic or in a field.” Thought-leadership content is different than sales or product-orient content. Rather than being self-promotional, it focuses more on the audience's needs and interests.

According to Edelman and LinkedIn’s 2022 B2B Thought Leadership Impact Report (PDF), 61% of nearly 3,500 global B2B decision-makers surveyed believe an organization’s thought leadership can be moderately or a lot more effective at demonstrating the potential value of its products/services compared to traditional product-oriented marketing.

Further, fully half of B2B C-suite executives say that high-quality thought leadership has more impact on their purchase decision-making during economic downturns.

Thought leadership content is effective because it not only helps B2B marketers establish their credibility, demonstrate their expertise, and earn trust, it educates a company’s prospective buyers along the way because it focuses more on the customer’s needs. And an educated prospective customer is much more likely to become an actual customer.

According to Gartner’s research on the B2B buyer’s journey, customers who had access to high-quality information related to a problem or challenge they were experiencing were 2.8 times more likely to experience a high degree of purchase ease and three times more likely to buy a bigger deal with less regret.

Challenge #3: Turnkey business development solutions

According to Hubspot, the No. 1 challenge for marketers in 2023 is lead generation. Why? When marketing budgets tighten up, it’s easier for marketers to draw a straight line between leads generated and ROI.

And, according to a report from HIPB2B and Ascend2, generating quality leads is a bigger challenge than generating enough leads. Gartner confirms that less than half of incoming leads (44%) are ultimately passed to the sales team because the majority don’t fit a company’s “ideal customer profile.”

And not only do your sponsors and advertisers want high-quality leads, but they need a turnkey way to generate them because, like many of us, they are also being tasked with doing more with less.

The Digital Marketing Institute finds that 70% of marketers experienced budget reductions over the past two years. That not only means fewer advertising dollars to spend, but smaller marketing teams responsible for the same or higher levels of production.

Gartner’s research on marketing budgets confirms that companies are grappling with serious resource challenges, with 61% of CMOs reporting that their teams lack the capabilities required to deliver their marketing strategies.

As trusted industry leaders with engaged memberships, associations are in a favorable position to compete for marketers’ advertising dollars. The key, however, will be to optimize sponsorship programs that align as closely as possible with your sponsors’ needs.

The same programs that associations have relied upon for decades will not suffice. The current climate calls for innovation. As the data reveals, sponsors need programs that will:

1. 1. Justify their marketing spend with demonstrable ROI.
2. 2. Differentiate themselves through thought leadership.
3. 3. Generate high-quality leads.

Further, sponsors and advertisers need programs that will achieve all of the above without requiring a strain on their own resources to accomplish their objectives.

There are a variety of non-dues revenue programs that associations can deploy to more effectively compete for marketers’ shrinking budgets. At Lead Marvels, we partner with Associations to create interactive online Resource Libraries.

An online Resource Library, sometimes called a “Knowledge Hub” or “Resource Center,” is hosted and fully managed by Lead Marvels, and it is highly targeted to sponsors’ needs:

• A Resource Library demonstrates ROI. Your sponsors only pay for results. When a sponsor generates leads through the program, they pay on a cost-per-lead basis, and they only pay for leads that meet their qualifications.
• A Resource Library demonstrates thought leadership. A Resource Library features your sponsors’ thought-leadership content, including white papers, reports, ebooks, webinars, and more, and makes them available to your members, who are interested in high-quality resources that align with their professional needs and interests.
• A Resource Library generates leads. When a member opts in to complete a registration form to download an advertiser’s resource, they become a lead for the advertiser. As actively engaged members of your organization, association leads are highly coveted by marketers.
• A Resource Library program is turnkey for sponsors. Sponsors can manage their lead generation campaigns through a user-friendly, interactive dashboard that allows them to monitor performance in real time, follow up with leads, understand what topics are resonating most with members, and more.

Not only does our Resource Library platform target your sponsors’ needs, but it can be a substantial driver of non-dues revenue. In fact, more than 100 different associations have partnered with us to launch our Resource Library platform on their website. The Association for Corporate Counsel (ACC), for example, generated a six-figure, recurring non-dues revenue stream using our resource Library platform.

There is never any cost to our association partners, and the program requires no new investment in technology or staff.

Learn more about how our Resource Library Program works in our latest white paper, Growing Non-Dues Revenue With An Online Resource Library, or schedule a no-obligation demo with a member of our team.