Manufacturers Demand More Accountability

Mark Dolliver reported in AdWeek online today that manufacturers are requiring greater emphasis in utilizing on-line advertising. Two-thirds of the respondents are reporting a shift in their online spend to either spending more than in previous years or at least half their budgets for online ads.

Another angle to this story might be that marketers are required to demonstrate greater accountability and ROI in the advertising. Whether its online advertising or sponsorship, over half the respondents are choosing marketing programs that can be measured because of greater pressure to demonstrate results.

So, you might start thinking about how you can demonstrate results for your sponsors.

And if you cannot demonstrate results? Well, 70% of the respondents indicated that if you're unable to measure the marketing initiative - it's slated for reduction or elimination.

Although you may have a great relationship with your sponsors, the CMO is hunting for greater accountability. So, you better be able to demonstrate measurable results. If you don't have benchmarks in place, now might be a good time to talk to your sponsors about how you can integrate metrics so they CAN measure the results.

What results are they looking for now? 44% want to generate new customers, while another 29% want to develop leads, 13% indicated that they want to show they can retain customers and 11% were wanting to increase brand awareness.

So, those signs and banners at your event may not be enough to excite your sponsors. To create sales and sales leads, your sponsor need to be on-the-ground with your event attendees. And while hospitality benefits may help retain some customers, utilizing hospitality to create customers or customer leads is going to be much more important.

As for CMO's looking to build measurable metrics and accountability for sponsorship marketing - you can learn more about Pinpoint SES, an online tool that evaluates potential ROI and measures sponsorship results using company-benchmarks at http://www.pinpointsponsor.com/PINPOINTSESdemo.mov