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Given the recent media coverage of a particular worldwide sporting event held on our shores, you'd be forgiven for thinking that sponsorship is a tactic suitable only for big events, undertaken by global corporates with multi-million dollar marketing budgets.

Sponsorship is the fastest growing form of marketing promotions in the US, yet in our experience, is largely unrecognised as a marketing tool for small business here in New Zealand - and when it is done, it's done ineffectively.

Sponsorship has been described as:
"A business relationship between a provider of funds, resources or services and an individual, event or organisation which offers in return, rights and association that may be used for commercial advantage in return for the sponsorship investment." Source: sponsorship.co.uk

Note the word "business" in the above definition. Sponsorship, just like advertising, brochures, fliers, media releases, Facebook or your website, is a marketing tool which you can use in your business to help you achieve your business goals.

Like these other marketing tools, you should be clear about your reasons for doing it, how much you want to spend on it, and what you want to achieve from it. You need to make a clear distinction between whether or not you are doing it as a form of marketing, in which case you want to be able to measure it's effectiveness in some way, or as a 'feel good' contribution, perhaps to your local sports club, charity or event.

Either way, it can offer you (and your business) a number of benefits which are worth considering before you finalise your next promotional campaign:

Improve your image as a 'good neighbour'

You (or your business) are being a good community citizen and making a donation to your favourite local charity, sports club or event. This doesn't necessarily have to be cash - donations of products, prizes for a competition, or even volunteering expertise and time are also very warmly welcomed/received. Imagine you are a paint retailer - a donation of paint (and maybe labour too) won't cost you very much, but will be a huge saving for the local sports club whose clubrooms are constantly being tagged, creating an eyesore in the community.

You're not expecting anything in return other than a 'warm fuzzy' from helping another organisation. A mention in the sports club's newsletter would be nice, but your primary motivator is just to help your local community and be a good neighbour.

Increase your brand profile

This is particularly successful if you can negotiate naming rights as a sponsoring company, e.g. Burger King Breakers (Basketball), Exodus Team Wellington (Football), Haier Pulse (Netball), so that your company name is included every time the team name is mentioned in the media, communications, printed publications etc. And the same opportunity exists at a local level. If your target market for example, is Hutt Valley families, you could spend your marketing budget advertising in the local paper every week - or you could provide naming rights to one of the Hutt Valley's local sports clubs - and be featured in a story on the back page of the same paper every week - for a fraction of the cost! The cost of actually paying for the same level of coverage in radio or printed ads would be far greater than the cost of the sponsorship.