So, you find yourself in the office of a local clothing store chain, trying to sell the presenting sponsorship for your upcoming event. The executive gently taps her perfectly manicured nails on her desk as you relate every wonderful thing about your worthy cause.

When you finally come up for air, she takes the opportunity (finally!) to get a word in edgewise and says, “Yeah, whatever. Tell me about your audience.”

The good news is, she asked the exact right question. Here’s how to give the exact right answer…

The most important success factor for sponsorship

True sponsorship—effective sponsorship—is about one thing and one thing only: selling stuff!

The greatness of your cause is a key driver for philanthropic support, but sponsors are looking to use association with your cause as a way to generate sales. Kim Skildum-Reid of PowerSponsorship.com describes this as a “win-win-win:” your cause wins because it receives the rights fee from the sponsor; the sponsor wins because of the opportunity for enhanced promotion; and your audience wins because they get a privileged opportunity to interact with a brand that matters to them.

So the most important factor in this equation is your audience. Knowing that, how do you answer the well-manicured executive’s question?

There are four answers (or key parameters) to use for describing your audience:

1. Demographics are the quantifiable statistics of a given population. These are data that describe important characteristics of your audience such as gender, age, family size, occupation, income and wealth, ethnicity, property values and education level, among others. These will tell your executive if the people coming to your event are the same people to whom she’s trying to sell clothing.
2. Geographics indicate where your audience can be found. In our example, this will give the executive an idea of whether or not your audience is located close to her stores.
3. Psychographics describe social class, lifestyle and personality measures. For a shortcut to describing these measures, check out the 8 VALS™ types, originally developed by SRI International (a nonprofit research organization in Menlo Park, California), and now owned and operated by Strategic Business Insights (SBI). A wealth of information on this model can be found here. The site includes an online survey that will tell you your own VALS type. Get a few representative members of your audience to complete the survey and you’ll receive a rich description of their motivations. Your retail executive will now have a clear sense of how to frame a message to your constituency.
4. Behavioral measures examine the audience on the basis of their knowledge, attitudes, uses or responses to products. Here, you’re looking at what consumers actually do. Where do they shop? What magazines do they read? What kinds of cars do they drive? What movies and TV shows do they like? With this kind of information, the fashion retailer will have a clear, three dimensional picture of the audience she might reach by sponsoring your event.

Of course, there’s much more to selling sponsorships. This is only the first step. 

But nothing is more important for sponsorship success than the ability to give a clear and detailed description of your audience. This information will help you determine what companies to approach (i.e., those who are selling to your audience) and what kinds of sponsorship activation opportunities to suggest. And it will position you before prospective sponsors as a serious and well-organized agency that understands marketing.

This website provides detailed descriptions of demographic, psychographic and behavioral indicators for where you live. Compile this information for some representative members of your event constituency, and you’ll have an audience description that will be meaningful and actionable for any potential sponsor.