You may want to read these good articles...Article Sponsorship returns: The value of naming rights

Article The moderating effect of identification on return on investm...

As you have found you can’t just count sales to see if there has been a ROI. But you have to define what outcomes you want, give yourself a benchmark and then measure the changes.

In your shoes I would first establish the key criteria that people use to choose your product. What are the drivers to consumption of your product?

Secondly find out what corporate activity improves perceptions and levels of satisfaction with the drivers. (qualitative followed by quantitative research).

Importantly do consumers relate to the type of sponsorship you are using? Do they think it is in keeping with and adding value to your brand?

Then use quantitative research amongst your target markets, measure the initial levels of things that drive sales… and plan to monitor the impact via repeat studies during and after the sponsorship period.

Set marketing objectives prior to the sponsorship related to the drivers. – What are the things you want to change and by what degree? Make sure the messages of the sponsorship campaign are aligned with the changes you want to bring about.

It is essential to evaluate what happens.

You may want to track changes in the indicators by the spend/level of exposure by various media. This would allow you to establish the most effective combination, experiment with different levels of spend by various media (email /social media / internet / radio / newspapers / TV / magazines / etc). Obviously, your agency will match the media to your target markets. More digital for younger, more traditional for older consumers

Is there some activity within the sponsor event that you can do to engage consumers? (get them to take part in a competition – some challenge through an obstacle course – whatever would appeal to them) This would give them something to talk about to remind them of your company. It would also give you an opportunity to build a database (record demographics, emails and mobile numbers) so that you can maintain the conversation after the event.

You could maybe try to build in a branded “keepsake” in the sponsorship. Something useful/attractive that your target market will keep with them until the next event. Perhaps a voucher to exchange in-store / online for a product

The point being that sponsorship is not just putting boards up or your logo being on a programme. You have to plan and co-ordinate it to get the most out of it.

Helen Strong Thank you so much for your detailed valuable response. Yes, I was almost thinking in the same direction to conduct prey and post analysis, setting my objectives of the sponsorship and evaluating both pre and post accordingly.

Thank you so much for your value contribution.

Waqar Younas Thank you so much for the valuable suggestions.

In practice it's complicated, but the philosophy is simple:

You need to measure both Pre-Event (Pre-Sponsorship) value of your target factors (or let say desired customer/audience actions such as brand awareness, social media follower, digital engagement, newsletter subscriptions, sales, etc.) as well as the Post-Event (Post-Sponsorship) value with the same methodology of measurement and then compare them with each other.

Thank you Aryan Aghili for your valuable response. Yes I agree with you. I was going through literature. Measuring impact of sponsorship in short is also the right depiction of impact.

Aryan Aghili Helen Strong Any theories, you can suggest me please. Integrated marketing mix, brand equity, awareness and loyalty are most refered models, However still I could not found any particular framework. May be I need to search it more.

Thank you so much, Looking forward to hear from you

With a single event I agree to use pre and post analyisis. If the sponsorship is continuous, the increase in awareness can be used as a proxy for a marketing mix model.

Long-term and one-offs are a very different beast in terms of effects and measurement. If you have access to WARC, you will find a very interesting Heineken case (with measurement) of their use of Champions' League sponsorship - and an interesting comparison of years when it worked and what was needed to make it work. Also several suggested models for measuring the

When looking at long-term sponsorship, I would certainly include some of the recent work about salience and distinctive brand assets by Jenni Romaniuk of Ehrenberg-Bass institute.

Short-term measurement and results will depend a lot on the activation tactics around the sponsorship. Long-term measures are certainly brand equity based (awareness-salience-intent-attitude shift).

Mariano Méndez-Suárez Thank you so much for your valuable feedback.

Antony Poole Thank you so much Sir, for your detailed feedback. I will go through the work of Jenni Romaniuk of Ehrenberg-Bass institute as you recommended. Thank you , its extremely useful, as I was looking for a theoretical evidence and calculation methodology.

Leonidas A. Papakonstantinidis

Regarding the future of sponsorship, please read the following two articles:

1. (2015): Johnston, M.A. and Spais, G.S. “Conceptual foundations of sponsorship research”. Journal of Promotion Management, Volume 21, No 3, pp.296-312.

2. (2014): Spais, G.S. and Johnston, M.A. “The evolution of scholarly research on sponsorship: Expectations about the future of this research domain”. Journal of Promotion Management, Volume 20, No 3, pp.267-290.

Both articles are available on RG.

Some Marketing actions can have their results measured. However, Marketing activity, as part of Applied Social Sciences, is not as easy to evaluate as other investments are.