Sponsor Magnet · 2026-05-18 · 20 min
Key moments - from our scoring
Substance score
72 / 100
Five dimensions, 20 points each
Brands justify sponsorship spending across two distinct buckets: tangible metrics like leads, meetings, and conversions, plus intangible benefits such as brand awareness, community presence, and long-term relationship building. Leo from a major sponsor explains how they've closed seven-figure deals years after initial booth conversations, revealing that enterprise software companies operate on multi-year sales cycles - not immediate conversions. Granica's Tom demonstrates sophisticated audience targeting, filtering for only relevant prospects rather than chasing volume. Twilio's Amy emphasizes that sponsorship goals extend beyond acquisition to include retention and partner relationship deepening. The episode provides critical insights for creators pitching sponsorships: understand whether a brand is playing a short game (direct ROI) or long game (relationship investment), identify where you rank in their marketing hierarchy (test, regular play, or "Super Bowl" priority), and recognize that budget decisions for major events occur six months in advance. Post-campaign reporting should showcase qualitative proof that the right audience was reached - comments from ideal customers, product trial engagement, and fit evidence - not just vanity metrics like views.
Brands sponsor events for both tangible ROI (leads, meetings, closings) and intangible benefits (brand awareness, community presence, relationship building). For enterprise software with long sales cycles, sponsorships are often investments in reaching the right prospects at the right awareness stage, not immediate conversions.
They track qualified conversations with their ideal customer profile, but also recognize longer sales cycles - some sponsors reported closing deals 4-5 years after initial event conversations. Success means reaching the right people, not just badge scans or immediate sales.
The best time to pitch is at the end of a current campaign during the post-mortem call, when you ask when they start planning the next quarter or year. Budget decisions for major events happen 6+ months in advance, so pitching two weeks before won't work.
Post-campaign reports should include both quantitative and qualitative proof - vanity metrics plus comments and DMs from people matching the brand's ideal customer profile who actually engaged or tried the product. This gives brands evidence to justify larger investments with their leadership.
Ask brands directly: 'How does partnering with creators fit into your broader marketing strategy this year?' or 'Where does this event rank in your marketing hierarchy?' Their answer reveals whether you're a test, regular play, or their Super Bowl priority - which should completely change your pricing and proposal structure.
Our reviewer’s read on each dimension, with quotes from the episode.
The episode packs substantial, non-obvious claims about sponsorship ROI and brand partnership strategy. The host extracts and synthesizes actionable frameworks from sponsor interviews - tangible vs. intangible ROI buckets, sales cycle alignment, ICP targeting, budget planning windows, and post-campaign reporting. However, some repetition and recap dilute density; the episode could be tighter.
Marketers internally justify their sponsorship spend in two buckets, typically, right? You've got the tangible stuff like leads and meetings and conversions and the intangible stuff, like, you know, the brand awareness and the presence and the relationships.
The way a brand measures ROI from a partnership often is directly tied to the length of their sales cycle.
The episode offers a useful reframing - positioning sponsorship ROI through the lens of long sales cycles and relationship depth - but the core frameworks (funnel stages, ICP targeting, retention vs. acquisition) are well-worn in B2B marketing. The insight about asking brands where a creator ranks in their hierarchy (Super Bowl vs. test) is relatively fresh, but much of the advice recycles established partnership playbooks without strong contrarian angles.
is this brand playing a short game or a long game? Because your pitch should look completely different depending on the answer.
Can they clearly see that they reach their ideal customer? Not that your video got views, but that the right people saw it and, and hopefully engaged with it and responded to it.
Guests are real practitioners - Leo from Google Cloud (multi-year sponsor), Tom from Granica (B2B startup executing sponsorships), Amy from Twilio (enterprise brand with clear partnership strategy). However, none are marquee figures, and the host does most of the analytical heavy lifting; guests are primarily sources of illustrative examples rather than deep experts on sponsorship strategy. Guest commentary is fairly surface-level.
So, like, how do you think about, like, is it the quality of the leads that people coming through the booth?
we're trying to identify individuals who are relevant to what we actually provide
The episode grounds advice in specific, named companies (Google Cloud, Granica, Twilio, Audix) and concrete examples: 4 - 5 year sales cycles, seven-figure deals from booth relationships, hundreds of qualified conversations, 6-month planning timelines, and booth positioning insights. However, most numbers and outcomes are self-reported anecdotes without independent verification or comparative data. No hard data on conversion rates, ROI multiples, or failure cases.
closed deals that we've met folks from Google Cloudnex, but like, you've four years and five years.
seven digits top of deal. A seven figure deal from a relationship that started at a booth.
The host asks solid follow-up questions that probe deeper (e.g., 'how do you quantify brand exposure?', 'how does location/booth size affect engagement?', 'where do you rank in marketing strategy?') and frequently pivots to extract actionable frameworks for creators. However, interviews are brief and somewhat controlled; the host rarely pushes back on claims or explores contradictions. Questions are good but could press harder on edge cases or failures.
So, how do you even quantify something like someone walking by the booth and like, oh, I remember that name
How does partnering with creators fit into your broader marketing strategy this year?
Computed from the transcript - who did the talking, and the words that came up most.
Most creators think sponsors care about their download numbers. They're wrong. I went booth-to-booth at a 30,000-person event and asked sponsors directly: why do you shell out hundreds of thousands of dollars for this? What I got back was a masterclass in how brands actually think about ROI, and it should completely change how you pitch. Why sophisticated brands filter out irrelevant leads even when they're walking right past their booth, and what that means for your pitch The two ROI buckets every marketer uses internally to justify sponsorship spend (and why most creators only pitch one) How a single booth conversation turned into a 7-figure deal... four years later The "Super Bowl" question you need to ask on every discovery call Why 6 months is the real window to get into a brand's biggest budget What your post-campaign report needs to show if you want a brand to double down The brands who kept renewing? They weren't chasing vibes. They were looking for one thing: proof they reached their ideal customer. Here's exactly what that looks like, and how to give it to them.
Transcribed and scored by The B2B Podcast Index.
One of my biggest questions when I come to a 30,000-person event like this is why do the sponsor shell out hundreds of thousands of dollars to sponsor it? So let's go ask them. How are you doing? Good.
How are you? I'm doing a video featuring some of the sponsors here, and I was wondering if I might be able to talk to someone like you or someone on your team about why you decided to sponsor the event. Sure. Yeah?
Yeah. Would it be you? Yeah. Alright, let's do it.
Well, I got shut down on the first one. He said yes, and then he saw me take out the camera. He's like, no, I don't think we're going to do this. How are you doing?
I'm Justin. How are you doing? Nice to meet you. Nice to meet you.
Nice to meet you. I'm Justin. I mentioned that I'm doing a video featuring some of the sponsors here, and I was wondering if I could talk to you guys about why you decided to sponsor this event. Unfortunately, we're not allowed to do any.
Not allowed. Got it. Okay. No worries.
Yeah. I appreciate it. Thanks. Yeah.
I'm doing a video featuring some of the sponsors here at the event, and I was wondering if I could chat with you a bit about why you decided to sponsor Google Cloud next. Oh. Do you want to chat on video? No.
It's like me, a war summer. I'm not going to lie. That's all good. I appreciate it, though.
Yeah. No worries. That's all good. That brand just said that they didn't want to speak on camera because they couldn't get out of their contract here.
So, you have been a part of this event for many, many years. That's right. How do you think about getting a return on an investment event like this, right? I mean, it's not, it's not nothing.
Absolutely. It's a significant investment. Yeah. So, like, how do you think about, like, is it the quality of the leads that people coming through the booth?
Like, tell me a little bit about how you think about that. It is good to think in both in both pillars. Let's put it this way. You have the tangible ROI, the measurements, you know, like, you see the number of leads that you get, the number of closings, the number of meetings.
But you also have done tangibles, which is your brand exposure, which is your presence, which is the relationships that you form. Okay. So, as I was editing this, I realized I need to do a bit of commentary here because listen to what Leo just said. Leo, just handed you a cheat code for your next discovery call with the brand, you know?
Marketers internally justify their sponsorship spend in two buckets, typically, right? You've got the tangible stuff like leads and meetings and conversions and the intangible stuff, like, you know, the brand awareness and the presence and the relationships. I think most creators only pitch the first bucket often, right? They show up with their download numbers and the click rates and, you know, how much ship revenue they've driven on Amazon in the last 30 days or something like that, and they act like that.
That's the whole story. But if the brand you're talking to is an enterprise software company, a B2B tool, or anything with a long consideration cycle, awareness might actually be the more important bucket for them. And so, I think here's the question that you need to be asking in every discovery call, which is like, outside of direct conversions, what does success look like from a brand awareness or relationship standpoint? I think that that question alone signals that you understand how they think, right?
And that's exactly what separates a creator who gets a one-off deal from one who gets into a long-term partnership. So, yes, we are very much, we're happy with the leads and the closings and all of that, but we also happy to interact and to be part of the community. Yeah. So, I suggest folks calculate both.
And calculate the numbers and calculate the relationships. Same more about the exposure and the relationship aspects, because I think a lot, I've talked with some other sponsors here, and a lot of them are very like, all right, how many badges did I scan? How many meetings did I set up here? So, I'm curious, how do you even quantify something like someone walking by the booth and like, oh, I remember that name, or they see an ad later.
So, how do you think about that? So, we have closed deals that we've met folks from Google Cloudnex, but like, you've four years and five years. Four to five years. Let that sink in, right?
Leo is describing a sales cycle that I think a lot of creators, they never even think about when they're pitching a brand or having a conversation and negotiation with the brand, because the way a brand measures ROI from a partnership often is directly tied to the length of their sales cycle. So, if you're working with a SaaS company, a financial services brand, or any kind of enterprise or B2B software or something, oftentimes they are not expecting to close customers the week your video drops.
You know, their success metric is getting in front of the right people at the right stage of awareness, right? So, when, again, when you're on a discovery call with a brand like that, and you ask what would a win look like, don't be surprised if the answer has nothing to do with immediate sales. You have to understand their sales cycle first, or at least ask them about that on the call, then pitch to that. Because if you show up talking about conversion rates to a brand, you know, that's playing a three-year game, you're going to be speaking a completely different language.
So, in my, that return might not come right away after the first round of campaigns and the first round of outreach, but you have a conversation in year one, and then that company will come around, then have another conversation in year two, and then they're at the end of a particular contract. I remember talking to Aodox is the most appropriate time, is the most appropriate way for us to pick that conversation back up. So, it might not be that ROI right post of it, but the way that we consider that exposure and that relationship building is when we have situations like that when you close two years after, or three years after, or four years after, which has happened to us.
Wow, that's crazy. Big, you know, seven digits top of deal. A seven figure deal from a relationship that started at a booth. So, here's the creator translation for you, is that if you land a brand that thinks this way, that invests in relationships over the long haul, and they measure success over years and not weeks, don't pitch them a single sponsored post, right?
You have to pitch them like a sustained partnership, like a multi-quarter campaign, a retainer, because brands that operate with this kind of long-term mentality are exactly the ones who are going to keep paying you. They're going to keep renewing with you, and they're eventually going to become the anchor sponsors that transform your business. So, I think the question that you should be asking yourself after every discovery call is, is this brand playing a short game or a long game?
Because your pitch should look completely different depending on the answer. That was great. All right, the small sponsors don't have any legal teams or HR saying that they can't talk to me, so I'm going to keep going for the small sponsors. All right, so I'm here with Tom from Granica.
Yes. Did I pronounce that right? You did, Granica. Supergirl, so when you are seeing attendees walking by and looking at the booth and things like that, how do you think about engaging them in terms of wanting to learn more about your tool?
What are some of your KPIs about? You walk away from this event and you're like, that was worth it. Yeah, so we're trying to identify individuals who are relevant to what we actually provide. Right?
Sure. Having those discussions with those types of individuals. The KPIs we're looking for are talking to folks who are carrying about like what we do. Right?
So we try not to take a spray and spray a pouch of skin, everybody. And there's a lot of really interesting stuff going on here. So we look for like having discussions with like the individuals who care about what we do. So this is exactly how a sophisticated marketer thinks, right?
And it should completely change how you pitch them. Right, Tom, just told you that they are actively filtering out irrelevant people, even when those people are walking right past their booth. Right? They're not interested in volume.
They're interested in fit. So when you send a pitch to a brand, your number one job in the first two sentences is to prove that your audience is their customer. Not that you have a big audience. Not that your engagement rate is above average or whatever.
That your specific audience with their specific problems and interests is the exact person that that brand is trying to reach. And if you can't make that case immediately, the brand is going to like mentally file you into the, you know, that spray and prey pile and they're just going to move on. So you have to lead with why you are a conduit for them to access either current or prospective new customers. Everything else is going to be secondary.
How do you think about getting an ROI from a from sponsoring an event like this? Like, you know, obviously, you're scanning badges, you're scheduling follow-up meetings either here or after the event. How do you, how do you think about an event like this and think that was worth a while? We're going to sponsor it again in future years.
Yeah. So I can kind of answer this from two sides. Obviously, for me, as one of the kind executives, it would mean that I had brought in new customers to your own cover. Okay.
Kind of an import. Yeah. No entrepreneur. Yeah, right.
That's the obvious one. But also it's been super fun to see like we have our, our incredibly popular swag. Oh, yeah. Is it, is it, is it people are digging it?
Thirdly popular. Yeah. Yeah. But it's so fun to be able to walk around and just see like yellow and white stripes of, of our, or swag bags and everyone learning about ground cover and see their marketing for you.
They're like, oh, boy, it's walking around the event, right? There's a little viral. Yeah, that's pretty, that's pretty, that's pretty. And people are like, hey, where'd you get that bag?
Let me go over to the booth, right? Yeah. Yeah. Really.
Well, that's, that's actually pretty good. Okay. So let's say next week, you all have a debrief meeting as a team. You're like, all right, let's go over how Google Cloud next works or how it went.
How do you make the decision? Like we're definitely going back next year or like, yeah, how does that conversation go down? I would say we've already made that decision. Really?
It's been an incredible show. We've had thousands of conversations with, you know, hundreds of qualified companies that are really actively looking to solve a problem that we solve for. Right. And yeah, I would, I would say it's not even really a question of if we'd sort of already, we don't have to debrief, we know that we're coming back next year.
So that phrase right there, you know, we don't have to debrief, we know we're coming back. That is the feeling that you want every brand to have after working with you, right? And notice what produced that feeling for ground cover. It wasn't like vibes.
It wasn't like a gut feeling that things went well. It was the fact that they could clearly see that they were reaching their ICP, their ideal customer persona. Hundreds of qualified conversations with people who had the exact problem that they saw. That is a measurable outcome.
So I think the question is when a brand finishes the campaign with you, can they clearly see that they reach their ideal customer? Not that your video got views, but that the right people saw it and, and hopefully engaged with it and responded to it. And by the way, that's what your post campaign report needs to show. Comments from people who are clearly in the brand's target market, right?
DMs from people who said that they tried the product, right? And qualitative proof that the fit there was real. You know, when you hand a brand that kind of evidence, you don't have to chase the renewal, they already know. I mean, this is going pretty awesome.
Like, I feel like amazing conversations going to the smaller brands was definitely the way to go. There seemed much more open to talking to me. Just such an interesting diversity of a thought as to how they calculate the ROI and events. I love it.
Do you think that like location, a booth, size of booth correlates to like level of engagement traffic, that type of thing through the booth? I've thought that in the past, but today we have our position is sort of in the back, which I was, you know, not sure how it was going to go, but we had tremendous engagement. It was actually very favorable for us. And a lot of traffic.
So it was great. That's pretty sweet. Is this your first year sponsoring it? Are you?
We've sponsored many years in the past, and I've been attending these for many years as well. How do you think about this event in particular versus other industry events? Like, what is unique about Google Cloud Next? This is the big one for us.
This is our Super Bowl, just because of what we do. So every marketer has a hierarchy of bets, right? There are the small shows they test, the medium ones that they repeat if they work. And then there's the Super Bowl, right, or maybe the big game, right?
You know, let us say Super Bowl, the one event or channel where their entire audience is concentrated and where showing up small is simply not an option for them. And so I think your job in a discovery call is to figure out where you fall in that hierarchy for this particular brand, right? Are you there Super Bowl? Are you there?
They're big game. I don't know why I keep saying that, right? Or are you a test? Because if you're there Super Bowl, if your audience is the highest concentration of their ideal customer anywhere online, you should be pricing and positioning yourself accordingly, right?
That means not sending a rate card. It means building a custom proposal that reflects what it actually means for them to reach your audience at scale. And if you don't know where you rank yet, just ask them, right? How does partnering with creators fit into your broader marketing strategy this year?
And their answer is going to tell you everything. Because we're an all in Google Partner, our entire business is based around serving Google customers. So this is the number one event of our entire year. That's so we prepared for this.
So we'll start preparing for next year, next week. Wow, really? Yeah. So you just kind of do the debrief and absolutely start getting ready for next year.
That's incredible. Is that level of lead time needed to have a successful event, you think? I mean, I'm developing a little bit, I guess, but what we do start preparing pretty quickly after it. But yeah, it's really to book the sponsorship and to start the plan of the logistics does take a while.
So I would say probably safe bet six months before then it really heats up about three months before six months, right? That's what when the budget decisions are already being made for their biggest annual investment. I think what this means for you practically is that if you want to be a part of a brand's major sponsorship push, whether that's a product launch or a seasonal campaign or an annual event, you cannot show up two weeks before it happens and expect to get in, right?
The money is already allocated, right? The partners are already selected. And so the window to get into that budget is during their planning cycle many months earlier. And so I think this is why, like, the best time to pitch the next campaign is at the end of the current one right there.
And you know, in the post campaign reporter in the post campaign call, hopefully you're having one after you've shown them the results, you say, hey, you know, when does your team start planning for Q3 or Q4 or whatever? And you know, that single question is going to position you as someone who thinks like a marketing partner, right? And it's going to get you into the room before the door closes. Amy, it's so wonderful to meet you.
Nice to meet you. Tell me a little bit about why Twilio decided to sponsor Google Cloud next. Absolutely. So we decided to sponsor Google Cloud next because we really want to be able to showcase how our infrastructure is able to help support your AI strategy.
So between all the ways that we're able to support businesses, the AI piece is super, super important to us. So I felt like this is a great opportunity for us to be able to showcase that to an audience who actually understands how this works and understands and appreciates this AI surgeons we're having. Yeah. How do you think about getting an ROI on a sponsor event like this?
Obviously, you can scan badges, you can schedule meetings here. Yeah. But like, let's say the dust settles a week from now, you're having the post-mortem meeting about how it went. What's going through your brain?
Of course you have your leads, right? But we like to be in person and have these great conversations. So you can't have the conversations and meet people and understand their needs, people, you know, there's a difference between like getting emails and people like sharing their concerns and their pain points. We like being here and being able to meet people in person and seeing exactly what are you looking for?
What are you needing? How can we improve? How can we make things better for you? So we love coming to shows like this because we're actually able to talk to people, talk to our customers, talk to our partners and talk to people who need to know who we are.
So say more about that. So a lot of people I think, a lot of sponsors who come here think, oh, it's just, it's acquisition, it's new customers. But you're saying like, okay, customers, partners, like talk about the importance of like the retention aspect of being at a show like this. So it's about relationships.
So it's about building those relationships, understanding, you know, many of customers where they are and actually seeing what they need. So we like to come to these conferences just because we know that if you're coming to this conference, you need something. You're looking for something you want to experience something. So we like to be in those spaces to make sure that we're there to meet those needs.
Right. Interesting. Now, Amy just described I think three completely different goals in one answer, right? She talked about acquisition, retention and partner relationships.
And this is something that I think a lot of creators don't think about a lot when they're engaging with us with a prospective sponsor. When you get on a discovery call with a brand, don't assume that there are singular goal is new customers. You know, a lot of brands show up to sponsorships specifically to deepen relationships with people who already know them. And if that's the case, your pitch needs to reflect that.
You know, instead of just leading with your reach and the impressions that you're going to get, you lead with your community and trust building. Right. You talk about how your audience takes your recommendations seriously, how they reply to your emails, you know, how they've, especially if they've bought things that you've mentioned before. Because, you know, a brand that is in retention mode, that kind of influence over an existing customer base is worth far more than just like cold or raw eyeballs.
And so you'll never know which mode a brand is in until you ask them. So just ask. So let's say that you're at that meeting next week, you're trying to decide whether you're going to sponsor this event. Sure.
Again, in future years, like what's going to make that a no brainer for you? What makes it a no brainer is making sure that the right people are in the building. So we are talking to people we know and we're talking to people who need to know who we are. So understanding the audience and being able to speak to people who actually need us, that's important for us.
So that's going to make us understand, OK, Google Cloud next was great for us and want to be back next year. So normally it's historical data. So if we go on to that conference before, we know that we've done well at those shows and we've met some really great people, then sure we may go bigger. So historical data, right?
That's the deciding factor for whether a brand often decides to double down with you or pull back from a partnership. And you know, as a creator, you're the one who controls how that conversation goes down internally oftentimes, right? I think a lot of creators, they finish a campaign, they send a screenshot of their analytics and they just, you know, they call it done. That is not a post campaign report, even if the brand is asking you for that, really the brands that often go bigger, deep in a partnership with you, the ones if you have an in person event, the ones that upgrade from the 10 by 20 booth to the 20 by 40 booth or whatever, that go from, you know, one sponsored post with you to a six month retainer.
But they do it because you gave them a clear compelling picture of what the last investment produced that is the real post campaign report, right? You've got the qualitative and the quantitative analysis. You've got the proof that the partnership worked, they can take that report, they can talk with their superiors, they can talk with their colleagues about and they're at that all hands marketing meeting and they're talking about how that last partnership with you went armed with that data.
Right? When you hand a brand that kind of report after your first partnership together, you're not just closing the loop on that deal, you are building the case for a bigger one. So there you have it. Did you guys enjoy this one?
I was like, Loki a little nervous to approach some of these booths, but I did it for you. So let me know in the comments what you learned from this episode. And by the way, if you are wondering, like, how do I actually approach a sponsor and pitch them to sponsor my thing? Make sure to check out this episode right here.
Other episodes covering the same guests and topics, from across The B2B Podcast Index.
How API Webhook Delivery SLOs Create Hidden Reliability RisksThe Developer Tools Podcast with Fexingo · on Twilio98 / 100
Cutting the cost of Customer Success by 70% (without layoffs), with Jim Richmond, CCO of SmartlingThis is Growth! · on ICP (Ideal Customer Profile)87 / 100
Why Your Marketing Automation Ignores SMSThe Marketing Operator Podcast with Fexingo · on Twilio85 / 100
What I Wish I’d Known About Sales With Tom HappeB2B Sales Playbook · on ICP (Ideal Customer Profile)79 / 100
HOW THIS HOBBIE GAVE THIS REP THE RIGHT MINDSETThe Brutal Truth about Sales and Selling · on Enterprise sales cycles78 / 100
Best of Build Mode: Think like a VCEquity · on ICP (Ideal Customer Profile)78 / 100
How I Lost a $6K/mo Brand Deal With Perplexity75 / 100How 1,300 LinkedIn Followers Landed Them Google75 / 100I Convinced a 700K Newsletter to Stop Ignoring Ads61 / 100I Grilled an Ad Agency CEO on How They Pick Creators76 / 100Why brands aren't responding to you60 / 100