Grow Your AWS Business through AWS re:Invent Sponsorship

New business owners understand the challenge of growing their business with limited resources. Investing in marketing activities to garner awareness, determining an appropriate budget for activities, conducting trial and acquisition, and effectively measuring return on investment (ROI) are critical steps for success, but implementation of these activities can be daunting. AWS is here to help, and one of the most effective resources we offer is AWS Sponsorship.

AWS Sponsorship is one of the marketing programs available exclusively to APN members. The AWS team has a number of best practices and toolkits available to help simplify sponsorship execution, and opportunities are available for all budgets and goals. Below, we highlight common questions surrounding sponsorship, and the benefits this program can provide for your firm. We also discuss the success two APN Advanced Technology Partners, CloudCheckr and Evident.io, have had in growing their businesses through AWS Sponsorship.

Is Sponsorship Expensive?

This is the first question that many APN Partners ask when the topic of sponsorship presents itself. When marketing your business every cent counts, and all marketing spend should be able to produce a strong ROI. Our team is here to help make sure that happens as you invest in AWS sponsorship opportunities!

In 2013, CloudCheckr joined AWS as a Bronze sponsor at re:Invent. Only in business for two years, the risk of receiving a poor ROI on their $15K+ investment was a valid concern. However, they are now a part of the 85 percent of APN Partners that return annually to sponsor re:Invent, and the 50 percent that increase their sponsorship investment year-over-year (YOY). With the 1000+ leads and access to the industry’s most influential cloud technology providers they gained at re:Invent, the CloudCheckr team believes that their sponsorship investments laid the groundwork for their 1100 percent growth in 2014.

“Sponsoring re:Invent  2013 was a key factor in CloudCheckr’s marketing success, as it provided the springboard for our product awareness. We used the 1000+ leads and countless conversations held at our booth as the groundwork for our 1100% revenue growth in 2014. re: Invent 2014, with another 1000+ leads and conversations, helped further expand our market presence and maintain our dynamic growth. We look forward to sponsoring re:Invent 2015 and future events as these events remain key drivers in CloudCheckr’s marketing success.” – Aaron Klein, Founder and COO at CloudCheckr

Evident.io felt similarly to CloudCheckr. In 2013, they joined AWS re:Invent as a Silver sponsor while their company was still in beta.  Evident.io nurtured the leads acquired from this event to grow their business exponentially. This growth has enabled them to more than double their sponsorship investment YOY.

“AWS re:Invent is the most meaningful industry event that we participate in to meet, interact and contribute to the Security and DevOps community leveraging AWS. Each year Evident.io has a strong presence on the exhibitor floor and sponsors various networking events – including a popular stop on the annual Pub Crawl at Madame Tussauds Wax Museum. As our investment in re:Invent has increased, so have the results. In 2014 we engaged 1000s of new leads for our continuous security platform which converted into dozens of new sales opportunities and well over $1M in pipeline value. AWS re:Invent is an annual highlight for our sales, marketing, and technical teams, and has had a tremendous impact on Evident.io’s rapid growth. ” – Jamie Glade, Marketing Manager at Evident.io

Can I Really Do This Successfully If I’m Not a Marketing Expert?

Absolutely. You don’t need to be a marketing expert to have an extremely successful experience through AWS Sponsorship. It’s our job to help simplify the sponsorship process and make execution easier than adding more storage to your Amazon S3 account (or almost!).  There are a variety of sponsorship types to suit the audience you’re trying to reach, your budget, and your goals. Additionally, we design our Expo Halls to be destination centers, with floor plans strategically designed to maximize the best opportunities across all sponsors for traffic generation regardless of placement. Additionally, we provide you with toolkits such as our How-To Guide on the APN Portal to make execution as streamlined as possible.

Join us at re:Invent 2015!

We’ve been fortunate to watch our APN Partners grow alongside of us with this program. At our largest annual cloud technology conference, AWS re:Invent 2015, we are expecting more than 17,000 attendees. There are a number of entry-level sponsorships still available for this event.  For more information, please review our prospectus or contact reinvent-sponsorship@amazon.com.

We look forward to working with you and watching you grow your business through AWS Sponsorship!