tips for finding sponsors for offline events?

Who are you going after? Who would benefit from advertising for these events?

Depending on your answer, you could go through local chambers of commerce, other events, local newspaper ads, adwords, solo ads, telemarketing, linkedin, ... a combo of those and others, all of them.

Need more info.

Look at your product. Who are you and who is your client? Now look to find businesses with similar products or services and who do not complete. You should find some. JV partner with them. You give them what they want and they will give you what you want. It can be a match made in heaven.

When looking for other businesses, try your trade magazines and Google some relevant keywords, that should give you some clues.

Good luck with it.

You can find those advertisers at Linkedin for certain events, it's much more esiest way to find whom you're looking for.

Set up different levels of sponsorship and what they get. Lay it out nice and clean on a proposal or brochure. Ex:

Gold Sponsor

--Lead sponsor in all publicity materials
--Signage behind speakers at event.
--Signage at welcome area.
--Item in goody bags.
--VIP area signage.
--Named sponsor on all event documents.
--Banner on event website.
--Signage on all event vehicles.

Silver

--Secondary sponsor in all publicity.
--250 x 250 web banner on event site.
--named sponsor of key sessions.

Bronze

--mentions in publicity material
--125 x 125 web banner on event site.
--named sponsor of luncheon.

This is just a limited example. Possibly you have none or some of these opportunities. The point is to offer several levels of sponsorship. Then approach sponsors.

They want to sponsor events that reach their customers. You must know the exact demographic of who is likely to come to yours. That means their age, sex, income level, professional level, etc.

Vice versa, look for sponsors you know match your event attendees. Do a search for "event sponsor proposal" to get some ideas on how to structure it. You may find several in your industry that you can model.

Live events are a great "value add" for sponsors to offer their clients. That means that your sponsors like to be able to bring their clients. Offer them a certain number of tickets/passes for them to pass out to their own customers. In the proposal maybe give them a few passes and then make it seem like you were able to free up several more "just for them."