by Kristin Swartzlander | Jul 28, 2016 | Media and Public Relations, Mindset, Motorsports Marketing for Tracks, Teams and Businesses, Racing Social Media, Racing Sponsorship
Big wins. They are what we all live for, right? Being crowned King Kristin (hmm, Roger, can we chat?) at Eldora Speedway’s Kings Royal or the Knoxville Nationals Champion might top your list. Or maybe you’re aiming higher, for a points championship in Formula One or NASCAR. But most of us aren’t just one step away from our IndyCar points trophies. That might be where our dream started, but it’s not going to happen tomorrow, or this year, and we’re mostly okay with that. Why? As long as we don’t quit, we’re still working towards our dreams. But what about those days – or months – when you’re losing motivation? When those big wins are too far apart? When you feel like you’re not making any progress? When you question what you’re doing altogether? Over the past few weeks, I’ve released just shy of 20,000 words in the Build Your Racing Brand Challenge. It’s been a bigger undertaking than I imagined, mostly because I can’t stop typing everything I think will help you in your quest to build a brand. (Didn’t join at the beginning of the month? Don’t worry – you can still start from Day 1 of the FREE challenge right on over here. There are tons of social media goodies in there, along with mindset hacks (<-just realized I don’t care for that word, thankyouverymuch) and sponsorship insights.) It’s also the middle of summer – the busiest time of the year for us in terms of schedule because we’re racing and so are all of our clients – and I have been up to my eyeballs in...
by Kristin Swartzlander | Jul 17, 2016 | Media and Public Relations, Mindset, Motorsports Marketing for Tracks, Teams and Businesses, Racing Sponsorship
As a racer, you might not think of your website as a critical piece of your program. But to me, your website is to your online brand what your hauler is to your on-track performance: it’s the hub of the action in the pits. If it’s effective, it holds your tools, spare parts and support crew/materials in a layout that’s designed for racing. The more effective your hauler – the more it contains in a better layout – the better job it enables you to do on the track. Your hauler doesn’t make or break your on-track performance. But without it, your job would be a heck of a lot harder. Your website serves the same function when it comes to your ability to grow an audience and support your team financially with sponsorship marketing and merchandise sales, for example. Yes, you can serve marketing partners without one. And yes, you can sell apparel and build a fan base without one. But it’s less effective – you’ll have to work harder for lesser results. (Why? When fans want to purchase your apparel but can’t make it to the pits at the track where you’re selling your t-shirts that one night, they go to your website to purchase. When marketing partners do their research on the driver that just pitched them, or they found on a social media channel, they’ll go to your website to see if you’re legit and represent yourself well. When at track announcer needs bio information, when a media member needs results, and when a fan wants to find out more about you, they’ll all go to your website.)...
by Kristin Swartzlander | Jul 1, 2016 | Media and Public Relations, Mindset, Motorsports Marketing for Tracks, Teams and Businesses, Racing Social Media, Racing Sponsorship
Last week, we talked about one of the best pieces of advice I can give you: don’t wait until you’re winning to build a brand. Smart companies partner with brands, not just fast race cars, in order to reach their audience. Fans become the audience of their favorite brands. In short: if you want to win races, fans and partnerships, build a brand. If you signed up for the 30 Day Build Your Racing Brand Challenge, you’re on board with the concept. If you haven’t already, you can sign up here. But it’s important before we dive too deep into the actionable parts of the challenge to build a strong foundation. We need to cover what being a personal brand means, and what it can do for you. What is a Brand Let’s not call Merriam or Webster on this one. I will give you my definition, and we’ll move forward on the pretense that I’m not completely incorrect: A brand is a set of stories, relationships, experiences and expectations that inspire a person’s decision to choose one product over another. You are the product. So is your competition. The relationship you have with a fan (or marketing partner, or media member) helps them decide whether to buy into your brand or not. Those relationships are built on their experience with your brand. That experience is built on a set of stories. And this is my word of warning: even if you are not telling your story, an experience is still being formed about your brand for fans. And it is completely out of your control. If you want...
by Kristin Swartzlander | Jun 23, 2016 | Media and Public Relations, Mindset, Motorsports Marketing for Tracks, Teams and Businesses, Racing Social Media, Racing Sponsorship
In Ready to make your racing your business? Treat it that way., I talked about how easy it is to chalk up a lack of action on your part to saying, ‘when you get to X turning point, you’ll do Y.’ One of the challenges I get often from racers who want to be successful in the sponsorship arena but aren’t winning on the track is this: “I can’t sell sponsorship (or t-shirts) until I start winning races.” And if that mindset isn’t enough to stop you in your tracks, there’s always the: “I can’t win races until I have the money (i.e. sponsorship) to compete!” Seems like a catch-22. You can’t win until you’re getting paid, but you can’t get paid unless you win. Sounds like only rich kids with parents willing to dump money into racing are going to make it. And they’re the ones that don’t even need sponsorship! (<- How many times have you heard that one float around the pits?!) Bollocks! (<- I’d say if I was British.) There is a huge misconception in the racing industry that they only ways you can get sponsorship funds are: a) cry poor and b) win races. Oh, and you can c) know somebody, which in negative rhetoric implies that only rich people know business owners, but I believe you can/must achieve the same effect by working hard to build relationships (no matter what your income level). The misconceptions all feed off of one concept: sponsors aren’t driven by business results. They’re motivated by emotions – pulling on the heart strings or the pride of seeing their sponsored car in victory lane. But wait,...
by Kristin Swartzlander | Jun 3, 2016 | Media and Public Relations, Mindset, Motorsports Marketing for Tracks, Teams and Businesses, Racing Sponsorship
You can have one night stands, or you can have relationships. You likely can’t have both. At least not for long – just look at celebrities, politicians and athletes paying the big bucks in alimony and child support for trying to make that third setup work. In racing, and probably in life, ‘one night stands’ might produce wins. But they might cost you more in the long-term: On the track, if you can only control your win-producing -peed every once in a while, you’re likely crashing more than you’re winning. And that’s more expensive than just getting consistently faster until you’re a dominant car each and every race. If you got the lead by taking out a competitor, you earned a short term win and, likely, an instant deduction to your fan base. The same goes for the off the track end of your racing business. You might be easily able to charm the proverbial pants off of a potential sponsor. But if you’re not setup to actually deliver and activate long-term, that relationship won’t last. And, just like on the track, you might not just lose one fan. That marketing partner that you left out in the cold is likely to tell his business buddies, or the whole world (hello, internet!) about exactly how you do business. Deep, long-term relationships based with marketing partners on mutual respect, however, do exactly the opposite: they grow over time, and sometimes even multiple with referrals to more potential marketing partners and other valuable opportunities. I get asked a lot of questions about sponsorship-seeking tactics: What is the title of the person making sponsorship decisions? How do I...
by Kristin Swartzlander | May 20, 2016 | Media and Public Relations, Mindset, Motorsports Marketing for Tracks, Teams and Businesses, Racing Social Media, Racing Sponsorship, Thoughts and Rants
In my line of work, I get to see a lot of marketing. From flyers on windshields to social media updates – yep, that’s marketing even if you’re only selling your own image – we come across thousands of marketing messages each and every day. And we all know that there are people or companies who get it right, and people who’s marketing falls flat. It’s not wrong. It’s just there. And we aren’t buying what there is(n’t) selling. Good marketing determines quite a bit of success in racing. They might post gate times and ticket prices, or results on race night, just like everyone else. And, even though you might not be sure why, something is missing. It’s the story. We racing people are practical. We talk prices. We talk times. We talk weights and pressures and RPMs. And sometimes we forget that we do it all for a reason that has nothing to do with making a shiny thing go faster. We are too close to the details to see the bigger picture. And that bigger picture is how we market ourselves, as drivers, and teams, and tracks, and event promoters. Yes, it’s important to know how to tweet, and to actually do that. But to think you’re going to build a fan base just by putting up results, gate times and ticket prices is a big mistake. And it’s where I see many racing businesses – frankly, businesses in many markets – fall flat. Want to nurture a new fan relationship? Want to create a new customer? Tell me why you race. Tell me what you love about the...
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