by Kristin Swartzlander | Feb 15, 2019 | Racing Sponsorship
It’s the time of year when we see a flurry of press releases in the racing world that boasts exactly how many sponsors a racer has as he or she launches this season’s racing campaign. While the world is all about big numbers, racing is different. In racing, you win by having the lowest times and finishing in the #1 spot. When I think about adding sponsors, I consider that concept. I evaluate what our team, event or property will be trading off to post another ‘number’. And I advise my coaching clients to do the same. For every marketing partner you add, you potentially split your time, effort and the attention span of your audience. Keep in mind that if you’re not maxed out on any of those assets, then adding another partner is purely a positive for your team. But I often wonder when I see lists of 20+ sponsors on a release: is that team providing equivalent value to those partners? Or are they going a mile wide and an inch deep? If you have two dozen partners, but each of those businesses only invests in one or two properties, how equivalent is the promotion of that partnership going to be? You’re splitting your time between 24 businesses on your race car, social media, website, and activations. But they’re only promoting you. The racer is getting the majority of the benefit, as their audience will come to equate your team or property with that business, but your audience is struggling to keep track of who your partners are and, most importantly, why. As an aside, many...
by Kristin Swartzlander | Feb 7, 2019 | Motorsports Marketing for Tracks, Teams and Businesses, Racing Sponsorship
There’s a group of racers that still believe that sponsorship is just a logo and a check. Some tracks still think a billboard does the trick, too. Since you’re taking the time to read this newsletter, you’ve likely already qualified yourself out of those groups. Welcome! So, you’re one of the racers who are as motivated to find marketing partners as they are to perform well on the track. You’re ready to match up your offerings – your tangible assets and your audience – to a company’s goals, whether those are customer-focused, business-to-business or internal. Instead of talking about sponsorship mentality, I wanted to give you some ideas about where you, the motivated and educated sponsorship seeker, might get hung up in the process: making it easy for sponsors to say ‘yes’ to your offer. Have you ever wanted to buy something and gone to the business with the full intent to make a purchase, only to walk out with nothing in hand? Ask yourself, why? When you’re buying a gallon of milk or a pack of zip ties, you might not have a hard time purchasing a different brand than your preferred, or choosing a different color. You might pay a little more than usual, or have to make a different size work. But you still make a purchase. But, let’s say you’re buying a car. Or a computer. Or a couch. When you’re spending a decent sum of money on a purchase you don’t make often and that has utility in your life, the buying process becomes more complicated. How do you find the right product? Can...
by Kristin Swartzlander | Jun 1, 2017 | Racing Sponsorship
For most of us, racing season is about performance in the garage and on the track. It’s easy once the season gets going to go into ‘maintenance mode’ – where you’re just maintaining and improving your car and showing up to the races on your schedule – and forget about ‘sponsorship mode’. Once the racing season starts, though, you have a ton of opportunities to both: attract new marketing partners, and, activate your current sponsor relationships. Many of the sponsorship-seekers and clients that I speak with are comfortable with the idea of activating their current marketing partners because they know it’s critical to making their sponsors happy now and in the future. But the underrated part of keeping your current partner(s) happy? Sponsorship activation often attracts new sponsors, too. And there is no better or easier time to activate your partnerships than during the season, when fans and the media are paying the most attention to your program and you have lots of opportunities to bring your partnership alive. When potential marketing partners see how well your promote your current partners, it’s easier for them to see exactly what they could be investing in and what kind of job you’ll do for them in the future. They see what you create, whether that’s marketing done in person (appearances), at the race track (autograph cards, apparel, announcer information and, you know, being a person and interacting with fans), online (social media) or any other way you put information about your sponsors out there. They see the response to what you create, whether that’s through the reaction of your fans online or offline or the public interaction...
by Kristin Swartzlander | Apr 7, 2017 | Motorsports Marketing for Tracks, Teams and Businesses, Racing Sponsorship
When you’re pitching a sponsor or creating a proposal for a potential marketing partner, you can exponentially increase the odds of moving forward in the process if you know what that company’s goals are and how you can help achieve them. But how do you get that information? All businesses want to increase their bottom line. That’s the obvious. Most companies want to do that by selling more products or services. But pitching on the ‘I can expose your product to more eyeballs’ line is way too general for most companies to take seriously. They might want to sell more of their products or services via social media, which often has a lower cost of customer acquisition, or they might want to sell more of their products to their existing customers, or find new customers, or sell higher-priced products, etc. The more specific you can get in solving a problem, need or desire, the more chance you have at the decision-maker finding a fit with your solution. (Bonus: the pricing matters less when you’re providing a clear solution to an expensive or difficult problem.) What other problems might companies want to solve? Saving money on products or services they utilize adds as much to their bottom line as selling more products. If you can help them do that, you’re providing value. Providing access to a marketplace – say, getting their product on the shelves of an auto parts store chain or having them picked up in a catalog – can provide direct value. Brand-building activities like a positive role in the community, access to an influencer’s network, emphasizing product use or...
by Kristin Swartzlander | Mar 2, 2017 | Racing Sponsorship
Most of the questions that I get about sponsorship center around the outbound portion of forging a relationship: How do I find a potential sponsor? Who do I talk in the company about sponsorship? What should I put in my proposal? How many times should I reach out? Should I mock-up my car with their logos so they can see what they’re getting? What should I charge for ‘x’ size logo? But I’ve found that racers, and tracks, who have the most success with finding and keeping marketing partners are looking at it from a different angle and asking this question: What will make my team sponsor-able? But we’re all sponsor-able, right? I’m able to deposit that check, I know it! It’s not so much about being able to accept or accommodate sponsorship. It’s about building a property that’s worthy of sponsorship. And I don’t mean worthy in a moral sense. I’m talking about building value into your brand, and then finding a marketing partner that will exchange value (i.e. money, product, access to resources, etc.) for what you provide. I’m talking about making it easy for potential marketing companies to find you, understand the value of what you offer and build a relationship with you. So, how do you do that? For me, it all comes back to branding. I got an email from a racer a few weeks ago with questions about sponsorship. He had a professional signature line on his email with a link to his website (*high fives*). But when I opened that website…I was even more impressed with his branding! His website had clear imagery, consistent colors and...
by Kristin Swartzlander | Feb 2, 2017 | Motorsports Marketing for Tracks, Teams and Businesses, Racing Sponsorship
When I worked in the advertising agency business, one of the first things we would do when starting a marketing, advertising or social media campaign was try to determine our ‘ideal customer’. In fact, if you and I have ever worked together – on race track marketing or otherwise – I’ve probably walked you through an exercise to help determine who your ideal client or customer is. Whether you’re selling sponsorship, in which case your marketing partner is your client, or selling event tickets you have to be able to address the customer’s needs, wants or problems in order to offer them a solution, i.e. your product or service. In order to do that, you need to know who you’re marketing to. That is your ideal customer. Traditionally, that ideal customer profile is created around a set of demographics which might include age, gender, location, income level, race, religion, marital status, etc. This is a set of facts that we used to employ to figure out what type of person is most likely to buy Widget X or hire Service Provider Y. For example, for an expensive laundry detergent we might traditionally have targeted moms within the ages of 38-45 who had a household income of more than $100,000 because they were the most likely to be able to spend the extra money on clothing care. If you want to think about it in terms of racing, how many times have you heard that our short track racing fan base is aging? Or that we’re a blue-collar sport? Or that a family of four has to be able to afford the concession bill if they’re...
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