by Kristin Swartzlander | Jun 5, 2015 | Media and Public Relations, Mindset, Motorsports Marketing for Tracks, Teams and Businesses, Racing Social Media, Racing Sponsorship
Last week, I wrote about why engagement matters more than ever in racing. Engagement at the race track and engagement in your online community. The more engaged your audience is, the more consistently committed they are to you and your brand. If you read last week’s post, you know why engagement matters, I want to talk about how to boost your online engagement, whether you run a race team, series, track or brand. When you think about engagement, I want you to think about specific actions. Reading a piece of content, whether that’s on your Facebook account, Twitter feed or your scoreboard, is not engagement. That’s consumption. Engagement, by quantifiable standards, means taking action. Let’s talk about two of the most popular platforms: Facebook and Twitter. On Facebook, engagement means a: • Like, • Share, • Comment, or • Click on a link. On Twitter, engagement means a: • Retweet, • Favorite, • Reply, • Click on a link. You can imagine what engagement looks like on the rest of the interwebs – for example, on Instagram, Pinterest, YouTube and your email newsletter. What you probably already know is that Facebook treats engagement differently. Your content is ‘edge-ranked’ by Facebook’s algorithm based on a number of factors that influence who sees your content and how often. Engagement is a major factor in that equation. And while the other networks – including race tracks – don’t use engagement to determine your level of exposure to your fans, it’s just as important. The more action fans take with your content – whether that’s what you do at the track or online...
by Kristin Swartzlander | May 28, 2015 | Media and Public Relations, Motorsports Marketing for Tracks, Teams and Businesses, Racing Social Media, Racing Sponsorship
Over the next two weeks, I want to explore a topic that’s always hot when it comes to marketing and almost never talked about when it comes to racing: engagement. First, let’s talk about how to define engagement and why you should care. Generally, engagement is: emotional involvement or commitment. In our social media and online marketing, engagement means likes, comments, shares, and other actions like subscribes, purchases and referrals. At the race track, engagement is generally less quantifiable. It starts when a fan or driver enters the speedway and, for example, gets built by: Forming relationships with other fans, drivers and track staff, Cheering for their favorite driver, Attending an autograph session, Bringing a friend or family member, Buying apparel and souvenirs, and Sharing their experience on social media, bringing the concept full circle. As you might notice above, social media engagement feeds the at-the-track actions and at-the-track engagement can feed social media. If that doesn’t give you enough of a reason to care about engagement, here’s the what it boils down to: The more engaged your audience is, the more consistently committed they are to you and your brand. So, what does that mean to you? For drivers, engaged fans might mean more apparel sales, more cheers from the grandstands, more fan votes in contests, more sponsorship opportunities and better performance for your current marketing partners. For tracks, engaged fans might mean more consistent, higher attendance numbers, more apparel and souvenir sales, more sales of signature concession items, a higher propensity to share their experience at the track, more sponsorship opportunities and better performance for your current...
by Kristin Swartzlander | May 22, 2015 | Motorsports Marketing for Tracks, Teams and Businesses, Racing Sponsorship
Ever heard the phrase, ‘ideas are worthless without execution’? With the hands-on nature of racing, at the track and in the garage it’s very clear that an idea isn’t worth anything if we don’t do something with it. When it comes to sponsorship marketing, though, we often forget that ideas aren’t enough. We think that we can just pitch a bunch of ideas to a sponsor and we’ll execute whichever campaign they pick. Or, worse yet, we don’t give them any ideas and want them to ‘just tell us what you’re looking for and we’ll do that.’ There is a level of trust that has to be built with marketing partners, whether they’re new and you’re pitching them on an initial partnership or existing sponsors. The problem for sponsorship sellers is: anyone can come up with ideas. Even great ones. The problem for potential sponsors? Not everyone can, or will, execute them. But that’s not a problem for those of us who show up. For those who can and will execute. So how do you differentiate between your property – team, track, business – and the other idea-makers? You show, not just tell. How, you ask? Start by pitching ideas that are within, or only slightly above, your current marketing level. And then show them what you’ve already done and have in place that proves you’re up to the task. For example, my husband, Carl Bowser, was recently featured in a television commercial for his marketing partner, Turner’s Premium Iced Tea. This was his first television commercial. So why did they trust that the idea would work in real life?...
by Kristin Swartzlander | May 14, 2015 | Mindset, Motorsports Marketing for Tracks, Teams and Businesses, Racing Sponsorship
For most of us in racing, time is a limited resource. We don’t lack ability, smarts or awareness. It’s time that stops us from doing anything more than getting our day-to-day tasks done. It’s time that stops us from being proactive about marketing, interacting on social media, and pitching new partnerships. That’s why much of what I write focuses on two things: doing things better and making them easier. (Here’s a popular post on making it easy for others to help you sell yourself and tell your story.) As a person who owns a home, runs a business and is elbows-deep in a race team, I make a lot of buying decisions. And I have a few criteria that I weigh when I decide where to buy what I need: connection, convenience and cost. Last week, when I needed contacts I had to decide whether to order from a) my eye doctor or b) an online retailer. Here’s how I weighed my buying decision: Connection: I love my eye doctor, and I’d like to support her. I have no connection with an online retailer. Cost: My contacts cost between 40 and 50% less when I buy them online. Convenience: When I order from my eye doctor, I have to pick up the phone during their limited hours and explain to them what I want to order. They usually don’t know how long they’ll take. I wait for a phone call to say they’ve arrived. When I get the phone call, I have to find a time within their limited office hours to pick them up. They call every single...
by Kristin Swartzlander | May 7, 2015 | Mindset, Thoughts and Rants
If you’ve been following DirtyMouth for long, you know that I’m passionate about making waves in the racing industry. My goal with everything I do, from coaching and seminars to promoting and consulting, is to help us all make the sport stronger with positive change, now and in the future. So I bet you think you know what this post is about: making waves. In this case, I think a lot of you will be happy to know that you’re wrong. Today I want to talk about making ripples. But who cares about ripples when other are making waves? Me, and I’ll tell you why. When you first start out in racing, or in anything else for that matter, you’re a beginner. From your first job to your first time playing a video game, you generally start out at zero. And when you work at something new, you start improving. In fact, the harder you work, the more you improve. You go from tiny steps to leaps and bounds. It’s easy to see this with rookie racers. Most struggle to make their first laps. But after some experience, they start to improve. Once they get the car under them, they quickly shave a large chunk of time off of their laps. Then they finish their first race and begin making passes. When you get a little bit of skill and confidence, you can quickly go from last to, well, not last. That’s making waves. But as you get better and better, those huge improvements taper off. You might only shave two seconds off your best lap on a good...
Connect!