by Kristin Swartzlander | Apr 7, 2016 | Media and Public Relations, Mindset, Motorsports Marketing for Tracks, Teams and Businesses, Racing Social Media, Racing Sponsorship
Whether you’re a track promoter or a team owner, things are about to get real. Real busy, that is. With the racing season upon us, nights in the garage / at the track are going to get longer and the time you can devote to ‘extras’ – what marketing is, like it or not, to many of us – becomes shorter and shorter. It’s really easy, and common, to hit July or August before you order your apparel, get around to inviting sponsors (or potential marketing partners) to the track, or realize you missed a holiday promotion you wanted to run. It happens to all of us (or maybe just me). So, I put together a list of ten things that you can handle, or schedule, now, while you still have at least a little bit of breathing room, so that your season runs smoothly and you reach your goals for the season without overloading the last few race weekends of the year with everything you forgot about earlier. Social media channels – If you don’t have them setup already, please do it now. (And, if that’s the case, just pick one and do that well to start with. Then branch out as you get your social-media-sea-legs.) If you’ve been quiet all winter, it’s time to stretch those thumbs and start putting information out about your first event, any partner news you have and your 2016 car or apparel designs, for example. If you’ve been active this whole time, bravo! You’re in the minority, but you’re surely a #DirtyMouther indeed! (P.S. Need guidance for your social channels? Check out the Social Media...
by Kristin Swartzlander | Mar 31, 2016 | Racing Sponsorship
Sponsorship, in particular finding marketing partners, is one of the most popular topics on this blog and with my coaching clients, so it’s only natural that I get questions on that process frequently. Today, I’d like to talk about the sponsorship outreach process, and the questions that I get on that, including some variation of: How many emails do I need to send to get a sponsor? I’ve sent emails and haven’t gotten a response. What do I do? Should I follow-up from those I haven’t heard back from? These are great questions. I’m all about actually taking action, and all of these questions imply that you’re already doing that. My hat is off to you. Unfortunately for anyone who doesn’t share my love of calculus, I’m going to answer this question with math. #NotSorry If you have a goal, whether that’s a dollar amount you need to reach or a number of partners you’d like to work with, that’s obviously the number you want to work backwards from, whether that’s in initial outreach (Question #1) or follow-up (Questions #2 and #3). For this exercise, let’s assume it’s one. Yep, just one, fantastic, voracious, enthusiastic partner that you can knock it out of the park for. Who will tell all of their business friends about. And love you forever. (Doesn’t sound bad, does it?) So, the real question is: how do you get to that one? Conversion Rates In order to get to your one, you have to understand the concept of conversion rates. A conversion rate is the percentage of actions taken on an offer or another action. For example, if 10...
by Kristin Swartzlander | Mar 24, 2016 | Mindset
Tensions can run high at this time of year, what with the anticipation of getting back to the track in the next few weeks juxtaposed by the terrifying feeling that you didn’t get ‘enough’ done in the offseason. One thing that I find with coaching clients is that, despite the excitement that every new racing season brings, there is often a feeling of inadequacy that pops up around this time of year. We’ve had all winter to watch what everyone else is choosing to put out on social media, or – the horror! – not be able to see what they’re doing and wonder how far they’re getting ahead of us or what strides they’ve made that we haven’t! We’ve been drinking the delightfully-censored-social-media Kool-Aid and now we have a comparison hangover. I’ve been just as guilty as the next person, assuming others are working on the types of proactive projects that I’d like to complete and creating loads of content while I’m just trying to keep my head above water with my current workload. What helps me? Thinking about where I’m at in the journey, without focusing on where I think I should be. In other words, remember that no matter where you are with your program, there’s always someone ‘ahead’ of you and someone ‘behind’ you. But it’s not a ladder – it’s a timeline. When you raced go-karts, at the same time there was a kid racing slot cars that wanted to actually sit in a race car. And there was also Steve Kinser. Imagine an eight-year-old kart racer waking up every morning kicking himself that he isn’t on the World of Outlaws tour yet. I mean, how did...
by Kristin Swartzlander | Mar 18, 2016 | Motorsports Marketing for Tracks, Teams and Businesses, Racing Sponsorship
Pitching. It’s an arduous and repetitive process, whether you’re throwing fastballs, trying to communicate the value of an offering to a potential partner, conveying a story to the media or the like. I see a lot of these pitches, whether I’m reviewing them for clients or sending them out myself on behalf of our race team, one of our events or a client. But I’m always intrigued when a pitch finds it’s way into MY inbox. So, not exactly for fun but for learning experience, I thought we could review two pitches I got recently and tell you why I didn’t take the person up on their, ahem, ‘offer’. I’ve blacked out any details that might incriminate or identify the guilty. Unsuccessful Pitch #1: Yep, that’s it. You can probably spot the some of the problems with this pitch straight off the bat, but let me list them out for you: Used a contact form when my email is all over this website. This makes it difficult for a person to just hit reply – they have to copy and paste your email into their email service provider just to reply to your pitch. No. Didn’t use my name, even though it is also all over the website. Didn’t sign their name. Just a courtesy. Didn’t give me any information about his team and why I would be interested in sponsoring it. Didn’t provide any information about what kind of value I would receive in the relationship. Basically, this pitch said, “Hey person, I want to talk to you about giving me money. And I’m putting the burden of finding out why on you. Copy...
by Kristin Swartzlander | Mar 10, 2016 | Media and Public Relations, Motorsports Marketing for Tracks, Teams and Businesses, Racing Social Media
Have you ever heard the old adage: “if you try to appeal to everyone, you’ll appeal to no one?” I believe it’s true. I mean, some guys like big boobs. And they tell me some guys like small boobs. But news flash: no one can have both. Well, not a matching pair anyway. And I bet some people are into that, too. Mind blown. That’s why having boobs that everyone likes is literally impossible. (This analogy works on paper so just follow me here, people.) But the biggest problem with ‘trying to please everyone’ isn’t just that it’s impossible. The real issue is the trying part. Every girl knows that you can’t successfully grow real, perfect boobs by ‘trying’. You’ve just got to embrace what you were given. Or, get the fake ones that you think are the greatest – that’s fine, too. Whatever you do, own it. Sure, being real means that some people won’t like it. But the people who do like it – well, they’ll do you one better. They’ll love it. And that’s why turning some people off is a good thing – a really good thing. Every time I attend a big race, one where the crowd is really electric like at the Dirt Classic, I am completely delighted when someone starts booing a car. Booing? YES! You hate that car? They must have really done something to earn your obnoxious boos. And doing something, anything interesting enough to earn some vocal hate, will also earn you some love from another fan. For the exact same reasons. But doing nothing – walking the middle ground – so...
Connect!