by Kristin Swartzlander | Jun 19, 2015 | Media and Public Relations, Motorsports Marketing for Tracks, Teams and Businesses, Racing Social Media
Over the past few years, I’ve worked with a number of race tracks across the country. One of the subjects that comes up over and over again is live updating. I’ve had countless conversations with members of the industry who emphatically believe that live results published on social media are hurting our sport. With apps like Meerkat and Periscope, fans can now stream live video (for free!) right from the track or pits. You might not be surprised by this, but I disagree with the argument that live updating stops fans from buying tickets. Fans come to the race track for the experience, not just for the results. Mistake that, and you’re missing out. It’s my opinion that live results are meant for fans who can’t make it to the track that night, whether they’re in a wedding or another state. They’re not for fans who just choose to stay home that night because they can find out who won on Twitter. In fact if results, or even a little bit of video, are satisfying enough to stop someone who would normally buy a ticket from walking through the gates, I think that says something worth thinking about. Either that person isn’t a serious race fan, or they don’t find the experience worth paying for. If the first, are they really someone you want to cater to? Are they adding to the atmosphere at your track? If the second, maybe the product isn’t enticing enough to bring that fan there in person. Is the entertainment experience at the level it needs to be at? It’s a question we all need...
by Kristin Swartzlander | Jun 12, 2015 | Racing Social Media
There’s a concept in business that assumes that you can make an arguably good living if you have 1,000 true fans. They buy from you. But most of all, they buy into you. No matter what. True fans don’t just show up in good weather. They walk to the gate and buy their tickets when everyone else is sitting in the parking lot in the rain, at best. Regular fans will buy a t-shirt. True fans buy every design you issue, even when all you have left is a size too big. Regular fans want their logo on your car or billboard when you’re winning and times are good. True fans continue to petition for your sponsorship program even when there are layoffs and budget cuts. I saw a tweet the other day that reminded me of this concept. It’s from an Eldora Speedway fan – a raving one, it seems: That’s one of many tweets that goes out every weekend from race tracks across the country. At least, the ones that are willing to acknowledge their raving fans, like Eldora did here by retweeting it. There are two key factors that I believe go into creating true fans, and encouraging regular fans to become true, raving fans. You need a product worth raving about, and the means with which fans can rave about it. I don’t know that 1,000 true fans is an accurate number in racing. For some race tracks, averaging 1,000 fans at every event would mean success. For others, that would be a failure. But it doesn’t really matter what that number means to you. The most important thing is...
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 | Apr 30, 2015 | Media and Public Relations, Mindset, Motorsports Marketing for Tracks, Teams and Businesses, Racing Social Media, Racing Sponsorship
When you’re trying to do something great, whether that’s run a race team or build a business, you have to commit. That’s not news. Most of us in racing know all about commitment. You can’t just build a team or buy a race track and try it for a few weeks. You have to commit, up front, with time, sweat and money. We don’t have a problem with commitment when it comes to the racing part of the business. One of the biggest mistakes I see in racing, though, is a lack of commitment to marketing. To building an audience. We build racing properties then try our hands at a few press releases, tweets, advertisements or another method for getting the word out. We stick with it for a few weeks, maybe a few months, and when the opportunities don’t come knocking, we quit. It happens all the time. Racing is a demanding sport, no matter what side of it you’re on. It’s easy to imagine that you’re wasting time building that audience, and decide to put that time and effort into the actual racing. But if I gave up after a year of blogging, I would have missed some big opportunities. Huge ones. Some of which you know about, like the Dirt Classic, and some of which you don’t. At least not yet. And most, if not all, of them came from my writing. But do you know how long I wrote to no audience before that happened? A really, really long time. For over a year, I spent hours – sometimes over multiple days – crafting a blog post to...
by Kristin Swartzlander | Mar 19, 2015 | Motorsports Marketing for Tracks, Teams and Businesses, Racing Social Media
When you tell your story effectively, you highlight what makes you unique. What makes you different from your competition. But because racing itself is unique to many people outside of our industry, we sometimes forget that the racing itself isn’t what makes us unique. It’s just part of our story. What makes you unique isn’t that: You drive a sprint car Your events run on Saturday nights Your track features five divisions Your track has high car counts These are details. They’re how you do what you do, not what makes you who you are. Right? One thing that I think we’ve forgotten is that people don’t just come to the tracks to see a cars turn circles. If that were the case, we’d be happy sitting in the stands watching self-driving cars. They buy tickets for the excitement. The drama. The stories. They buy tickets for the drivers. And the teams. And the family history. And because little Sarah likes watching the girl driver and little Johnny loves the car with the cow-print paint scheme. And your track is the only place cousin Billy can ear ‘Action Track’ Snacks. (Someone stop me now. I could do this all day.) If you’re a driver, you’re also probably finding out that companies don’t buy sponsorship just because you have a race car. Or even because you win races. They buy because you and your team align with their values. People buy because they’re invested in a story. In your story. If you want to know how to tell yours better yourself, check out a few of the most popular posts I’ve...
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