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 10, 2016 | Mindset, Racing Sponsorship, Thoughts and Rants
One of the questions that Carl and I both get asked frequently is: how do you make racing your full-time living? Right now, I’m putting together a post on how teams make money (hint: hired drivers with 401(k)’s are the exception, not the rule, and those race track checks don’t exactly pay the bills), and today, I want to address just one aspect of that answer: We treated it like a business even before it was one. And when I say ‘it’, I’m referring not just our race team. We took everything that aligns with making racing our full-time job seriously before we were required to by our commitments, including this blog, our personal finances, our health, and much more. It’s very easy to say: ‘when you get to X turning point, you’ll do Y.’ When my only job is racing, I’ll have the time and energy to: work out every day, have multiple cars built and lettered, take opportunities for rides outside of my own team, travel to races outside of my region, have a professional crew and appearance, structure my team financially as a business, create apparel and promotional materials, promote myself online and in the community, and, find and activate sponsorships. Your mind needs that assurance that it’s okay for you not to be doing those things until X happens. You’re already tapped out. You’re already putting in too many hours. You’re already spending too much money. You won’t have the time and energy to do any of the ‘extras’ until you go full-time. Except, I’ve found that doing those things before your team is a business...
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...
by Kristin Swartzlander | May 6, 2016 | Media and Public Relations, Motorsports Marketing for Tracks, Teams and Businesses, Racing Social Media, Racing Sponsorship
If you’re building a racing business – a team, a track, an event or even a store – you know that you need customers. Customers come in different forms – fans, purchasers, media members, marketing partners or sponsors – and you need to get in front of them to be successful, whether you’re selling a piece of merchandise, a ticket or a story. While making a connection in person is always best, there are only so many opportunities to do so. And that’s why I think social media is the most powerful tool in any businesses’ arsenal today – we can be reaching new fans and building our audience 24 hours a day, seven days a week, no matter where you are. So, if you’re taking building your racing career seriously, and you’re approaching it as a business, you need to be looking to social media to build your audience. Agreed? Agreed. Now that we’re – ahem – agreed, let’s talk about where to find your audience. In the same way that you’re won’t be successful selling life insurance to a kid in the candy aisle, you don’t want to be hammering tweens on Snapchat with, well, life insurance pitches. (No insult meant to the insurance industry – I happily have plenty of it. But, as my friends and family will quickly remind me, I am no longer a tween.) There are a few ways to approach finding the right platforms to build your audience. These two questions should determine how you read the rest of this post: Are you going full-bore in the direction of your dreams and willing to dive into...
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...
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