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Racing Promotion: Return on Investment... National Impact can demonstrate a significant Return On Investment through effective motorsports marketing. To get a better idea of which race type makes sense for your company, click on a picture below to learn more details regarding that series...
*Approximating over 1,000 simultaneous, "Saturday Night" races around America weekly. Click on these subjects to read more about the power of motorsports marketing...
Overview
Why Marketing?
A Marketing Paradigm ShiftFaced with a new ad media landscape, companies are scrambling to find the most effective ways to place their brands in front of an elusive audience. But while the latest tools are effective for creating interest – targeted search, ads sent to mobile devices, and other personalized Internet technologies – these efforts do little to capture the imagination or build brand. While the world around customers has changed dramatically, it’s important to remember that the world inside them has not. Now more than ever, people craze connection and affiliation. And as always, these bonds are best formed through “real world” interaction – seeing, hearing about, tasting, directly experiencing a product or service or FEELING an EMOTIONAL EXPERIENCE. Having real contact or FEELING CONNECTED with people/cars/teams who can act as a guide - and/or even on an unconscious level - through the brand experience. Because the distancing effect of new media is at odds with the human need to connect, many marketers are “re-remembering” the power and potential of live events and how they later transfer over to a televised event. Now, more than ever, marketers are turning to sponsorships and event marketing to create affinity, gamer mind share and engage with customers and their communities. Power of EventsMarketers have created a world where the average consumer can recall only a few of the thousands of messages they’re exposed to daily. In their attempts to connect, marketers have actually overloaded consumers to a point where people are literally protecting themselves from the uninvited intrusion. Events are different. They provide an opportunity to establish affinity that no other ad channel can offer. The reason is obvious. Attracted by a theme, interest or cause, thousands – often tens of thousands – of like-minded consumers come together for a common experience. Unlike any other marketing medium, face-to-face interaction enables smart marketers to seize a precious moment of openness to move consumers to action and create lasting bonds.
Media OptimizationTaking a cue from the retail experience and its powerful ability to build long-lasting relationships with customers, many consumer marketers are looking for ways to increase the number of face-to-face opportunities with their customers. As a result, experiential marketing is most certainly on the rise. The most successful marketers are taking a strategic approach to creating human connections, integrating sponsorships and event programs into their annual plans. Effective events bring messages to life, give lift to existing programs, and can establish and strengthen connections with millions of targeted consumers in a short time in selected markets. What’s more, events create a rich context for a marketing message. A memorable face-to-face interaction creates a lasting impression with customers that pay off down the road. Upon subsequently seeing a company’s ads, vivid “brand memories” from the event are rekindled. The whole of the marketing mix becomes greater than the sum of its parts, as the human connection amplifies marketing communication. The integrated marketing portfolio is optimized with the inclusion of an effective event component. Cracking the CodeThe formula for building successful customer relationships is simple – consistently deliver compelling messages to your target audience. Advertising theory contends that reach and frequency of quality messaging is at the heart of this challenge. Unfortunately, this is often easier said than done. While outbound marketing, via the traditional and the latest e-tools, can provide both reach and frequency, they are “un-invited” and are often screened or ignored by consumers. They lack a “social contact” with the consumer that events readily provide with face-to-face contact. Unfortunately, the standard offerings of most event marketing services companies are “one-offs”, tours, and mega-events. Although these may at times offer great reach, frequency is typically 1X and dramatically limits the power of the event medium. So how can a marketer be in all major markets, simultaneously and repeatedly, over the course of a season or year? National Impact has changed the paradigm and does just this. We’ve established a proven platform that delivers event programs with both the reach and frequency our clients need to support their brands – to make a human connection for them. Our unique platform – an in-market, employee staffing model; appropriate training; a strategic and creative orientation; and customized, proprietary planning and management software – enables us to execute large volumes of events efficiently and effectively. Only with National Impact can companies deliver the frequency critical to building customer bonds and supporting brands. Partnering with National Impact gives your company a powerful competitive edge. Your event program can be a channel that’s “always on”, an ongoing and far-reaching means to engage customers’ communities and gamer their loyalty. It can support your campaigns and seasonal efforts. It will fortify your efforts in battleground markets, help you respond rapidly to changing competitive environments, and enable you to take advantage of special opportunities. Fast. Consistent. Scalable. Highly personal. If you’d like to connect with your customers in a new and powerful fashion, as many leading consumer marketers have discovered, National Impact can make it happen. Realities of modern life and technology have radically changed consumer behavior toward media. Today, people zap through TV spots or have acquired TEVO; listen to commercial-free radio and block pop-ups, bypassing the most well-planned efforts of advertisers. The advent of dazzling new technologies is making it more difficult than ever to reach customers, much less foster meaningful connections with them. And as the gap between brands and people grows, commoditization sets in and consumer marketers are hit where it hurts the most – at the bottom line.
Trying to compare sponsorship of one event or sport to another is like trying to compare apples to oranges as typically a Hockey Fan is not a Basketball Fan for example. And an Opera patron is not typically a NASCAR buff. Although, studies show 38% are Formula 1 or Sports Car Fans. But in comparing overall effectiveness of the sponsorship or return on investment, study after study show motorsports to clearly be number 1 when all factors are taken into consideration. Please see the PDF Downloads or marketing links for detailed information:
To read an interesting article and another explanation of marketing with motorsports from a competitor and purveyor to motorsports marketers please see: http://www.insmkt.com/money2.htm Are you a fan of any sport or passionate about any sort of event? Do you remember your feeling when a great play occurs? Or have you at least observed others at say a Super Bowl Party? That is an emotional connection. The distinction however between the Ball Sports and Motorsports is huge! The reasons are numerous. However, one key reason is that when a baseball player breaks the world record for home runs or a football player makes that touchdown the emotional connection is strictly with the player. However, when a racecar driver makes that exciting pass, wins, crashes OR losses the race the fan has an emotional connection to the driver AND sponsor. (Ask ANY NASCAR fan who drives the Home Depot or Dupont Car. Ask them to name a dozen sponsors. They will know!) And they are loyal regardless of whether the driver has a good season or not or whether they are a fan of that particular driver. Inquire with any corporation who has been involved with motorsports for a number of years assuming they are with an effective marketing company and have been able to quantify their results. The emotional, visual, visceral, and subliminal impact of motorsports is so POWERFUL that even when the tobacco companies were getting banned from racing and other sports marketing Philip Morris did it’s best to find a loophole to advertise with the branding gorilla of the world, Formula 1 Grand Prix Racing. Please see: There are certain cases where a consumer will not use TEVO or go to the bathroom or kitchen during commercial breaks. Among them are Multi-Million Dollar Super Bowl Commercials. But even they are only watched once a year for entertainment value and NO emotional or permanent memory connection is made.
Who else is involved in motorsports? Likely your competitors. And if they aren’t now they soon will be as the vast majority of up and coming companies and the Fortune 500 are. It wasn’t that long ago that racing was predominantly sponsored by auto manufacturers, associated products, alcohol, and tobacco. Now because of the proven marketing prowess you can find every product and service imaginable involved.A Few Sponsorship Press Releases:http://www.theautochannel.com/news/2006/04/05/003137.html http://www.usatoday.com/money/advertising/adtrack/2006-05-14-ups-track_x.htm http://biz.yahoo.com/bw/071117/20071117005017.html?.v=1 http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/13105675/ Download what the Sponsors have to say...
What is the Cost? The better question is; what is your company ready to budget? The reason being that costs vary greatly from under $100,000 dollars for a local or regional grass roots marketing program to over 100 million (typically around 40 million) for a world wide Formula 1 Grand Prix Sponsorship. Even among a particular series sponsorship can differ greatly depending upon the driver, team assets, operating costs, services they provide, and so forth. For example in NASCAR a Major Associate Sponsor can spend 12 to 20 Million plus. Indy Car can be from 4.5 Million to 10 Million plus annually. So it is best to determine what your company budget is, target demographic, geographic locations desired and so forth. Also, this is something you won’t learn from a lot of race teams but the most effective motorsports marketing programs allot a budget of at least an equal amount of dollars to promote the program. In other words if you have a total budget of 14 Million dollars then it is generally best to spend say 7 Million on an Indy Car Team and 7 Million promoting it. Rather then just 14 Million on a NASCAR team. (Unless of course you can allocate the promotional funds from your TV advertising budget or other line items.) There are many ways to spend your promotional allocation. Some are proprietary and will only be discussed in person or involve a creative process. However typically they are spent on supporting TV, radio, print ads, coupon offers, prize give aways, so forth. This is what really helps your marketing program synergistically come together and produce maximum ROI. National Impact will help your company custom tailor a program that best meets your companies objectives and obtain the best value for the dollars you are able to allocate. Also, we can handle as much or as little of the marketing “off track” promotional side as is a fit with your marketing department. Cost is really not the greatest consideration. Whatever the cost is, the greater consideration is; What is the Return On Investment? Common sense would dictate that since motorsports is the fastest growing and largest overall sport in this country with the shear number of Fortune 500 involvement that there is great Return On Investment. However, sadly there have been corporations who have pulled out of motorsports. The most common reasons are that a new marketing manager comes on board and is a fan of another sport and the particular corporation has a limited sports marketing allocation. (This is no way to determine a company’s marketing dollars and possibly future existence, BTW!) We all have bias’ in life every time we choose strawberry over vanilla for example. However, if a budget is finite and a choice between sports needs to be made, the facts speak for themselves when comparing motorsports to the other sports marketing choices! The other is that they contract directly with a race team – and race teams are just that. With rare exception, they are not marketers. By default they can often provide you with the most basic of marketing with the logo on the side of their racecar. And depending on the race series, TV Coverage, how often they are filmed via exciting moments and so on this alone can provide ROI. But most race teams don’t know how to demonstrate this, which makes it uncomfortable when you need to explain your sponsorship decision to your boss a year later. We use the common marketing channels such as Joyce Julius, Nielson Ratings, Ipsos Insight, and Various Marketing Research Avenues to determine ROI in black and white specific to your individual company as well as the market with annual reports. But we can also assist with things like in house tracking of coupon offers for example. And we use proprietary software. Our software applies advanced mathematical modeling to your specific sponsorship activities and your sales data to yield accurate and reliable return on investment analysis. This is the key – it is entirely based on your specific data, allowing the resulting ROI analysis to be precise and relevant. National Impact is dedicated to helping our clients make a human connection with their customers. Everything we do to build our organization – from our technology investments, to our hiring and training policies, to the internal culture we foster – is based on how well it supports this mission. With more delivering scalable, high-touch, experiential marketing events that fuel our client’s brand-building and customer activation efforts. Values that Move UsWe believe whole-heartedly that in order to grow as an organization, we must foster the growth of individuals – which we’re proud to do with opportunities, incentives, and a culture that encourages the development of each person’s professional potential. While all of us have unique talents and backgrounds, we all share a common passion for creativity, belief in teamwork, appreciation of human connections, and commitment to doing what needs to be done. Results NowWhatever your goal – from generating leads, to increasing sales at retail, to driving web traffic to increasing brand awareness, which all ultimately lead to greater sales – National Impact knows what it take to move customers to action. Whether it requires complex sampling, product demos, direct sales, or well-crafted hospitality, we masterfully engineer events to yield the desired results. A combination of art and science, our events are carefully designed to lead your customers through a linear progression from capturing their interest, to engagement with your brand, to purchase. As committed to results as you are, we work with you to understand how to measure success for your event program. We carefully track the metrics we develop with you to evaluate program results. And we stay on our toes seeking any opportunity for feedback of event learning into continuous program improvement. MotorSports Marketing is fun, exciting, and can be rewarding on deep level but the bottom line is that you and your company be more prosperous, have an increase in sales, and make a “National Impact.” At National Impact, we’re re-defining experiential marketing with event campaigns that greatly increase the number and lift the quality of connections you can make. Now, your event program can have reach and frequency as your budget allows and MORE IMPORTANTLY, properly designed, even spill over to non-race fans. For marketers trying to connect with their customers, motorsports events present a precious opportunity, a fleeting moment of consumer openness. With a deeper perspective on brand, a unique methodology and staffing model, and unprecedented technology for control and measurement, National Impact makes every one of those precious moments more for your brand. Meaningful Connections – Memorable Moments – Measurable Results.For more information,
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