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Expanding a Race Series - Brad McCleary
- 2. Our Family
- 3. Our Story Took clients to races Did our first race in 2011 Halloween Next year we added Thanksgiving & Christmas – Healthy Holiday Series Bodies Race Company was born
- 4. Our Company Produce about 25 of our own events Most known for our Holiday Race Series Manage about 50 other events Not our main focus Don’t double book or work with big races Franchised our Race Company 3 additional locations Apparel, medals, etc
- 5. Our Mission Fun. Family. Fitness. Make a healthy impact in our community. Not looking to have one single big event per year, not adding marathons
- 6. Why Are You Here? 1) Looking to create a series 2) Looking to grow a series
- 7. Why Have a Race Series Increase revenue – more participants at each event and / or annually Avg runner does 7 events per year Increase profit - decrease cost Leverage resources, increase buying power, Invest in equipment, share event expenses (marketing, supplies, etc) Separate yourself from the competition More aggressive pricing; discounts & deals Great marketing opportunity – your own events! Great for smaller events or lows in your calendar Diversify your revenue
- 8. How to Create a Race Series? Great Participant Experience Industry is so competitive One bad experience can hurt all your events Competition makes us all better Take care of your participants & add value to your events
- 9. How to Create a Race Series? Need multiple events for a series Consider partnering with other established races Pros: less to manage, more marketing, leverage other databases Cons: you don’t control the whole experience – so pick good partners, have to agree on series offerings, conflicts
- 10. How to Create a Race Series? Use your own events Pros: you control everything, you leverage your events, Cons: you are the only one marketing, you have to manage everything Better have a team and processes in place
- 11. How to Create a Race Series? Need a theme or reason Same distances Progress series Seasonal theme (summer, etc.) Specialty: mud, wine, etc. Must be easy to explain & market Add additional incentive
- 12. How to Create a Race Series? Competitive Analysis Grow at a pace you’re comfortable with Remember all that goes into an event: courses, website, logos, branding, registration, etc.
- 13. How to Grow a Race Series? Add more value Better swag, fancier medals, series rewards, add pacers, course music, etc. Fun vendors, bigger after party, costumes, face painters, kids activities, etc. Offer series discounts & giveaways “Market-ables” not expenses
- 14. How to Grow a Race Series? Improve your brand Update logos and designs Website clear & easy to understand Registration easy to use Professional photographer ○ Use these for marketing
- 15. How to Grow a Race Series? Take over declining or unsuccessful events Find out how much they gave to charity Let them sell sponsorships, you keep registrations Use your resources to make the event more profitable & to grow
- 16. How to Grow a Race Series? Once you’re done everything well: Open a new market Can even be the same city Duplicate current events Pull reports
- 17. 5 Keys to Take Away Know Your Mission – what is your why? Diversify your revenue / income Have a Great Event Experience Always be adding value – How can you make it better? Act like your franchising – must be able replicate everything
- 18. Thank You - Questions?
Editor's Notes
- Hello! I’m Brad McCleary with Bodies Race Company. How's everyone feeling? We have a lot to cover in a little amount of time so I’m going to be moving quick to leave as much time for questions and discuss but I want this to be interactive because everyone’s business and goals are different so please ask questions, make comments. Let’s see if we can learn some things but also have a little fun!
- I always like to start with my why because a wise person once told me no one cares how much you know until they know how much you care. So my beautiful wife Jen and our 4 crazy kids; Shelby, Lilly, Molly, & McKenzy. Everything I do is for my family ….. and usually with my family! There’s been many long trips and early mornings with the kids sleeping in the truck because we need some more help at a race. They know how to nearly any volunteer spot at an event. From handing out medals or water to spotting bibs and backup timing. You can never have enough help as a race director right?
- I figured I’d give you a little background. My wife and I started out in our home. I did the personal training and Jen work with clients on nutrition. We were very blessed and our business and family quickly outgrew our home and in 2010 we moved our gym into our current location. Which works great because now we office our race company and our apparel business outs of the extra space. We began taking our clients to races as a way to get them focus on something besides the weight scale. We were taking big groups and someone along the way said “why don’t you put on your own race”. So in 2011 we did our first race a Halloween themed race. The event was so well received by the community the next year we added 2 more. Thanksgiving and Christmas and did our first series challenge for doing all three. Bodies Race Company was born.
- The rest is history. We now produce about 25 of our own events in KC. We are still best known for our holiday series. Which has grown to 10 holiday events throughout the year and we’ve just recently added a couple new markets in KC. So now we duplicate most of our events in KC in different areas; we call KC East, KC North, & KC West. We also do race management (timing, course setup, marketing) for about 70 other events and this has grown year after year and it’s never been our main focus. We consider ourselves a race production company, not a timing company but as you grow you’ll inevitable be asked to help other races. This is great because it helps grow your database and builds your reputation but if you primary focus is your own events you have to manage your time and resources carefully. We seen timing companies that work with 200+ events a year. That makes it tough to put in the time and energy on your own events. One thing we don’t do it double book on our own event dates unless they are not in our market; I don’t feel comfortable with that conflict of interest. We also don’t work with the big races because they want way too much and the payoff is not the same as events we own. Over the years it’s even made sense for us to bring screen printing in-house and source our medals directly from manufactures. That way we control nearly every part of the supply chain. I’m not saying you need to do this but it made sense for us since we had so much buying power and so many events depending on us for their event swag. If I’m going to be responsible for it, I want to control it. Finally we’ve franchised our race company and have started added locations in other cities. We’re looking at adding one or two more cities this fall.
- Even through all our growth and change our mission has always stayed the same. Our mission at Bodies Race Company is simple: Fun Family Fitness. We aim to make a positive impact in our community by getting the whole family active all year long. That mission helps us make any tough decisions and determine the direction we should be going. For example: we’re not looking to have a single HUGE event each year. We aren’t looking to add full marathons or ultra marathons – these aren’t great for the whole family. So my first takeaway for you is before you know where your going you need to know WHY you’re going.
- So know that you know all about me, my family, my company and our mission. Let’s talk about you. Since you’re here I think it’s safe to assume you’re either: Looking to create a race series – maybe you have a single event or a couple unrelated events that are not in a series. Or Looking to grow your race series – If it’s not one of those two options then I guess the third option is your in the wrong room??
- Let’s start with the benefits of a race series! The obvious reason – increase your revenue. A series can help you get more participants to each event and you can get more per participant annually. The average runner does about 7 events per year, so another event provides the perfect up sell opportunity! Not only can you increase your revenue you have the opportunity to cut costs and increase your profits! Having more events allows you to leverage your expenses and your resources. For example you may have 3 events but only need 1 flyer. So you just spent less per event on flyers. All those extra supplies like cups, water, that might have went to waste now get used at the next event. All the fixed equipment (like your finish line, cones, flags, tents) that you would have only used once and possible rented, now get used over and over and the cost is split between events. Like I mentioned it’s lead to us investing in all kinds of stuff because we can justify the cost for our series because we use it so often. One of the biggest reason you get to separate yourself from your competitors. You are now offering a challenge, something different than just another race. Something they can’t get somewhere else! Plus IF you need to, you have the ability to be more aggressive with your pricing because that single discount is shared over multiple events. Speaking of marketing, the best way to market a race – with another race. You already have the database. They like to run, they like you, makes sense to sell them another race. It’s 7 times more costly to obtain a new client so how much more can you get out of your current participants – they are your loyal fans! Maximize your current list, sell them more events. Have an event you’re struggling to grow? Pair it with some more successful events and you just helped your stabilize your overall participation. For example those hot summer races or those cold winter races can be hard to get people to sign up for individually because they are so weather dependant. If you have people sign up for a series they’re not even thinking about weather now. They’re thinking about the challenge, the special offer, whatever you’re selling. We’ve been able to add races outside of the normal “race season” to help stabilize our cash flow – but they only reason they were as big as they were is because they were part of a series. Speaking of cash flow you are making a wise decision to diversify your revenue – and if you’re like me ultimately your income. Relying on a single event can be dangerous because you don’t control the weather or if the city makes changes. They have been numerous events that were devastated because of bad weather or a national race come to town and fell right on the same date. If you have multiple events you can share those high and lows over multiple events.
- Let’s start by looking at How to Create a Race Series. See if you have what it takes. First and most importantly your participants have to have a great experience. Our industry is WAY to competitive now, if you don’t do a good job then you can forget adding races it’s just a matter of time before your closing yours. Competition is good; it forces us all to be better. And if you take care of your participants and add value to your event a series could really separate you from your competition. On the contrast if you provide a poor experience at one event that can hurt your whole series because people will associate your whole series together. So the most important thing always focus on the Participant Experience.
- Second you need more than 1 event to have a series. But that doesn’t mean you have to create those additional events. Depending on your team and talents maybe it makes more sense to try and partner with other established races to create a series. You can find races and companies all over that have done this and it can work really well. It adds a new “challenge” to re-engage participants and also exposes you to new participants not in your database. Everyone is responsible for their own event and still works to market their individual event as well as the series. This can be especially advantageous if you can partner with a bigger race or a race that has participants you know you’re not reaching. But you’ll have to bring value to the table when you go to talk to this races, especially if they’re bigger and more established than you. Maybe you can offer discounts on services (if you time your own event and they don’t). The downside is you don’t have control over the experience of the other events so you’ll want to make sure you pick good partners. It also might be more difficult to agree on what discounts or incentives you want to offer since everyone needs to agree. Sometimes there’s conflicting sponsors, charities or goals. Finally you don’t earn all the revenue.
- Of course you don’t have to worry about many of those issues if you own all the events. You also pick up opportunities to leverage the series in terms of sponsors, charities, give-aways, expenses and so on. The downside is you are only one marketing everything you’re not tapping into anyone else database. You also have to produce all the events, come up with all the designs, find all the locations, manage the orders, the participants and so on. So you really to have a team and your act together!
- The events also need a reason that makes sense to be put together. For example a 4th of July 4 Miler and a Thanksgiving Day 5k aren’t a series just because you want to sell two events together. There are numerous reason or themes you can use: we do the holiday series, obviously they are tied to the holidays, I’ve seen matching distances: 4 4miles make a sweet 16. I’ve seen a progress series where you do a 5k, 10k, Half Marathon. I’ve seen seasonal series: Summer Series, Frostbite Series. Series around a similar idea in different locations like a Winery Run Series. Whatever you choose just make sure it makes sense and can be quickly and easily explained because when it comes to marketing today people are inundated with advertising that our attention span has gotten so short. Also a theme is good but you probably want to go ahead and add a special incentive for signing up for the series verses just participating in all the races individually. That can be a big discount or some kind of extra giveaway; like an additional medal, shirt, something that is going to help entice them to sign up for multiple races with a bigger ticket price then just planning to sign up individually.
- If you’re adding new events to your market be sure to do a completive analysis. We actually redo ours every year. This seems like a no brainer but if you pick a date that already has a huge established race in your market you’re not only going to lose people for that event but there’s a chance they won’t do the whole series. The discount or special incentive can become de-motivating if they feel like they’re missing out. Finally grow at a pace you’re comfortable with. Don’t forget your adding locations, new logos / designs, webpages, registration, not to mention another race to your market
- For those of you that may already have a series, let’s talk about growing! Assuming you already have a Great Participant Experience. One thing you should always be doing is looking to add value to your event. Some examples: better swag; nicer shirts, bigger or fancier medals, additional giveaways, series incentives. So many race directors hear these things and think oh it just going to cost more INSTEAD of weighing the cost as an investment. Does an extra series medal that cost $3 pick up enough people that it pays for itself? That’s the question.
- Improve the brand. When’s the last time you update logos. Do people actually like the design on the shirt? Ask them. Email surveys are cheap and easy. If you don’t want to do that create a think tank of runners you trust. How easy is your website to navigate and find information? How professional does your image look? Do you have professional taking the photos you’re using in your marketing?
- As many of you are probably aware the overall number of finishers has decreased the last couple years. There are events out there that are struggle and closing. Maybe you work with some of them. Find out how much they are actually giving to their charity after expenses. I know we’ve worked with a couple charity runs that after our bill there’s no way they had much money left for the charity. Talk to them about partnering up. You put on the event. Make them the charity partner. Both of you can work on getting participants, they can sell sponsorships you can keep the registration fees. You can offer to to give them a percentage of each registration. Either way the deal is they won’t have a cost at the end of the race. Hopefully you have the means to grow the event but also the resources to save money so that you’re both successful but you’re also not losing an established race or adding a new one to an oversaturated market.
- Finally consider opening a different market. Pull you reports – very easy with RunSignUp. See how far people are traveling. Go to a different part of town or the other side of the city and replicate what you’re already doing.