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Marketing 101: Essential Strategies for Promoting Your Race or Event
- 2. 2 Hello! I am Matt Sinclair I am here because I love to give presentations. You can reach me at matt@runsignup.com
- 5. Developing a Marketing Plan
- 6. “If you aim at nothing, you will hit it every time.” - Zig Ziglar
- 7. Situation Analysis ๏ Define your race, company, or services ๏ Strengths ๏ Weaknesses ๏ Opportunities ๏ Threats 7
- 8. Describe Target Audience What is the profile or demographics of my customer base? 8
- 9. Personas Template 9 Personas are fictional characters created based on your research to help you understand your customer’s needs, experiences, behaviors, and goals.
- 10. Personas Example 10 ๏ Meet Tara the timer ๏ Include demographics ๏ Create a background story ๏ List additional general info about the persona
- 11. List Marketing Goals ๏ What do you want to achieve? ๏ Write down a short list of goals ๏ Make them measureable ๏ Timelines 11
- 12. Strategery & Tactics ๏ Team awards ๏ Offer club discounts ๏ Activate your base ๏ Sponsors ๏ Tell a friend 12
- 13. What’s the Hook? ๏ Tangible takeaways for participants ๏ Stand out ๏ Swag – Shirts, medals, etc. ๏ Photos, Results Notifications, RaceJoy
- 14. Spending Plan ๏ Marketing is essential to success ๏ Set and stick to a budget ๏ Budget 20-25% for marketing ๏ Measure your Return on Investment (ROI) 14
- 16. Intro to RunSignUp Analytics As the name implies, this is similar to Google Analytics for races using the RunSignUp platform. Link to Dashboard 16
- 17. Facebook Pixel
- 18. Intro to the Facebook Pixel ๏ How do you know if your ads are working? ๏ Plug and play – Just add your Facebook Pixel ID ๏ Facebook Custom Audiences covered in Advanced Marketing Link to Dashboard 18
- 19. Social Sharing
- 20. Create your own Branding ๏ Create your own mini ad ๏ Image customization ๏ Keep things on message Link to Dashboard 20
- 21. 21 When a Plan Comes Together
- 22. 22 Thanks! Any questions? You can reach me at matt@runsignup.com
Editor's Notes
- This presentation will cover: Creating a Baseline – Establishing where you are currently as a reference point. Developing a Marketing Plan – 5 step plan or roadmap to take you from start to finish Intro to RunSignUp Analytics – Tool to check baseline and measure marketing efforts Intro to Facebook Pixel – find your ROI of Facebook ads Social Sharing – options for custom branding of your race
- “Where are we now?” - what is the current situation. Participant count, gross revenue, etc. “Where could we be?” - what is the desired positioning for the event. Raise more in donations? Marketing strategy emerges out of the gap between #1 and #2 and informs a strategic direction. “How do we get there?” - simplifies the strategy into attainable goals, and sets objectives and targets to measure marketing activities to reach the desired positioning. “Are we getting there?” - measures the marketing activities in relation to the goals. Checks to see if the planned activities are helping accomplish the strategic vision. This analysis helps create the new “current situation”, and the planning cycle repeats itself.
- Author and motivational speaker.
- This first section defines your company and its products or services, then shows how the benefits you provide set you apart from your competition. Experience, cool shirt, goodie bag, medal? Not only do you need to be able to describe what you are marketing, but you must also have a clear understanding of what your competitors are offering and be able to show how your product or service provides a better value. SWOT analysis - Strengths/Weaknesses are internal and Opportunities/Threats are external. Strength could be professional running photos, course. Weakness could be limited parking. Opportunity could be work with local running club or store. Threat could be a saturated race weekend. SWOT helps position your event: What distinguishes the event from another? What type of participant would you attract?
- Now that we know who we are, we want to know who are customers are! Develop a simple, one-paragraph profile of your prospective Describe prospects in terms of demographics—age, sex, family composition, earnings and geographic location—as well as lifestyle. For smaller non-iconic races. Understanding your actual audience for a charity. Donors past 12-24 months. Catering to your built in audience. Ask yourself the following: Are my customers conservative or innovative? Leaders or followers? Timid or aggressive? Traditional or modern? Introverted or extroverted?
- Include details about the customer’s education, lifestyle, interests, values, goals, needs, limitations, desires, attitudes, and patterns of behavior. Add a few fictional personal details to make the persona a realistic character. Give each of your personas a name. Create 1–2-pages of descriptions for each persona. Ron Runner, Patty Participant, Fred Fundraiser
- Tara is married to Tim. They own a timing company together. Tim is the primary owner of the company. Tim does the setup (physical) and she does the data management. Tara is learning Race Director and RunSignUp right now. She is learning how to upload results so that things that took her 2-hours before now are automatic. Before this she used Elf Score and their registration platform. It was so difficult and time-consuming to post results after a race and now she can upload results straight from Race Director and send to RunSignUp. Tara is not lazy, she’s a hard worker and just wants to make her life a little easier, but will spend hours organizing 90 divisions of a stand up paddle board race. She is excited to learn all the new features and is very enthusiastic about using RunSignUp. Timer General Information People do timing as a retirement job Technology familiarity – LOW – they learn from whoever taught them and they just do things manually even though it’s harder Timers are Runners that want to stay in the business Timers struggle with manually uploading bib assignments for more complex races CRM is used by women (data management and customer support)
- What are you hoping for? Make the measurable so you’ll know when you achieve them. In it’s simplest form a marketing plan is a list of action items. Send Eblast on X date. Increase Price on X date. Social Media ad campaign on X date, etc. Timelines of when to start depends on size. Save for closer to race time. Announcing, price changes, show shirt or medal, scheduled emails. Sample timeline, open registration 3 months out, schedule pre-race emails to go out 10 days out and 3 days out, price increases, advertising,
- Previously outlined what we hope to achieve. This is the how. Social Teams – Scott Coffiee did “Caffeine Challenge”. Any team that has over 20 members receives a free pair of socks. We work with the local running store and get a very good price on socks and look for a sponsor for that cost. Team members only get the socks if they pick up in the store before the race (so the store gets more traffic). This year our largest team in a 1,000 person race was over 100! And we had 4 teams to qualify and a total of 19 teams organize with over 300 participants. Their viral word of mouth has really helped our race. Facebook – We have a Facebook page with over 800 followers. We use the social sharing features of RunSignUp so when people sign up, their friends sign up as well. It is great to be able to upload a nice image that appears on Facebook posts automatically – it makes our race look good! Activate your base – Likely have a database of people interested in your cause. Motivate past participants to come back or invite others. Sponsors – attract local community partners that can bring recognition to your event and share in your core values. Tell a friend – Word of mouth is the best form of advertising. Referral Tracking and Referral Rewards can help with this!
- Cater to your base. They are already engaged. The hook would be something that their friends and family would then want to join in. CASA has a superhero theme. Hot cider runs, dog jogs, tutu runs, etc.
- The key is to never stop marketing—don’t concern yourself with the more costly tactics until you can afford them. As you begin to gather costs for the marketing tactics you outlined in the previous steps, you may find you’ve exceeded your budget. Simply go back and adjust your tactics until you have a mix that’s affordable.
- Show how to navigate the RunSignUp Analytics Dashboard and also see the year-over-year comparison by expanding the Dashboard.
- How do you know if your ads are working? To understand how well your Facebook ads are doing, you need to define the outcomes you want to track. Measure your ad performance in Ads Manager
- Demo social sharing
- Preparation and execution. When a plan comes together.