Sponsorship ROI Opportunities in Motorsports

Enhancing Sponsorship ROI Opportunities in Motorsports
StuWiley

Teams are beefing up their offerings with media, track assets and other elements not typically found in a car sponsorship package.

To better entice brands, teams are looking for innovative ways to add value to the sponsorship package, rather than slashing prices, although there’s plenty of that going on as well, industry sources said.

That added value could come in the form of space in industry magazines, websites or radio broadcasts, as well as track assets such as time on the SprintVision video board. Teams are sometimes buying that inventory to enhance the package of assets for prospective sponsors.  This is where enhanced online presence offers additional leverage over traditional media, and is the direction teams such as the newly formed US Formula 1 operation are headed.  When people like Chad Hurley of You Tube get involved, you know you are on the right track. 

CLS Global is in the middle of this mix, providing teams, sponsors and organizers the ability to develop and tap into online communities and create fan based social media ROI campaigns in order to provide high returns for motorsports related interests.  Teams that offer sponsors additional value in the form of ready made online customer bases and opportunities for market penetration by sponsors carry a premium.

“In the past, you wouldn’t have those conversations with other people in the industry because you feared that someone would steal your sponsor,” said Steve Lauletta, president of Earnhardt Ganassi Racing. “Now everyone realizes that you’re better off at least getting a percentage of a sponsor’s dollars instead of trying to get all of the sponsor’s dollars.

“What you’re seeing is a greater collaboration between teams and other parts of the industry to be creative and make these packages more valuable.”
The fractured nature of NASCAR assets has sometimes been a turnoff to brands. There’s practically no one-stop shopping—talk to the track for a track deal, talk to the team for a car deal, talk to the broadcaster for a media deal, talk to NASCAR for a league deal.

Teams think they can offer a more well-rounded sponsorship package by bundling these assets into one package for the brand while holding the line on price.
“Keeping price integrity is hugely important,” Corcoran said. “Fire sales might get a team by in the short term, but it hurts the industry. And we see plenty of companies come through just looking for a bargain.”

There’s also the specter of a busy free agent class next year that includes Kahne, Kevin Harvick, Kyle Busch, Kurt Busch and Greg Biffle, among others. With so much anticipated driver movement, new sponsor opportunities will emerge and it might make sense for brands to sit on the sidelines and re-emerge next year.

“For the most part, teams are doing a good job holding steady on prices, but they are willing to negotiate,” said Moffitt of MCG Sports. “What you’re not going to see next year is a lot of new money in the sport. But for the companies that have suffered from sticker shock before, now is a good time to look at the opportunities that are out there.”

QuickTips: Your Brand and Social Marketing

Overcome the Mystery of Social Marketing:

A recent bit of discussion with one of our clients reminded me to recycle this quick tip list.  Our charter was to assist a 90 year old company with a very established and entrenched dealer channel to come to grips with a web future. 

1. Monitor and Listen to understand customer needs.  First, retain a digital consulting firm that understands how to use various brand monitoring tools and applications in order to understand the needs of your customers in the real time social web. As part of your overall budget, allocate a sufficient amount of attention to the monitoring and tracking of your customer base and trends.  

2. Use content sharing tools. These enable customers to share corporate created content such as videos, blog posts, images, and contests.  There are numerous sharing tool vendors that can be used to Vendors such as Share This can quickly get a brand up and running.  The use of these tools quickly promotes corporate content out into the social media.

3. Create Brand related competitions and user contests. Develop programs that maintain the brand experience while emcouraging memembers to share the experience with others. Recently there has been a surge in Facebook applications along the lines of “which one of your friends is a Band Geek” who appreciates musical instruments, purchases sheet music and gift products”. Ask for the public to vote on favorites then broadly amplify the results. Encourage the sharing.

4. Highlight consumer created content from “Endorsees”. If celebrities or endorsees are using your products and talk about them, echo it back and highlight from your own efforts. Create cross promotional traffic and share the attention. Solicit additional reviewers and pundits to engage in discussion about your value proposition. Highlight users of your products in your blog, from Twitter, or other social technology “Listen to Cary Judd playing our prototype electric guitar” or “submit your best Ukalele tune”, allow users to share and spread it to their own websites. Encourage and promote submisskions to YouTube and other media sites.

5. Develop or sponsor lifestyle communities and actively engage in discussions of all types. Branded communities, social networks, or bloggers can all be reached using traditional media relations tactics. Know what social media platforms are frequented by your market, and join in.

Commuity influencers can be identified and engaged with the help of your online media consultants.  And make sure that you invite your dealers to participate, providing incentives to do so.  Not unlike traditional product trial programs, you can develop brand affinity in the social space through testimonial and endorsement programs.  The trick however is to become a platform to uplift their voice (positive or negative) and support community interests while indicating a willingness to address the negatives – and not just insert or push your own agenda or product sales pitches.

Aircraft Owners : Plea for Haiti assistance

I’m relaying a message from one of our business partners who called from St Lucie International Airport this morning regarding needs for Haiti relief efforts.  He and his wife are headed to Haiti later this week to help out and he mentioned a need for additional aircraft.  This request is a simple one for any of your jet owners or corporate executives who want to serve with Missionary Flights International, http://www.missionaryflights.org/ by way of donating aircraft support.

Dave Martin of Missionary Flight International – MFI – can be reached directly at (772) 521-2725 where all coordination goes through him.  The aircraft donation needs are as follows:

-          Min of 8-10 seat turbo prop or jet because of time and distance
-          Cargo aircraft needed as well
-          Self-funded would be best (MFI is a 501(c)(3)

MFI is all set through this week as Hendricks Motorsports has two Saab 340 planes donated for use.  Thanks in advance for your help, support and willingness to also forward this message along to those who can help financially too.

Social Media Audits are critical for business planning

Why Social Media Audits are critical for business planning 
 

StuWiley

In addition to constant listening and alerting to their market, brands should conduct an initial, then quarterly review and annual social media audit to be successful.

Just as companies conduct audits of inventory, employees, and budgets on an often annual basis, they should also survey the landscape to find out what customers, influencers, partners and employees are participating on the social web. Audits are critical for identifying risks and opportunities, priorities, benchmarking and measurement of previous efforts, and planning for future roadmaps; the same applies for social media.

Three Types of Social Media Audits

1. Initial Kickoff Audit. Brands should audit their social sphere as part of their initial planning process. Brands should work with a partner to find out the conversation index, top competitors, top discussed phrases, and customer experiences with products and services.

2. Conduct Quarterly Reviews, and Annual Audits: Social media teams should work with management and marketing managers to understand how and why the social web responded to activities in the market. Benchmark top advocates and detractors, and determine which topics or products are most talked about. Most importantly, benchmark your own social efforts, measuring the change and analyze what caused them, you’ll need this data as your budgets are questioned. Finally, use this knowledge to set quantitative and qualitative goals of where you want to be next year.

3. Conduct Ongoing Monitoring: Brands should be constantly monitoring their brand mentions and social media discussion of relevant topics using alerts and reports. Ongoing monitoring is critical for crisis response management, and as part of your planning you should have policies, trigger events and response processes in place prior to an event. For more on how social media impacts all facets of your business contact us about our webinar for CEO’s.  Ongoing monitoring also is imperative for trend spotting and contextual analysis of macro changes. 

4. Get wide participation, use partners and stakeholders.  Use your initial competitive intelligence to identify the optimal keywords, phrases, tones and locations to measure, and involve a variety of stakeholders, both internal and external. By creating a regular iteration for review and discussion, all parties can be participants in shaping a common objective and formulating next steps. While this may smell of “management by committee”, this is meant to be a core collaboration phase leading to a definitive prioritization, used to identify issues or non issues, and to qualify and quantify potential impacts.  By establishing a lead who is accountable for this process, you will establish a process and go-to mechanism for eliciting relevant information, as well as an efficient decision process for roadmap planning.  Regularly distribute findings to stakeholders, and invite input on potential meanings and solutions.  Better to have a process for ongoing roadmapping, than to be caught unaware. 

5. Consider a monitoring vendor as a long term partner. Find a listening platform or set of tools that meets your business needs.  Hire a seasoned technology and social media consultant that understands your business, and gets the social web –beyond just mainstream media. There are numerous platforms available, some that meet claims and others that do not.  A good social media consultant should be able to steer you to the best platform for your needs, objectively clarifying and addressing the problem you are trying to solve rather than attempting to sell a tool. At no time should you rely simply on the software vendors sales pitch.  Validate all claims.

6. Appropriately Staff and Fund. Don’t expect this partner to understand the nuances of your markets’ discussion, assign a few part time resources internally to champion this audit internally –and don’t forget to budget. Social Media implementations are proportional, representing a sliding scale of potential tactics based on priorities and budgets.

7. Don’t be afraid to experiment.  Be open minded.  You may be in a unique business or industry that has not yet come to grips with the power of social media. Do your homework, gather competitive intelligence before initiating any tactical or strategic action.  Then try new approaches that may seem a bit out of the box.  Monitor effectiveness and be ready to make adjustments. Social media is a new frontier, those afraid of a little trailblazing will be destined for the Darwin heap.  Be smart – crawl walk run, but do so with purpose.  As with anything, you may take a few knocks, but you will take many more if you aren’t assertive and let others dictate. 

8. Listen to your target and their environment.  You will be aware of changes, influences, and variable factors that can be quickly integrated into your practices.  A non-listener will always be in a reactive mode, so make sure that you have your ears on and participate. When the party moves, you’ll know right where to be.  When you see a convergence happening, you’ll be well positioned for “opportunistic” responses rather than defensive moves. 

9. Understand that the math has changed.  Industrial age ROI measurements are largely linear in nature. Social Media in the Information Age is geometric, so multi dimensional measurements and formulas must be applied.   If your current staff is ill equipped to make this change, retire them and find relevant expertise.  Likewise, if you have an agency or any other third party relationship that claims a lock on new frontier formulas, you should put them through as critical an audit as possible, and discard heavily.  There are far too many agencies and department heads claiming results (using old math), yet fail to deliver when geometric auditing is applied.  Know the allocation options, and where social media spends drive cost efficiency.  

10. Seek professional help.  No, not that kind. You want consultants or staff who are highly aware and successful in the rapidly moving environment of social media.  Advisors who have continually proven that they know how to stay on top of changes, and exploit this fragmented marketplace.   Preferably individuals who have worked with a variety of businesses, and understand that Social Media touches all aspects of your company.  If you find someone who only speaks in terms of brand, marketing, PR or sales – or Twitter, Facebook, MySpace marketing allocations – RUN AWAY.  The very best teams are those who grew up developing the underlying technologies, can speak the language, and who also have backgrounds in multiple corporate disciplines.

Media 2010

 

 Companies with end to end solutions that have a high degree of digital presence are expected to fare the best in 2010.  No-where is this more apparent than with established brands that fit well with Voice of the Customer and community engagement models.  Scaling does not have to be enterprise level in order to be highly cost effective, as long as the correct amount of attention is placed on identifying markets and customer placements on various web platforms, and penetrating them with invitational rather than broadcast messaging.   

While moving marketing allocations and spends online has proven out to be cost effective, don’t rely simply on banner ads  – rather look for creative value ad opportunities and vehicles to provide information or edutainment messages to customers of interest.  By providing something with value and substance, engagement becomes a partnership instead of the historic one way street.  By allowing and encouraging your customers to help craft messages and help determine what needs and interests that a company can service, you are ingratiating yourself in their domain of choice, and key customers and influencers will by definition opt into accepting advertising and value proposals put forth. 

Fail to meet the partnership bar however, and you can expect to fall into the “ignore” category.  If you are not addressing online markets in terms of customer engagement, retention, and analytics –good luck. 

For some reason the requirement for active participation with mutual value has yet to be embraced by many marketers and agencies.  If you are working with an agency that is still trying to penetrate markets with a % advertising allocation approach across Twitter, Facebook, MySpace, Google etc. without the foundational understanding of required people to people involvement, you should look for a different agency.  Push is out, Pull is in.  High touch does  not have to be high cost, but it does have to be transparent. 

eMarketer predicts that online advertising spending will increase by 5.5 percent to $23.6 billion in 2010, reversing a 4.6 percent decline last year. 

Search engine spending should be around 15%-20%, an increase from around 6% in 2009.  Search engines are THE gateway for discoverability, and will be so for some time to come.  Companies will continue to need a solid SEM and SEO strategy, and more sophisicated anagement and maintenence.  There is no slowing of the Google, Bing juggernauts – so you’d best assume a fair portion of your online budgets will be necessary.  That doesn’t mean you can’t be smart however, and move the balance of PayPerClick and Organic activities to be highly cost effective. 

“The difference between the Internet and traditional media like TV is that there are infinite possibilities” online, says Scott Schiller, svp of ad sales, Comcast Interactive Media. “Why would that change in 2010?”

If you want to be successful, hire a company to do comprehensive research into the infinite possibilities so that you can create a best fit roadmap and tactical plan.  There is no one size fits all, and there are no magic bullets.  Dominating your space takes diligence, homework and frequent adjustments – as well as direct participation by the corporate clients. 

 Just how does social networking fit into the digital media mix? Many contend that while nearly every major advertiser is interested in social media in some fashion, the true value for brands on sites like MySpace and Facebook lies in customer retention and analytics, rather than as vehicles for display ads.  Know where your customers are and how to engage with them.  Forget hype, there are plenty of tools available (Call us with questions) to assess when and where your targets are online for positioning and timing of your message.  This sure beats the ol Nielsen “rating” system where a dog in front of a TV was counted as an impression.   Digital really does have infinite possibilities – are you on board?  Are you working with experts?

Of course, no digital forecast is complete without someone extolling mobile’s potential for the coming year, and someone else tempering that prediction. 2010 is no different. Per eMarketer, mobile ad spending should jump by 42 percent this year; yet the medium represents just 3 percent of digital spending.

But at the very least, “in certain categories, mobile will have a definite seat at the table,” says Schiller. “Media buyers like to buy what they know and understand. And everyone has a Blackberry and iPhone.” 

 

Thanks to ubiquitous wireless broadband networks and a variety of portable Internet access platforms, the solution, increasingly, must be anywhere and anytime.

And what about TV?   What about local opportunities?  

Stations are cultivating online and mobile revenue in the effort to build new business models. According to BIA/Kelsey, TV stations can expect to ring up about $600 million in online ad revenue in 2010, versus $463 million in ‘09. As part of those initiatives, stations are partnering with other local stations to create video news pools and going hyperlocal both online and on-air, trying to find solutions to expensive syndicated programming.  This plays hand in glove with an astute local online search effort, and ROI can be delivered in a matter of months.  Companies with sponsorship agendas, such as those with athletics, sports, or celebrities should take note.  Regional and local scaling is affordable and beneficial.
“We’re all going to be focused on those other revenue streams,” says Paul Karpowicz, president of Meredith Broadcasting. “You’ll see a lot more emphasis on local programming. In an environment where ratings are scarce, if you can create a format that has sponsorship, product integration elements, that becomes attractive.” In total, all of TV’s additional revenue, including Internet, mobile, digital subchannels and retransmission could account for as much as 13 percent of TV stations’ revenue, with online and retrans representing more than 5 percent each, according to TVB.  This is a BUYERS MARKET.  Companies with a strong marketing mix that is both traditional and digital, and with a solid understanding of new market dynamics – can literally call the shots.   

Astonishingly, no-one is sure why the concept of digital re-mixing has taken so long for marketers and advertisers to understand.   For the agencies and corporations alike, the current environment is a marketers dream – and prices and barriers to entry are low.  Do your homework, and come out swinging!