The Role of Digital in Motorsports Marketing
7 Digital Strategies You can use to Maximize Your Motorsports Marketing Efforts
Motorsports is a massive, $4.8-billion industry across many series and different types of racing, such as NASCAR, motocross, dirt track racing, NHRA, Monster Jam, and more. The industry is projected to grow even more to $7.8 billion by 2026.
A significant portion of this growth is found online. Online advertising for motorsports alone is expected to hit $256.7 million by 2025, a growth rate of 24.1% from 2020 to 2025.
With technological advancements and the immense popularity of social media, it’s more possible than ever for the different brands, teams, series, and others in the racing market, to expand their reach within the industry with speed and efficiency.
In this post, we’ll examine the changing role of digital in motorsports marketing. Additionally, we’ll provide you with seven strategies you can use to maximize the success of your motorsports marketing efforts.
The State of Motorsports Marketing
Traditionally, motorsports businesses have relied on traditional marketing tactics such as print advertising and event marketing.
While these components can still have a role in motorsports marketing, there has been a significant shift toward digital marketing. As the average American spends 5 hours and 42 minutes daily on a screen, whether it’s on their smartphones, laptops, or other gadgets, buyers have a ton of information at their fingertips, so they can be very close to a decision before even talking to a seller.
Why Go Digital?
Many motorsports-affiliated businesses are exploring digital marketing to attract new customers and connect with their audience. Here are a few key reasons to consider digital marketing in your motorsports business.
- Popularity of the Internet: Many customers rely on the internet to find the products and services they are looking for. Going digital can help you expand your reach and find new customers.
- Efficient Communication: You can inform your prospective buyer and lead them to your solution in an efficient, organic way, using strong messaging and content to guide them through your website at their own pace.
- Tell Your Brand Story: You can effectively tell your brand story - helping your potential customers see themselves IN that story - and deepen the emotional connection with your audience.
- Create Brand Ambassadors: Your fans and customers can become your own brand ambassadors as they share your ads or campaigns with other motorsports-loving friends.
- Utilize Metrics: You can track the effectiveness of your campaigns using digital marketing metrics. You can then use the data to identify what’s working and what’s not.
- Leverage Multiple Platforms: You can leverage the different digital platforms and apps to promote your brand.
- Embrace Automation: You can automate your processes and integrate your digital marketing efforts within your chosen technological platform.
- Keep Up with Trends: You can stay informed on the latest trends and industry data, with some even based in real-time.
Digital marketing encompasses all marketing efforts that happen on the internet. You can use several digital marketing strategies and tactics to grow your business. For example:
1. Websites and Online Stores (eCommerce)
An effective website that supports your sales funnel includes high-quality copy and content, images, videos, a blog, and your online or eCommerce store.
Stores that make automated transactions easy and seamless and provide valuable information to customers tend to perform well, as users or fans can easily navigate and take desired actions. You can build a website yourself or hire an experienced agency or contractor.
2. Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
Search Engine Optimization, or SEO, is one kind of Search Engine Marketing (SEM) strategy. It works by organically ensuring that your website ranks high in search results returned by search engines like Google.
The higher your website’s position is in search results pages, the greater the chance of being clicked and visited. It does this through keyword utilization, enhancement of content design, effective link building, and more.
3. Paid Ads / Pay-Per-Click (PPC)
Another kind of SEM strategy is Pay-per-click or PPC. Here, search engines like Google, Facebook, or Instagram ensure your website’s visibility by making you appear high on the search results page. Each time your link or ad is clicked, you pay an advertiser’s fee.
Paid ads are a good option to include in your overall strategy but should not be the entirety of your marketing efforts. Remember, when you’re using paid ads, you’re only getting traffic as long as you’re shelling out funds to drive that traffic. Think of it like a faucet. Once you turn off the flow of advertising dollars, your traffic from paid online ads will stop completely (and immediately). Combine paid ads with the other strategies listed here for the best results.
4. Email Marketing
Email marketing has become an effective channel to drive engagement. With email marketing, you can segment your customers according to their profiles and preferences by using emails. This enables you to send highly personalized content that matches their needs and desires.
5. Social Media Marketing
Of course, this list wouldn’t be complete without including social media strategy. This taps the power of social media platforms (such as Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram, and TikTok) to create and share content about your brand and sustain interest through online conversations.
6. Inbound marketing
Traditional marketing strategies advertise products on external platforms such as TV ads and billboards. These ads are interruptive in that the advertisements are inserted into an individual’s activity. The 30-second TV ad spot is a classic example of this. The opposite approach is known as inbound marketing. This business philosophy and methodology involves driving customers to your website to help them solve their problems and ultimately connect them to your products or services. By providing information that helps answer a potential customer’s questions, you create marketing that your customers will actually like because it helps them!
Once they’re browsing your website, your prospects can familiarize themselves with your brand. Driving the right people to your website—and providing them with content that encourages them to stay—allows more opportunities for you to sell when they are ready to make their purchase.
7. Account-Based Marketing (ABM)
Account-based marketing is focused on business-to-business (B2B) marketing, where marketing, sales, and customer teams collaborate to target top-tier leads and convert them into customers. This strategy uses digital targeting to qualify best-fit companies. Then, they engage these customers on their terms using messaging most relevant to them.
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Enter the Race with Motorsports Marketing
By going digital in your motorsports marketing strategy, you can track and prove the performance of your campaigns, effectively demonstrating the ROI of your efforts. To have the most accurate measurement, you need to start your digital marketing campaign by defining your goals.
With the right goals in hand, you can then drive your marketing success by following the Digital Growth Framework™. In this systematic approach, you begin by establishing a strategy tailored to your business and then developing the sales funnel. Lastly, you measure how well you are performing against your goals—all while fine-tuning your performance along the way.
At Digital Momentum, we can use the Digital Growth Framework™ to grow your business. By using Inbound methodologies, we can help you track and analyze every component of your digital marketing strategy to deliver the results you want. Ensure you are optimized for winning—book a call with Digital Momentum today!
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Whether you hire us or not, let us show the Digital Growth Framework that works for racing and automotive performance brands.
