Motorsports Marketing and Sponsorship

Marketing and sponsorship has always been the prime mover of motorsports. Riders, team, fans, spectators and even workshop recognises the contribution be it big or small sponsorships coming from the corporates. In professional level racing, top 5 NASCAR team only earn less than 10% of its revenue from the race winnings. It may come in as a surprise to us low level racing people. Not many will see it this way but id like to reiterate that motorsports team are in the business of marketing services and NOT racing.

It is foolish for us to think that sponsorship money is the key to go racing, but on the other spectrum to racing. Sponsorship money is actually a startup fund for you to make your sponsors marketing communication a more effective ones. Take this for example, you are a podium finisher in a national series league. There’s only RM3,000 prize money at the end of the season. When you win, do you give the money back to sponsors as part of their contribution? was it even enough after asking RM100,000 to fund you racing? have you blew all the money up on racing parts or you did what the industry expect you to do? communicate their advertising and marketing on behalf of them through racing?

Question: So do you sell racing to your sponsors or do you sell marketing services to them? 

What are Motorsports sponsors looking for when they sponsor you?

Return of Investment (ROI)

So you plan to seek a sponsorship and under the purview that you are a championship winner for 2 consecutive years. You are asking for a total funding of RM100,000 worth of cash and parts from a sponsor. The sponsors are all business people, to be honest winning is just making their job easier to communicate their advertising and marketing plan which might not even cost them as much in order to make their brands sellable. What they want is a real person communicating their brand to the motorsports public from a third person perspective in hope they would get you to drive their sales up. For example: they give you RM100,000. Somehow you need to use this money and help them generate from 10% to 30% of that amount invested in you then only its called a healthy trade in business.

Question: Are you going to invest RM100,000 into someones hobby so that in return you would only get back RM30,000 in return?

Branding

Not all company seek for cash or sales return. Some may even look at motorsports sponsorship as a form of branding to create awareness to their newly founded brand locally, to communicate the possibilities of eradicating their current tarnished brand image, to get closer to their market by using your race team as a platform and etc. For example: When everyone is taking a piss on volkswagen’s gearbox problem, you and your team came out with a good marketing strategy and communications to help cool down the publics critic by racing their vehicles in a 24hrs endurance race. This will have a positive impact on the brand but that doesn’t mean that you should knock on every brands that only has problems. Perhaps also knock on doors that the brands are undervalued at the moment.

Question: Do you think marketing communication is just sticking a couple of brands on your bike and motorcycle? 

Sales

Fairly similar to ROI but ROI can come from many other sources such as splitting the championship winnings, selling the whole race bike to retire a full season and give credit back to your sponsors. Sales is something more direct from that. While some companies are forking out money for our hobby, which is racing of course. They are looking for an avenue to expand their sales network and to sell more to their potential or untapped market. Lets take an example such as, brand A only sells their parts for road bikes and they are coming up with their new race parts. They need a platform to endorse it. Perhaps working together to help sell some parts to your friends or opening up a sales channel by convincing your workshop to start reselling their parts is a point to start off with. So that sponsoring your hobby doesn’t feel like a selfish decision that benefitted the rider only.

Questions: Would you be taking the RM100,000 and spend it all for your racing or you take out 30% of that portion to encourage your friends to buy your sponsors parts? like only by going through you, you are able to give them RM1,000 cash up to 30 person? 

What do motorsports sponsorship has to offer?

The benefits of motorsports sponsorships.

Motorsports is quite an easy on to see its benefits because every single sponsorship thats being placed on the rider or vehicle has a clear benefit to the performance that reaches up till race podium finishes. Take exhaust, suspensions, CNC parts, helmets, leather suits, apparels, heck even crew T shirts all reflects the benefit of the product and easily translated to a good item if communicated properly.

High repetition and recall rate for brands

Motorsports unlike football. Football has a high repetition rate for viewer but very low on your preferred teams . It happens very often in a month but to wait for your favourite team to come on air again might take a longer period. Motorsports is a high repetition and it is consistent because your favourite team/rider is racing every other month. They are involved in every other race. The fact that they run once in 2 months gives sponsors a time to recuperate from their loses and have enough time to come out with a marketing or public relation statement to answer the problem or possibility in hand. If you notice after every race the marketeers and public relations are scattering all over the month on their marketing communications plans. Be it launching of new models, bragging about their winnings, advantages of their new technology and all this is in reflection to that race. It creates contents for marketeers to shout about every other 2 months.

High impact on followers of motorsports

If you have been riding for more than 10 years you will see this phenomenon. RS Taichi landed in Malaysia and they focused so much on track riders. Giving out ridiculous discounts on race suits for track racers and soon everyone in trackday is wearing RS Taichi. Need more? just about the same time Rev’it made themselves available in Malaysia too, they too did some promo and gained some market share but quickly dims down but notably there was more road riders wearing it than track as compared to RS Taichi. Do you think it has something to do with RS Taichi being the official suit for ARRC race? wait, theres more! at one point of time Dainese came into Malaysia like a storm. Giving out partial sponsorships for racers to race in their suits with after sales support and ridiculous discounts. Then what do we see? a decline in RS Taichi users and a sudden spike in Dainese. I can go on forever, but this would be the last example as ive quota of words so that it doesn’t bored you guys out there. Furygan made an entry in recent years and you see all top riders are wearing them now in our humble national series. You see Furygan consistently nabbing all podium finishers to increase their brand visibility and thus, need not to say. The motorsports people followed through with the new brand.

Cross target audience penetration

Motorsports is somewhat a unique platform that serves its almost all target audience crossing demographic and psychographic. You dont need to be a certain age or race or sex or income level to be a supporter of Valentino Rossi. Then again same goes to Kobe Bryant (may your soul rest in peace) But the difference is, everyone is a consumer of motorcycling industry. A classic pair of Jordan may be sold to jordan fans or if you are a K-pop fans or having oversized foot but it serves a couple of different demographic and psychographic. A difference in consumer behaviour, making the marketeers scratch their head on which segment to target. they will be working day and night either to create that market or to fall into place. Whereas motorsports people are just simple minded sheeps. Once you hit your brand in the scene effectively, everyone will follow. You dont see a K-Pop artist buying a pair of K-Tech suspensions or an akrapovic full system but you are highly likely to see a motorcyclist sharing almost an identical bike specs so that they could extend their identity to their local heroes. You could even see a race livery design of your brand even if you dont sponsor them. As long as your brand is communicating effectively on a motorsports platform. It speaks to ALL motorsports people. Try asking a car guy if they know what’s an Arai vs asking a table tennis fans (if theres even such thing) about the same question.

Cheapest advertising and marketing reach out there

The cost is definitely lower. Heres why. Marketeers has always looked at numbers to to justify their spendings and recently marketeers has been blinded by likes and counts of views (which can be bought anyways). They tend to forget the target audience in the process of reaching out for the highest KPI with the least amount being spent. Lost aren’t you? lets start with examples. Lets say theres a food blogger site that offers you (put your company brand here) RM0.01 for 1 reach and RM0.20 for every reaction. Surely the figure is high as food is for everyone but would you be able to sell your RM12,000 Race only full system exhaust to these foodies? oh ya its too expensive, fine! how about your fork and rear bobbins set? cheap, affordable, and EVERYONE needs it. Would you be able to sell any? well perhaps 1 or 2 sets. cause bikers are humans too. On a contrary when you adopt a race team and let them do the work for you. The brands are carried all over the grid with its fans. Also these guys are not just riding on the race track but also on the road. Chances of purchase or exposure is definitely higher because theres easily 100 bikers being exposed to each other on a single race/weekend rides and repetition is definitely there. well, versus the high reach but non effective platform. The money spent there is might as well being burnt away. At least burning RM1,000 with a flame torch and post it in instastory gains more reach than that anyways.

Marketing assets

When you are a brand distributor of a motorsports segment. Do you purposely build a race bike to feature all your parts available in your catalogues or do you have one of your sponsored teams bring forth their machines to display in your corporate events, hospitality events, photo or video shoots, your sons birthday, your sons open day, catalogue or pamphlet designs, mobile advertisement opportunities or even an activation campaign. If you have a vehicle as such in your assets, i truly adore you for your passion in motorsports. Otherwise look for someone for a fair trade then.

Hospitality events

Business to business (B2B) markets are often overlooked as most marketeers are too focused on consumers. That is not wrong but in our current market situation, a B2B format could actually draw more possibilities and creating bigger advantage in this niche market. Motorsports is the very few sports that could bind that much of brands onto their bike and apparels. Each professional race teams has at least 10 major sponsors and another 10 more smaller ones on themselves like a knights insignia. When a motorsports team is having a hospitality events it is the most sort after events for these business owners to go to (Not even your race, because the process of you racing was never important in the first place. It is the result that matters. Of which they can obtain through WhatsApp) So why do these bosses want to attend such boring black tie events? duh! socialising, strengthening their brands, possible joint ventures, business oppurtunity, cross branding leverage and you name it. Imagine having 20 business person in the industry sitting down in a hall with booze (ok fine, perhaps teh tarik as well) and race queens. We don’t need to be a genius to know where this 20 powerful people are heading towards. well, if ever possible. An allied force designed for total nationwide domination in motorsports scene.

Common mistakes done by amateur racers and race team 

Most amateur racer/team has a serious lack of understanding when it comes to race sponsorship. I’ve personally heard racers telling me how fast are they, how they’ve dominated the series or how they intend to go faster the next season on how they deserved a sponsorship. The thing is, not all sponsors will come knocking on your door if you are fast. Being fast just opens up the conversation easier.

Being Fast is everything

Being fast just opens up the conversation easier. It serves just as much as an ice breaker if you are in club level race. Everyone thinks that being placed as first or being placed in a podium is what it all takes to earn sponsorships money. So if you are one of them, please smack your head against the wall and re-read this whole article once more. Then it might occur to you what is sponsorship really.

Question: If being fast is everything, won’t you think that ALL the sponsors in motorsports would only sponsor the fastest guy out there? why would they want to sponsor a Top 10 or even the last person on the grid?

Communication

In any opportunity, communicate the brands that sponsored your silly hobby of yours to the public, try to sell their brands to people during off season racing or between preparation time. If you want sponsorship you gotta earn it. Not come out once in a blue moon and preach about your racing. Really,if you are not Valentino Rossi. No one really gives a sh*t about your personal life. Once you are acknowledged by a sponsor you work 365 days a year doing their marketing services functioning as a “tool” to them. Get creative in this segment and you are sure on your way to be a Star Racer quicker than your lap time.

Question: Would you be a star employee if you only perform 4 times a year (assuming the race series only has 4 rounds) thats like you working 4 days out of that 365 days in a year! Do you think you would deserve a bonus?

Focus too much on racer itself

Motorsports is a team effort, contrary to what people thinks its all about the racers. The team manager,  crew, their family too. When it comes to marketing communications, it really doesn’t hurt to extend those sponsorships advertising to your crew and family. Let them have your team shirts. Let them carry the brands all over the circuit as they walk around. It helps people to notice the team. Look at how successful VR46 communicate the brands to the crowd. You even get a yellow grandstand to make its appearance louder than necessary.

Spectators

Did you know why MotoGP grandstand always sells out and it is always full but our national series is always empty? try asking yourself this, have you communicate this hobby of yours to people around you to give you mental support during your race? A racer should be able to gather some level of fans when it comes to their race. Well, thats because most racer only think too much about their race that they forgotten what’s next on the package that makes a great racer versus a motorsports icon. If you can’t get a grandstand full of crowd to support you, at least fill up your paddock with your supporters. The full paddock worth of supporters will somewhat appear as a supporter of the brand too. provided they are all wearing your team T-shirts. Fans are developed over time and it has always been communicated through racer or race teams personality. If you have a large numbers of friends/followers in your social media. It is time to make it into use. Communicate your racing through your personality and perhaps run some lucky draws to gain their interest. Perhaps by then you would have your own fanbase

Question: Do you have fans?

So, if you are a racer or a race team manager. I sure hope you guys would come out with a commercial plan before all the markets sponsors labels all of motorsports people as beggars. Please be professional and passionate about your sponsors brand. Carry them with pride and communicate it as part of your brand.