red truck labs best practices guide

BEST PRACTICEGUIDE:DELIVERING ROI FROM SPONSORSHIPAND EVENT MARKETING

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http://redtrucklabs.com/


TRADITIONAL APPROACHES TO MEAUSURINGSPONSORSHIP ROI


Over the years, brands investing in sponsorship and eventmarketing have sought to extract value from three areas: (i)brand exposure, (ii) VIP hospitality, and (iii) promotionactivation. Prior to emergence of digital analytics, measuringthe ROI from a sponsorship investment was primarily basedon advertising value and other “fuzzy” math methodologies.

With regards to promotion activation, measuring financial outcomes also varied as brandmarketing teams were often inconsistent in their use of direct response tracking such asunique tracking phone numbers, promo codes, or coupons.

Measuring the success of customer appreciation or saleschannel incentives has largely focused on qualitative insights inthe form of attendee sentiment (postevent satisfaction surveys,opinions from executives, etc.) These nights are directional atbest and fall short of fiscally responsible approach to marketinginvestment.


A NEW AGE OF EVENT MARKETINGACCOUNTABILITY


In recent years, the availability of digital tools such as web analytics and marketing automation(lead scoring) has provided greater visibility into marketing performance. As a result, today’s CMOis under increasing pressure to deliver ROI that extends to their investment in sponsorship andevent marketing.

For Sponsorship and event marketing professionals, this translatesto a greater need for tracking lead capture and attribution fromevents and sponsorship all the way through the sales pipeline torevenue. It also means a need for greater collaboration with internalsales teams to set goals, coordinate involvement, and track CRMdata.

For those selling sponsorshipopportunities, it means aligning datacapture and ROI tracking to supportbrand marketers’ need for tying theirinvestments back to revenue and profits.

Lead Opportunity Sale

CRM

Today’s CMO is underincreasing pressure to deliver

ROI that extends to theirinvestment in sponsorship and

event marketing.


THE RISE OF MOTORSPORTS MARKETING


Over the past few decades, professional sports have emerged as a hotbed of opportunity. Withexponential increases in fan attendance, media viewership, and the rise of digital/social, corporatebrands have jumped in on the action seeking to increase brand awareness and generateincremental sales. While team sports historically dominated the sponsorship and event landscape,professional motorsports (led by NASCAR) has risen to prominence in the last 20 years.

RT Motorsports has been on the leading edge of thisgrowth curve by leveraging NASCAR as a venue forB2B relationship marketing to drive sales results. Thereis no other venue where executives have theopportunity to network with peers and prospectivebuyers from so many diverse industries— all in onelocation. What’s more, the setting is different from allother forms of sports/entertainment in that attendeescan participate in the action and become a part of theexperience by attending the team strategy meetings,listening to the driver/crew conversations during therace, walk on the track during prerace guided tours,watch the action from pit lane and enjoy VIP hospitality.

NASCAR providesa business setting

that is uniquefrom all other

forms of sports &entertainment.


HERE ARE SOME TIPS TO HELP GET STARTED:


Set clear, quantifiable goal(s) for each field marketing eventInvolve your Sales leadership early and often in the goal setting exercise for shared buyin (afterall, Sales will need to attend the events to network for sales leads)Ensure your event and sponsorship marketing team(s) and your motorsport partner’s marketingteam understand the goals and the a reporting structure is establishedStructure VIP events into three types: networking for prospects, deepening relationships withLeads, and closing latestage OpportunitiesSince the focus of any field marketing event is making connections, capture every interaction ina CRM database (preregistration conversations, registration data, atevent conversations, postevent communications)Be sure that your CRM Lead Source field (standard in application suites such asSalesforce.com) is configured so that the pick list values in the field reflect your unique eventtypes (it is critical to use consistent event naming taxonomy for reporting accuracy)Consider creating a custom field that allows additional data to be captured about the specificevent (year, location, etc.)Use your CRM mobile app to capture realtime event conversations to avoid losing businesscards or conversation details days after the event. Aggregate event leads from individual events by use of tags (standard in Salesforce.com) totrack aggregate performance tracking and ease of reporting.


MORE TIPS:


Establish a reporting process with your Sales team to track the progress of eventsourced leadsthrough the sales pipeline (e.g. Conversion rates to Opportunities Won)It’s profit that runs your business (not revenue) so measure it. Specifically, consider measuringcustomer lifetime value (LTV) to determine customer profitability from your events as comparedto other marketing tactics.Collaborate with your Sales team to calculate sales close rates, average revenue size, andaverage profit margin between events to compare resultsUse the sales close rates, revenue, profit data to help you determine where to allocate yourfunds to maximize ROIUSE LTV calculation to guide how much you can afford to invest to acquire a new customerGet predictive group all of the leads from one event using their tag, the divide the total profit bythe amount of leads to predict how much each new event customer is worthAvoid the lastclick trap measure assisted attribution where your events or sponsorship were acontributing touch point to a lead or sale (remember: your event was one of many touch pointsthat led to capturing a lead and converting them into a customer)Use campaign tracking (such as Google UTM tags) to track registration landing landing pagesCompare results across different field marketing eventsTest different formats to determine which works best for a given business goalRegularly solicit feedback from prospects, customers and your sales team for improvement


CHOOSING A MOTORSPORTS BUSINESSPARTNER FOR BUSINESS RESULTS


PRIORITIES

Q: Are they a strong racingorganization, or a businessorganization that usesracing to drive businessresults?

Q: Do they have the inhouse business skills tohelp you and yourmarketingteam integrate events andsponsorship into yourdemand generationstrategy?

PROCESS

Q: Do they haveexperiencewith tracking campaignperformance?

Q: How frequently do theyreport/share metrics withtheir sponsors?

Q: Are they articulate whatthey need from you toensure they candemonstrate ROI?

TOOLS

Q: Are they using CRMsystem or do they haveCRM expertise to activelyuse your system?

Q: Do they use marketingautomation or do they haveexperience with emailcampaigns for pre/postevent engagement?

Q: Do they understandweb,social and sales metrics?



If you are considering an investment in motorsport

relationship marketing for demand generation, be sure

that your motorsport partner can deliver. If you are

already investing in motorsport marketing and not seeing

results, it might be time to contact Red Truck Labs to re

assess your current program.

ContactRed Truck Labs

[email protected]

redtrucklabs.com

/redtrucklabs

(212) 5698000



red truck labs best practices guide

Marketing