5 effective ways to promote your next race event

There’s no magic fix when it comes to promoting a race event. You have to plan it all out well ahead of time and ensure that you don’t waste resources on needless experimentation. In this blog post, we’ll discuss 5 tried and tested strategies for promoting your next race event.

 

No race event is the same, which is the biggest problem most marketers face when promoting it. It’s true that there’s no one-size-fits-all solution for every race event, but there are some ways you can predict whether the proposed promotional strategies would work out in your favor or not. The target audience is one of them — you need to tailor your marketing efforts to the interests and preferences of your audience. 

 

For instance, if it’s a school or inter-college race event, the prime target audience is the friends and family members of the participants and the schools/colleges they study at. Once you’ve figured that out, follow these strategies to get as many people to your race event as possible.

 

Put up flyers in high-traffic areas

The first and most obvious thing to do is put up your race event flyers. But that depends on the type of event you’re promoting. If it’s a school competition, the flyers should be posted all around the school, especially in places where students get together to hang out. If it’s a city-wide event, the posters should be put in subways and preferably shown via digital signage.

 

Make sure you mention all the relevant details on your poster. These include the date, time, and venue of the event along with a brief outline of the teams that are participating. Creating a poster doesn’t have to be difficult. You can use an online graphic design tool like PosterMyWall to craft one in a few clicks.

 

Advertise the event on your blog

You’re probably a part of a school, company, or some institution if you’re tasked with promoting a race event. If so, you must have an up-and-running website blog. Most business owners underestimate the power of a blog, but the truth is if you keep your audience engaged by posting valuable content, they’re going to keep coming back for more.

 

So, if your website blog receives a substantial amount of traffic each month, consider posting an article about your race event. This will let your audience know about it. I also recommend mentioning the ticket registration link in the blog so that those who are convinced of attending it can buy their tickets there and then.

 

Create a specific landing page

When you say “click here to register online” in your blog, YouTube video, or Instagram post, you need a working URL (landing page) so that people can buy their tickets. Therefore, you must have a specific landing page because the first thing visitors will see after clicking your ad is your landing page.

 

Make sure your landing page is persuasive. You should list a brief breakdown of the event like the intervals, schedule, and the participating teams. A good idea is to insert a short 2-minute video of the past race event you hosted, highlighting the excitement in the atmosphere and the winner(s).

 

Advertise heavily on social media

Social media is the most sought-after marketing tool in today’s digital age, and you do wonders with it. As far as a race event is concerned, you should focus your marketing efforts on Facebook and Instagram since they’re the most highly used platforms today.

 

As far as Facebook is concerned, consider joining local community groups and pages relevant to the race event. For instance, if the event is specific to a particular neighborhood, join groups of that neighborhood (all its schools and colleges) and post about the upcoming race event.

 

On Instagram, you can post snippets of the ongoing preparations of the venue to create an exciting environment for everyone who wants to attend or is thinking of attending the event. Don’t forget to use popular hashtags so that people can easily find your Instagram posts.

 

Create stunning posts effortlessly by using customizable social media templates that you can edit in minutes.

 

Finish it up with email marketing

Last but not least, you can promote your race event with email marketing. But this requires having a subscriber list. If you’re representing a school or college, you’d probably have a big list of students’ and parents’ emails that you can use to relay information about the upcoming race event.

 

You could bring it up in the form of a newsletter or just a simple email intended to inform them. However, make sure your subject headline is captivating because most people don’t even open irrelevant emails if the subject line doesn’t convince them. Also, avoid writing blocks of text and instead embed the poster you created in the first step in your email.

 

A few parting words

Promoting a race even is easier said than done. And that’s mostly because you have a very niche audience to target, and most of them are either students or parents. Although the above-mentioned strategies work like a charm, make sure to mix them up a bit and tailor them to your specific situation. Start with the marketing as early on as possible because it’ll give you enough time to experiment with multiple strategies and see which ones work best for you.

Adam Sinclair