3 Nascar Marketing Secrets That Will Turbo Charge Your Success This Year – Part 2

NASCAR Makes Their Own Celebrities



NASCAR does not simply rely on big names to endorse and market their organization. Instead, they create and market their own celebrities to carry the brand. Mike attributes DALE EARNHARDT JR. and his development into the sport’s first true cross-over star as one of the factors for NASCAR's dramatic growth in the first part of this decade.



Based on that idea, if you can’t find a celebrity to endorse your dealership, you could just become one yourself. Think it is impossible?? Well in the age of YouTube, Social Media and the internet, it is really not.



Make yourself a local celebrity by beginning a blog, writing articles for your local publications, speaking before local groups, hosting seminars about smart car buying or credit strategies, hosting your own weekend radio show, etc. You could get a book or take seminar on DIY PR and start getting your name in the media as a featured expert. Use social media to garner "fans" and develop your celebrity status that way. Every little bit counts.



NASCAR Understands the Power of Cross Promotions



You might be a little guy in a big dealer pond, but you absolutely don’t need to promote like one. Actually, you could play a bigger game in this area simply by associating yourself and your business with other famous entities in your area. When done right, this can help boost the effectiveness of your message and insulate you from being hurt financially and emotionally in the case of a failed promotion.



To break this down further, more promoting means teaming up with other companies and advertising each other. Sometimes you see this in an auto mall, where multiple dealerships will pool their marketing dollars to create a bigger splash in the market. Occasionally you see this with multiple, non-competing businesses in a tight geographical area, where they pool their marketing bucks to bring shoppers to the general vicinity.



But if you wish to cross promote similar to NASCAR… you will have to do what these other businesses are doing and take it to the MAX.



So forget auto malls and tiny marketing collaboratives… doing it the NASCAR way means partnering with well known (celebrity-like) firms directly from the beginning. For instance, Tag Heuer, the watch brand, already has Tiger Woods secured as a celeb endorsement. Maybe you can connect with a local jewelry store which is a Tag Heuer retailer, to offer a Tag watch to one lucky winner on Father's day. Your marketing could feature you and the jeweler (and Tiger). You could either share the expense of the marketing, or ask the Jeweler to provide the watch. You then have a big event, the jeweler is on site with a cut out of Tiger wearing a Tag watch, you have a putting contest (obviously, you could also tie in a golf course or country club for this, divide the marketing 3 ways!), you give away the watch, you sell some cars, and everyone goes home happy.



Realizing that there is power outside of yourself is the key element here. You should expand your thinking to allow the possibility of working with others and leveraging their existing celeb associations. Not to mention, you’ll be spending less money for greater exposure as you learn to pull your resources and share the costs of these incredible campaigns.

Here's few of the great ideas which you may need to think about.



You could tie with local celebrities like newscast personalities, local authors, radio DJs, local musicians, etc. Again, promote them and ask them to promote you. Perhaps offer to pay for a printing of the next batch of CDs produced by a local popular band… with your logo and offer on the CD or inserted inside. A pal of ours recently offered to host a reception in his coffee shop for a group of young pageant contestants. The result was the current Miss America came by to visit the contestants, signed autographs, tasted his coffee and declared, "Best Ever." Now he has a picture of Miss America drinking his coffee which he could use forever.



As you expand your thinking on this, you will literally see possibilities all over. You just have to look through the lens of the power of celebrity to start seeing them all. You could come up with more than ten great ideas when you start to concentrate on this subject for an hour. Or, place the desire in your subconscious by writing it down on a piece of paper and carrying that in your pocket for a week. In time, the ideas will pop right into your head while driving in traffic, or standing in the shower, or after waking up in the middle of the night.



One of the most influential and leverageable activities that can make you rich is focusing on this element of your business. While most individuals are moving cars around or writing on windshields or brewing coffee, you can be working on SPEED and rapidly moving your business into the fast lane, while drafting behind the existing success and celebrity of someone else. That is the true power of NASCAR!



Jimmy Vee & Travis Miller are the authors of Gravitational Marketing: The Science of Attracting Customers and founders of the Rich Dealers Institute. They help dealers double their profits in as little as 118 days. Receive a free copy of their special report & video presentation, The New Rules of Automotive Marketing by visiting http://www.RichDealers.com/special