Using The 3 Nascar Marketing Secrets To Turbo Charge Your Success This Year

– Part 2 NASCAR Makes Their Own Celebrities NASCAR doesn’t simply rely on big names to endorse and promote their organization. Rather, they create and promote 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 cannot find a celebrity to endorse your dealership, you can just become one yourself. Think it is impossible?? Well in the age of YouTube, Social Media and the web, it’s actually not. Make yourself a local celebrity by beginning a blog, writing articles for your local publications, speaking to local groups, hosting seminars about smart car buying or credit strategies, hosting your own weekend radio show, etc. You can 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 build your celebrity status that way. Every little bit counts. NASCAR Understands the Potential of Cross Promotions You might be a small guy in a big dealer pond, but you certainly do not have to advertise like one. In fact, you can play a bigger game in this area simply by associating yourself and your business with several other well known entities in your area. When done right, this can assist strengthen 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, cross advertising means teaming up with other companies and promoting one another. Occasionally you see this in an auto mall,

where multiple dealerships would pool their marketing dollars to create a larger splash in the market. Sometimes you see this with multiple, non‐competing businesses in a tight geographical area, where they pool their marketing dollars to bring customers to the general vicinity. But if you want to cross promote similar to NASCAR… you would 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 famous (celebrity‐like) companies right from the beginning. For example, Tag Heuer, the watch brand, already has Tiger Woods secured as a celebrity endorsement. Possibly you can hook up with a local jewelry store that is a Tag Heuer retailer, to offer a Tag watch to one lucky winner on Father's day. Your automotive marketing could feature you and the jeweler (and Tiger). You could either share the cost of the marketing, or ask the Jeweler to supply 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 (naturally, you can also tie in a golf course or country club for this, divide the marketing 3 ways!), you give away the wristwatch, you sell few 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 relations. Not to mention, you would be paying less money for greater exposure as you learn to pull your resources and share the expenses of these incredible campaigns. Here is some other nice ideas you might need to consider. 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. Maybe 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 lately 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 meet the

contestants, signed autographs, tasted his coffee and declared, "Best Ever." Now he has a picture of Miss America drinking his coffee that he could use forever. As you expand your thinking on this, you will literally see opportunities all over. You just have to look through the lens of the power of celebrity to begin seeing them all. In less than an hour of focused concentration on this subject you could definitely come up with 10 good ideas. Or, plant 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 would pop right into your head while driving in traffic, or standing in the shower, or after waking up in the middle of the night. Focusing on this element of your business truly is the kind of powerful, leverageable activity that can make you rich. Whilst most individuals are moving cars around or writing on windshields or brewing coffee, you can be working on SPEED and quickly 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!