Inbound Marketing: How the Kansas Speedway used a virtual race to fuel fan engagement on Twitter

Although it is one of the newer racetracks in its 17^th year, the Kansas Speedway in Kansas City, Kansas, is one of the premiere racetracks in the country.

The speedway’s base is in Kansas City, which offers plenty of growth opportunities for expanding the fan base. Its reach goes as far and wide as Nebraska, Iowa, Missouri and all the way out to St. Louis, Denver, Tulsa, North and South Dakota and Minnesota.

“We're one of the few tracks that is so easily reachable to all of those fans, so we actually have an interesting opportunity to reach out,” said Kelly Hale, Director of Public Relations, Kansas Speedway.

CHALLENGE

That huge reach can also provide a challenge when it comes to figuring out how to best place the advertising spend.

Because people do more digitally, the team began looking at social media as a way to reach all of those locations while spending money in an efficient way. This would go alongside the largest allotment of advertising in the form of billboards as well as TV and radio promotions.

“For social media, you have such a differing fan base on every platform. Facebook tends to skew a little older, which is really the core NASCAR fan. So, we hit Facebook a lot. But we also make sure we're paying attention to Instagram and Twitter and Snapchat for those younger fans,” Hale said.

Social media wasn’t always a priority, according to Hale, but in the last three or four years, the marketing team has ramped up efforts in the channel.

“We know, No. 1, that's where a lot of our fans are, but also No. 2, it's a more inexpensive way for us to reach a greater number of people as well. When we can get our fans to share our content to their friends, then we know that we're reaching a bigger base than we would with a traditional TV ad or a radio promo,” she said.

CAMPAIGN

To rally younger NASCAR fans, the team decided to develop a social media race where fans’ tweets would fuel drivers around the speedway.

“We were looking to do something different to be engaging with Twitter fans because Twitter followers have become a pretty big base at this point,” Hale said.

The team developed the #Virtual400, where custom hashtags would send each “driver” — identified by their number — racing around a virtual track. The more tweets, the faster the driver. A landing page showcased the drivers circling the track while conversation pods gave fans access to all the tweets or individual driver tweets during the race.

The race took place over a two-hour period, and the driver with the most live support, in the form of tweets using their specific hashtag, would win.

Step #1. Pick drivers who will excite fans 

“NASCAR fans are very passionate about their drivers. So, we wanted to go with drivers who we knew fans would really buy into and want to follow this race,” Hale said.

The layout on the landing page was a replica of the Kansas Speedway, and it had 16 drivers going around the track, identified by their car numbers.

“For the drivers, our initial plan was to go with the top 16 drivers because when NASCAR gets to their playoffs, there are 16 drivers that make the playoffs,” she said.

The challenge was that the team knew that NASCAR’s most popular driver, Dale Earnhardt Jr. was 20^th in the points and wouldn’t fit into the top 16.

“We knew it was going to be really important for us, if we wanted fan engagement, to have him in there,” she said. “So, we did a little bit of tweaking with the numbers.”

There was one driver in the top 16 who was not on social media at all, let alone active, so the team decided that there wouldn’t be fan pushback if they chose not to include him.

“We left him off the list and included Dale Earnhardt Jr. Other drivers we wanted to make sure we included were Clint Bowyer, who is from Emporia, Kansas, and has a big tie to Kansas Speedway just as a local driver, also Jamie McMurray, who grew up about three hours from Kansas City. Fans really relate to those two drivers,” she said.

Aside from these exceptions, Hale said, the team went with the top drivers in points because they felt like that was the fairest way to go.

“There are some great drivers who were not in the top 16 who were on Twitter and very active that we'd love to include, but at some point, you have to start looking at your costs and making sure that you're being very strategic in what you're doing,” she said.

To propel those drivers around the track, fans would include the hashtag #KSS42, for example, if the driver’s number was 42. Also the hashtag #Virtual400.

“What we also found was some fans were very passionate about just that [including the hashtag], but some of them started including comments as well. It was kind of fun to see what some of those comments were as they were trying to get their driver to win,” she said.

The race lasted two hours, and the team was surprised at that time. They had blocked off the whole day in case people weren’t participating, and it took longer for the drivers to get around the track.

“We had plans, in case people weren't participating, to have different people's friends and family start tweeting to have them participate. Obviously, we didn't have to do that because there was such a great engagement by fans,” she said.

At the end of two hours, driver Kevin Harvick won the race “pretty solidly,” Hale said.

“I got really nervous. With the 16 drivers, there were like four drivers that had no tweets whatsoever in the first 30 minutes and I was thinking this is going to be bad. Four drivers will have never even started the race. But all of a sudden, they kind of made a comeback. That was really good to see,” she said.

Step #2. Promote the race 

To promote the contest, Hale first reached out to NASCAR.com to write a blog about it. She also contacted various teams, some sponsors, Kansas Speedway’s sister tracks as well as some radio stations.

The team also began promoting the Virtual 400 on their own social media, especially Twitter, where the race would be fueled.

“Honestly, we were a little nervous that maybe people wouldn't buy in,” she said. “I think that's always one of those things that you have to worry about.”

But on the day of, she said, the excitement was more than the team could have hoped for. Not only from fans, but from drivers, the race team and even racing sponsors — proving that Hale’s promotion ahead of time had paid off.

“It was really fun to see that engagement throughout the entire NASCAR industry,” she said.

One of Hale’s favorite aspects of the industry is the camaraderie, especially from the speedway’s sister tracks.

“We all try to help each other out. Actually, another racetrack reached out to us this morning and said, ‘Hey, we're going to have a really big announcement with one of our sponsors at 10:00 this morning. Can you guys help us share this socially?’” she said. “Whatever we can do to help, it just helps all of us in general.”

Step #3. Never miss a chance to remarket

Through the Virtual 400, fans could enter to win race tickets, which the marketing team used as an opportunity to collect that data for the database, to hopefully remarket to that group.

The contest was one entry per person, and the team decided that after the contest, they would go back to the people who didn’t win and make them a special ticket offer as a thank you for participating.

“We did a random draw of anybody who entered because they participated in the contest. They won two tickets to the Go Bowling 400, which is our May cup race, two pre-race passes and a parking pass. It was really great because the man who won that one was really excited to bring his son out here,” she said.

When the ticket winner and his son attended the race, he posted a picture of them at the event, which the racetrack’s Twitter account retweeted.

“With the #Virtual400 campaign, it's a way for us to have a fun interaction with our fans but also to potentially gain some data on who our fans are,” Hale said.

With social media overall, she said, they view it as an information source for fans first and then as a way to contribute to the team’s overall goal — to sell tickets.

“We try to find creative ways to sell tickets through social media to the point that people don't realize that we're actually trying to pitch them ticket sales,” she said.

RESULTS

In the #Virtual400 race, which only took two hours when the team had set aside an entire day, the team saw thousands of original tweets. The team also had:

• A reach of 4 million
• 9.5 million impressions

Because of the campaign’s success, the team is now planning a fall virtual race as well.

“We’re actually going to use the 16 drivers who make the playoffs to make it relevant to our playoff race, which I think is something that is unique and no one else is really thinking about that,” she said. “I think it will be fun for everybody who gets involved and most of the 16 drivers that are going to make the playoffs are very active in social media, so it will be a great chance for us to interact with them.”

For the speedway’s social media, she said, “We just keep moving forward … just always trying to keep our social media relevant is going to be our biggest challenge and takeaway.”

Creative Samples

1. #Virtual400 race landing page
2. Tweet about #Virtual400
3. NASCAR blog post
4. #Virtual400 promo tweet

Sources

Kansas Speedway

Trozzolo – Kansas Speedway’s social media vendor

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