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Sponsorship: Part Two- Building a Racing Website

Greg MacPherson by Greg MacPherson
October 15, 2012
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Last time on my blog I talked about sponsorship and some of the myths associated with getting support for motorcycle racing.  There is no question that being a sponsored athlete can be hard work, and you get out of it what you put into it. Sponsorship is not about getting “free stuff” but rather about building relationships with brands and organizations to help promote each other, and ultimately, help your sponsors sell their product to consumers.

When you’re approaching potential sponsors, you need to be prepared to show them what you can do to help them market and sell their product. Getting on the podium each weekend is nice, but what other types of coverage are you giving your sponsors?  The Internet is a great tool for giving exposure to your sponsors, through a website or blog and social media.  With a little time and effort, you too can have a professional-looking online presence to help promote your racing and your sponsors.  

This week, I’ll walk you through how to set up a website to promote your racing and try to generate greater support and sponsorship for your racing program.  

Building your Website:
Many years ago, you had to have some pretty hefty programming knowledge to create a website, but with the advent of sleek Content Management Systems (CMS) and organizations such as WordPress, this has all changed. Now, anyone who knows how Microsoft Word operates, can probably figure out how to create a nice WordPress website.  While there are plenty of website builder resources out there, I’m a particular fan of WordPress—it’s relatively inexpensive, simple to use and can allow you to create a very professional looking website that is easy to update and manage.
WordPress.Com vs WordPress.Org
When you’re building your WordPress website, you can either use WordPress.com or WordPress.org.

The WordPress.com site is a free service that offers limited WordPress templates for free, along with a free domain name. You can also upgrade to a custom domain (eg: www.myracingsite.com) for as little as $13/ year.   Wordpress.com is a very viable option for many people as it is free of charge, easy to set up and hosting is free.  The downside of WordPress.com is that you are limited to the list of themes provided (though they are not half bad) and you cannot add any additional “plugins” (a tool that allows users to implement additional features to extend the functionality of the website such as a Facebook feed or Google map).  An example of a WordPress.com website is http://nadineracing.wordpress.com. Nadine is a female racer who used to race in Canada and now spends much of her time south of the border racing and doing motivational speeches.

WordPress.org is slightly more sophisticated, allows you to implement a wider variety of templates (including those which can be purchased at a nominal fee of $25-$80 from WordPress theme providers), allows you to implement plugins and gives the user more control over their website.  The downside of using WordPress.org is that it requires you to have a hosting provider that allows you to have FTP access to your website.  There are plenty of reputable hosts out there, a number of whom offer an easy installation package for WordPress. Bluehost is one such provider that allows for easy WordPress installation and will host your site for as little as $3.95/ month.  An example of a WordPress.org site is www.cactusbike.com, a site I threw together quickly for a friend who owns a bicycle shop in Phoenix, Arizona.

Content:
Once you’ve set up your website, the critical and more time-consuming step will be to create relevant content to promote your racing efforts.  If writing is not one of your strong points, you may wish to jot down some information in bullet point form and try to convince a friend or relative to help you out. The content you choose to place on your website will be important, as it outlines who you are, what you’re all about and the sponsors you represent.
Suggestions for Content Headings:
News:  This could be your homepage “blog” with the latest news or event results
About: a brief racing biography
Team: list your pit crew or others who help you on a regular basis
Schedule: include your racing schedule and a list of any upcoming trade shows or events you might be attending
Multimedia: include any photos and video of you riding *always ensure you have permission to use photos on your site and give photo credit to the photographer
Sponsors:  a list of your sponsors including sponsor logo, link to website and 2-3 sentences about the product they offer
Contact: an email address or contact form so people can get in touch with you.
Keep Content Current:
Once you have added initial content to your website, the key will be to keep the content fresh by updating it regularly! There is nothing worse than a website that has not been updated in several months, and it certainly won’t help your sponsors either!

With a good website in place, you can demonstrate to existing and potential sponsors that you are serious about your partnership with them and that you want to help promote and sell their product as best you can.  A good website might make the difference between getting that parts budget you were hoping for or covering all of your expenses out of pocket!

Next time, I’ll talk about the emergence of Social Media as another great tool to help promote your sponsors and try to achieve your sponsorship goals. 

Tags: How to build a websitehow to get motorcycle sponsorsI need a website for my racingmotorcycle racing sponsors
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