Karting Marketing Discussion

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I think this is right on the nose. As it exists today karting is largely defined by the very young and their families’ hopes and aspirations. Even at the local tracks this is true. This might even be a good thing depending upon who was asked, but it definitely is the most distinguishing feature of karting compared to other motorsports.

I’ve been karting 7 years and I’m still trying to get it used to it, honestly. My background was various forms of motorcycling and there was never mistaking that a motorcycling event was ‘a thing for adults to do, which kids also happened to do sometimes’. Whereas in karting, in the pits, in the media, it can feel and be largely perceived to be a ‘kids activity that adults happen to do’. I think Alan is right, as long as the kids are largely featured at an event it’s going to be perceived as their event, or at least equally so. No other motorsport I can think of is like this at the top.

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62

I hate the term, but the “grassroots” segment of the sport requires “grassroots” efforts.

63

Just my 0.02, but I think the core issue, and the core solution is that karting lacks a culture and lifestyle ecosystem around it.

I agree with almost all of Alan’s points. Personally, developing a culture around an activity is an attainable, organic, and (once established) much more cemented thing than having a documentary or the FIA spin their narrative.

If I look at the differences between karting and other adjacent motorsports the biggest thing I see lacking in karting is a coherent culture, lifestyle, or community.

Efforts like @XanderClements help, and clearly bring viewers to the sport. But if you have a group that is always pulling in different directions, or has their only cohesive commonality being that they compete against each other it’s hard to grow something attractive to others based solely on that.

It’s a shame, because I meet a ton of interesting people at the kart track. Maybe it’s just me, but I don’t see a lot of extension of participants and their life choices, spending habits, or time allocation choices to extend with regard to karting beyond going to the track.

I look at other sports, that started off with very small participant pools (historically) that grew to be very popular. Motocross is the best example of what I think karting could be in terms of popularity, community organization, and most critically, lifestyle and culture. I’m not saying I want karters to wear Monster hats and have tattoos and drive lifted trucks, but whatever our culture evolves to be, if we could even be a fraction of the development moto has had since the 80s it would be amazing.

Maybe I’m just too close to karting to not see it. And admittedly I’m not in every region. I’m not at every race. But since I started to now…I really haven’t seen a change in terms of culture. In some ways I’ve actually seen a massive regression. I (personally) don’t feel like I have a clearer idea of why I find karting appealing aside from disparate components.

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64

Something to think about, and I apologize if this has already been stated I only skimmed through the thread, but there’s a whole age-group or “genre” of people I think are missing the party; the 20-30 y/o something car guys (and girls obviously). Especially those who dabble in the time-attack, HPDE, and autocross. They’d be a good crowd to tap into because in general they’re getting out of college, getting big-boy jobs, maybe not quite settled down yet with a family, etc. They have enough resources to play with cars, but maybe not enough to do anything competitive.

I say this because I definitely fall into that category. And when I started karting with the OVKA this year, I quickly noticed the grid is either kids, or guys that are old enough to be my dad. Obviously there’s absolutely nothing wrong with that but I find myself in this weird stage where I’m too old to fit in with other senior drivers, but not quite old enough to race masters (but hangout with them anyways).

So back to the marketing thing … I think the best thing any club / series / or track can do is actively put forth an effort to have an internet presence. It doesn’t have to be viral tik-tok videos, but little things like having a functioning website with regular schedule updates, having FAQs, actually responding to emails and messages with more than a few words, etc. You want to have as many “doors” as possible for someone to check things out, even if it’s just one person.

I know with me, ever since I started karting this year a bunch of buddies have seen my posts and stuff and are interested in joining the party. So I’m making it a point next year to have them tag along and force them to do some laps. I know they’ll be hooked

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Yep, untapped market for sure in various ways and it’s kinda why kartpulse exists too.
Karting can be an alternative a way to race and a tool to compliment one’s existing experience in cars. The latter gets overlooked A LOT in terms of meeting car drivers where they are so to speak.

Worth noting… back in the 60’s and 70’s karting was a prominent and regular feature in hot rodder magazines… I’ve asked for a few images of those hot rodder mags for reference.

Nowadays there’s more pushback from car aftermarket manufactures and sellers that are advertising products that are “competing” with karting. I’m not making this up either in some sort of “I love karting” to tend glasses thing. … I won’t mention the magazine, but they were every upfront about this when I spoke with a prominent one a few years ago. They did not want karting articles, caused friction.

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66

if you ever wonder why you feel your always swimming against the tide with kart promotion a lot is explained here

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This surprises me, and saddens me.

(Even more reason to build a culture).

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68

I just eventually decided ***f I’ll build my own pool and at least control the waves in it :laughing:

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This is a little confusing to me. On one side I look at karting as its own animal, there really isn’t anything like it. BUT on the other hand, karting is driven by disposable income and in that lens really any hobby is competing with karting. I think magazines are a dying media, maybe somewhat because of their narrow focus.

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In a motoring magazine (or on a motoring website) though, the attention isn’t spread out. The audience is already there with their disposable income, looking for motoring things to do/see/buy.

Sure print media is a small number, so I should clarify. This Magazine is digital too.

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Anecdotally, on this Race to 50 journey, there’s been a pretty strong correlation between responsiveness of the track/people and my enjoyment in attending one of their events. Not saying they should care about my goal, but moreso getting help, leads on who to rent a kart from, or other questions I have about their event

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Exactly! At least you are familiar with the world of karting, but imagine how someone new would feel in a situation like that?

I won’t name names, but earlier this year I reached out to a track (who only operates on facebook) and was like “Hey! Do you all have a yearly schedule? And what tires do you all run?”

3 days later they responded with “hoosier”

Safe to say I didn’t pursue the conversation after that haha.

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I was involved with CKT in Colorado for many years. At one point I managed our communications. I answered emails, fb messages, prepared content, etc.

To do it properly for even a regional series is almost a full time job.

I agree with your perspective and lamentations. By focusing on communications, consistent rulings, and trying to do things professionally we grew approximately 25% year over year for several years in membership base. There were a ton of other factors but that all helped.

Being responsive in karting is an abnormality, rather than the expected norm. It is infuriating to me to see and watch in the space, but also presents an opportunity for those that do respond.

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It’s interesting with all of the different racing in the Midwest because you can see the full range of this spectrum, from Big Tracks like MCC that put out nice looking graphics for every event and have a modern website, down to little local dirt tracks whose entire online presence may be a little-updated Facebook page, but who hosts races every Friday night.

But you’re right that maintaining a website and keeping social media active enough that your club looks “alive” is more involved than just posting a picture on insta every week

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This won’t be popular but I’ll say it anyway.
IMO the elephant in the room here is the the sport continues to debase itself and try to sell itself on the basis that it’s “cheap”. So it makes sense that it is more likely to attract people that are more worried about cost vs value.

So, entry fees stay low because “karting should be cheap” and should be for the “every day person”. Then we wonder why clubs and tracks don’t have resources to answer the phone and manage everything else.

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Unpopular but true. Karting is not cheap. It is not easy. It is not without risk. Our market is a small pool of people to start with.

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Fundamentally I agree karting shouldn’t advertise itself as cheap, but it’s worth communicating it can be done on a budget (usually this comes in via secondary media entities if that makes sense). Like most things in life there’s a spectrum of cost.

The mistake with advertising something as cheap is unless you have full control over the price structure you’re basically setting yourself up to fail.

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I think most in karting that I talk to actually unfortunately do the opposite. They like to tell people how much money they spend going to Supernationals or so on.

And I think that scares some people away. Motorsports is expensive, but by motorsports standards karting can* be fairly affordable.

I think selling any sport on price is a very narrow value proposition, whether high dollar or low dollar.

To me, karting offers a lot more than track time for a certain $, it just so happens to be affordable by motorsport standards.

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There are a lot of basic, old school things that can be done locally. At Rock Island we have a big infield display by the local Track, 61 Kartway, with tents, signs, flags, and marketing by Kate Adams who also works with Grand Prix. Anyone can walk up and ask questions of people who just compete locally (not nationally), sit in karts etc. We also invite them to come on track, see karts up close, get autographs and introduce them to some of the top drivers in the sport so they feel connected.

You can also expose people with parade floats, displays at the mall, visits to high school automotive classes etc. Lots of other grass roots opportunities to expose potential racers, parents etc. to karting.

Locally, most people are getting involved at the Briggs or Ignite level where cost is less and racing speed doesn’t scare them off. If interested, they can always move up later. High-priced racing and fast karts just scare new racers away… as does the wide variety of chassis and motors that beginners don’t have a clue about. Just needs to be fun and simple .

It’s been a failure of the sport as long as I’ve been involve (30 years) to promote the sport to newcomers. Any promotion comes from the series and that’s not where people should get their first exposure. We need to get people to the local tracks and let the sport grow from there.

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That’s because there is no ‘sport’ so to speak. What we have as a collective is a hobby split up into a number of niché divisions. We have what resembles a sport now and then, but we’re really a collection of sporadic groups with a few like us who take a holistic view.

There used to be a heavy reliance on the secondary media entities which is magazines, websites and forums like this to do the moan bulk of general marketing. That kind of promotion of general karting used to be almost profitable (adverts, subscriptions etc…), but now it’s very very difficult. My Budget Kart Challenge brought in about $100 of revenue. So after selling the kart etc… I am probably down a few hundred dollars. The project could’ve been done better and it started early 2020 so timing couldn’t have been worse. Either way a general marketing of karting that can be viewed from a global perspective is very expensive, and to benefit from that myself would require it to go viral in a big way. That’s the thing - promoting karting in general is high risk and if you do a really good job the most likely scenario is that you won’t get any benefit, but the major shops, teams and distributors will.

One would expect governing bodies to take up some of the slack, but generally speaking they are almost always going to swerve towards the ‘F1 ladder’ stuff and basically make things even harder.