Head Start

If you have been putting on races for a while, it probably won’t surprise you to hear that organizing events is one of the most stressful jobs out there. How stressful? According to a 2019 survey by job searching site Careercast, it is in fact the 6th most stressful job you can do, less stressful only to careers like the military and firefighting. So what makes putting on events so stressful? What...

Securing sponsorship is undoubtedly one of the toughest jobs on any race director’s plate. And finding and approaching sponsors, in particular, is probably the toughest bit of it. Where do you even begin looking for good sponsor prospects? How do you know which person to contact? What do sponsors really want? And how do you make that first approach to maximize your chances of success? We’ve got so...

90% - keep that number in mind -  that’s how much of your event waste you should be diverting away from landfill to be able to claim that your event is a zero waste event. Sounds tough? Easy? For most races that’s a pretty high bar to clear - particularly as, when you start adding everything up, it quickly becomes apparent that a race can generate waste in many more ways than may seem obvious at f...

In all walks of life, people love to stress the importance of data - knowing the hard facts and using evidence to make better, more informed decisions. So, how well do you know your participants? How well do we all in this industry understand who runners are, what they really want out of our events, and what motivates them to choose one event over another? Well, we’re going to be shedding some lig...

Last week, if you happened to join us for part one of our two-part Facebook Ads podcast special, we set the scene by looking at Facebook marketing strategy, understanding sales funnels, planning and structuring ad campaigns, and mastering audience targeting. This week, in part two of the discussion, it’s time to switch gears a bit and look at some more advanced topics around ad creatives, ad perfo...

When it comes to spending money on marketing races, Facebook Ads remains the most popular choice for race directors and professional race marketers, regardless of race size or type. So how do you make the most of the opportunities Facebook Ads has to offer for marketing your race in 2022 and beyond? We’re going to be going over all that in a special two-part show on Facebook Ads with the help of m...

Are you struggling to understand how you should approach and talk to sponsors? Is seeking sponsorship a task you dread or maybe have even given up on? We’ve got an awesome episode for you today that is going to boost your confidence and reset your entire thinking around sponsorship. It’s going to help you understand what sponsorship truly is about, what sponsors really look to get out of it, and h...

Personalized participant video, where a participant receives an edited video of themselves in the race after they cross the finish line (often as soon as a few minutes after), has been a long time coming in mass-participation events. So how far has personalized video technology really come over the last few years? What does it add to the race experience? How much does it cost? And is the cost wort...

Have you ever thought about trademarking your race’s name or logo? Trademarking your race and brand could help protect your business against trademark infringement, and the risk of getting someone else’s event confused with yours, whether that is done through malice or ignorance. Today we’re going to be looking at all aspects of trademarks and the trademark registration process, with the help of n...

When it comes to marketing your race, email marketing is the granddaddy of all marketing channels. Forget TikTok, and Instagram and Facebook Ads, if you don’t have a sound email marketing strategy, you could be passing on a huge opportunity to grow your race - and also falling short of delivering the highest quality experience you can for your participants. Today we are going to be taking a very c...

It is May 2022 and whatever hopes and expectations we’ve all had of 2022 at the end of last year have started to materialize - or have they? It’s difficult to say how strongly our industry’s recovery towards pre-pandemic levels has fared so far this year, particularly when we all individually get to see only parts of the bigger picture. Well, today I’m delighted to be joined by two industry inside...

When it comes to marketing events, text marketing - or SMS marketing, as it’s often known - is just about as controversial as it gets. Some people have used it and absolutely love the high engagement rate and ROI SMS marketing campaigns provide, others don’t want anything to do with it and positively cringe at the idea of marketing their event over so personal a channel. Well, over the next hour a...

Does your race employ a race announcer? Chances are probably not. You may think that your race is not big enough to have one or that the money spent on a race announcer could be better spent elsewhere - or not spent at all, if you run a for-profit race or raising money for a charity or cause close to your heart. Well, today we’re going to try and give you some reasons to reconsider with the help o...

What do the Marine Corps Marathon, Air Force Marathon and Army Ten Miler all have in common? They are, of course, amazing races put on to celebrate branches of the US Military that attract tens of thousands of participants every year. Well, there’s a new race in town for 2022, set to celebrate the youngest of all military branches: the Space Force. The aptly named Space Force T-Minus 10-Miler is s...

It is by now abundantly clear that some of the ways we have all been used to doing things, including organizing races, are just not sustainable for the planet in the long term. And it is increasingly obvious to race directors and participants alike that traveling long distances to and from events, going through scores of single-use plastic bottles, and sending tons of waste to landfill is taking i...

It’s probably not an overstatement to say that volunteers are the backbone of every successful race. They are the people that make much of race day happen and, yet, recruiting and managing volunteers, training them properly and retaining them for the long run remains a constant headache for race directors of all levels of experience. Well, today we’re going to try and make everyone’s life a little...

On February 17, former president of the Portland Marathon, Lester Smith, was indicted by a grand jury on charges of wire fraud and tax evasion. In the indictment, Smith, who has led the Portland Marathon as both president and race director since 1982, is accused of embezzling more than $1 million dollars from the race’s coffers to fund his personal luxury lifestyle. Today, we’ll be looking back at...

What’s in a brand? Is it the sleek logo with the matching color palette and catchy tagline? Is it your organization’s mission statement and your event’s core values? Or is it every single thing that makes your event a memorable experience for your participants on race day? Well, according to my guest today, event branding expert Peter Abraham , your brand is all of the above and a whole lot more....

Why do some of your marketing campaigns work and others don’t? Why do you yourself as a consumer respond a lot more favorably to some types of messages and not others? At the end of the day, what makes us all take our wallets out and pull the trigger on that next purchase? The answer to all those questions more often than not comes down to psychology. We are programmed to respond to certain queues...

When you want to know what’s happening and trending in the endurance events industry by the numbers, where do you turn to? Well, for me and many people I know, the definitive source of event data for the industry is, and has been for some time, GiveSignup|RunSignup ’s annual RaceTrends report. The report leverages GiveSignup|RunSignup’s extensive registration data from almost 60,000 events to poin...

When you think of race expos, what kind of thing comes to mind? Well, if you’re like me, you’re probably thinking huge pre-race expos like New York or London, where you go to pick up your bib and race packet, and where you get to stroll around hundreds of booths from high-profile running brands showcasing their latest thing. Race expos are actually a lot more common than you think, and, according...

Public relations (PR) is an integral part of running a successful brand and business. It is the art of communication and storytelling. It’s about appealing to communities and stakeholders, forging relationships with media and playing the marketing long game. Yet, as my guest today - PR pro, Meg Treat , of Treat Public Relations - rushes to acknowledge, it often gets a bit of a bad rap.  Well, hope...

If you’re listening to this episode as it comes out, it’s the middle of the holiday season and, hopefully, you’re recovering from some excessive meal or other - so, Merry Christmas to you! Today, we have a very special end-of-year episode for you where we’re going to be looking back at a fairly challenging 2021 but also looking ahead to a - hopefully - much brighter, more optimistic 2022. We’re go...

Sports tourism - you’ve heard the phrase, people traveling to places to participate in sporting - that’s a whole thing these days. And a very fast-growing thing at that. So, how can your race capitalize on this trend and how can you position your event to attract more overseas or out-of-state participants? That’s exactly what we’ll be getting into today with my guest, George Kakourides , Marketing...

If you have built a business putting on races, chances are you would have thought of maybe selling some or all of those races at some point in the future. You may also have toyed with the idea of buying races from others as a way to grow your event portfolio. Buying and selling races still remains a big mystery for most race directors - even very experienced ones. How do you go about it? How do yo...