May 11th, 2010 
Journo Pages that don’t work. Under construction banners. Replayed press releases. Poorly produced video content (or clipped TV interviews). Lackluster traffic. Pitiful efforts.
All these things and more describe the websites of NASCAR’s biggest teams. For all their sponsorship dollars and sales savvy, the sport’s elite have largely failed in their efforts to attract a strong audience to their Internet presences.
In our very unscientific TNI poll we found a little less than half of respondents regularly visit the websites of their favorite teams or drivers. According to comScore Hendrick Motorsports had just 68,000 unique visitors in March. The traffic numbers for other teams are lower (by comparison NFL teams regularly have unique numbers from the low six figures to the low seven figures per month).
The popular excuse is that NASCAR fans follow the drivers, not the teams, so they don’t visit the team sites. I don’t believe this is the whole story though. The teams, for their part, have done very little over the years to utilize the potential of their sites.
What you currently find on their websites is non-exclusive content (press releases), some photos, and the occasional video collage set to ridiculous music. Some teams have attempted blogs, but they get forgotten; and while others have done a good job with video recently, I don’t trust they’ll continue to do it.
Roush Fenway is making steps in the right direction, but the end result is still to be seen. According to Sports Business Journal, the team is spending close to $500,000 on a new team website (this includes the site, a relationship with the Barbarian Group and a new studio) – the new site will be “half competition/half sales.” Team president Geoff Smith said this was a way for them to modernize their outreach. Welcome to the 21st century Geoff (you’re only 10 years late).
One of the key components of this redesign is video content, and the team has already started to wade into that. They recently produced a Home Shopping style infomercial for Ricky Stenhouse. It was mildly entertaining, but about 4 minutes too long. Don’t get me wrong, it was well done and having a guy like Sean Pragano (Ricky’s PR guy and a former broadcast sports reporter) host is great. Every team should attempt to put out viral videos. Roush just needs to be very careful about who they’re marketing this to, and whether or not there will be an actual benefit.
Unfortunately, many teams are online just because they feel they have to be. As Michael Smith so accurately wrote, “…most teams don’t tout their sites as a legitimate source of exposure. It’s mostly a value-added component to a sponsorship deal.” While very correct, the statement is fundamentally flawed. How can a site be a value-added component if nobody sees it? Perhaps more important to this post though is why isn’t it being used as a source for exposure?
NASCAR, just like every other sport in the country, is facing dwindling coverage by downsizing newspapers, newspaper chains and broadcast outlets. Where most sports teams are looking to increase their online presence, especially on their own sites, NASCAR teams are doing nothing. I think it’s bizarre.
On top of that none of these teams do anything to promote their sites (with the exception of the occasional sticker on the car or, driver’s firesuit). It seems quite simple and logical to think that a team would want to tell people that they have a site and there are great things on it, but none do.
Honestly there is a lot teams could do to encourage people to visit. Most important is getting capable individuals in place to produce exclusive content for the site. The fact is, it takes skill and knowledge to effectively write for and produce video content. It also takes a skilled individual to consistently write compelling and interesting stories and blogs that people will return to read. If teams can effectively add value to their sites, and increase traffic, it too could become a tool for making money. Go figure.
Too often organizations delve into things without asking the fundamental, why they’re doing it. It seems like such a simple thing, but often gets overlooked. Websites certainly take time and money to make right, but with the proper individuals and the appropriate investment they really can turn their sites into a valuable part of their marketing efforts.
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I agree Journo. I tried to view my favorite drivers and teams pages. The pages looked like my 3 year old made them. I was so disappointed, I quit. Now if I want to know what’s going on I just come to yours and TC’s blog. Great job! Iv’e been reading yall’s diatribes for about 10 months.
I think MWR has a great website! Did you check it out?
This is where social mediums like Twitter and Facebook are an excellent stepping stone for promotion, IMO their best use is to publicize things from your main website in a friendly, inviting way. The team that catches my eye doing this type of “push” very well is Joe Gibbs Racing. Their guy Bryan “Boris” seems to get the big picture. Kyle Busch has a similar guy in Ryan, those sites were all made over this year into a cohesive look and as a group do the social networking pretty well too. The Speeds are a hoot, and Red Bull gets it. Two more teams who seem to be trying to get it on are Penske and SHR, but the former has lagged lately (except for Keselowski’s guys, they are on it with their own accounts), and the latter is just getting started (except for the Newman’s who have been popular for some time).
The reason baseball and football team websites are both good and popular is because MLB and the NFL took them all over. They’re part of one cohesive package. Each team has some unique features, but for the most part its locked down to a template- that works.
NASCAR is different, so I’m not so sure that would work here. MLB has a lot more control over its teams than NASCAR has over its “teams”.
NASCAR could do a much better job with driver pages- especially the popular ones.
It’s been a long time since I visited any team’s website. Probably the last time I did was when we were taking a trip to the Statesville area and wanted to check out some race shops, so I was trying to figure out where they were located. I was generally less than successful. That was around the time of the Petty/Evernham merger and I never could find any information at all about where their shop was! Other sites weren’t much better.
And why in the world does Roush need to spend $500,000 on creating a website? I operate my own local weather website on about $140 a year altogether. Granted, it’s nothing fancy, but it gets the job done and it’ll celebrate its 10th anniversary in a couple of weeks. I like simple websites (like this one!), not ones that overwhelm you with fancy stuff but don’t contain much useful information. Spending that kind of money on a website is nothing short of insane, especially when they have a dozen or more torn up Nationwide cars in need of repair.
I am on the laptop just about every evening for several hours almost all of it NASCAR related including Twitter. I visit some sites every day and others only when I am encouraged to do so by a Tweet. My favorite teams websites fall into this category. The 48 teams site doesn’t even use Twitter its just @Hendrickinfo, although they are on facebook. They have a several great parts like Earl’s blog but it’s so random I forget and nothing reminds me to go back when there is another post. I get sent to the MWR site a lot by twitter. As a fan I’m looking for info like future driver appearances, show cars and inside info (even if it’s realy not inside). No the team isn’t going to get business to business from me personally but there very well could be a fan who would and any traffic to a site is a plus. In 2010 the team sites are still for the most part in the 90′s.
The article is spot on. Until you put forward a real, sustained effort into your website, you’ll never know what it can do for your team & future sponsors.
All the excuses about “too much effort, what’ll it do, don’t need to spend the money” will get you passed on the way to land the next sponsor by a team that gets it.
Interestingly enough, Twitter may be the “end around” play that develops web sites better. Drivers, teams & PR squads have hit Twitter full force & could be driving their fans somewhere.
They’re finding social marketing is the wave of the future. (It really is!) Time to go back & make your base website better to launch social marketing off of.
Maybe teams don’t have websites because someone is telling them it costs $500,000 to start one. You can’t tell me there isn’t someone’s kid on the team who couldn’t set one up for thousands less.
There’s a job opportunity here for someone. Start sending your resume to the shops for website setups.
I completely agree with the main point of this post. There are too many bad websites in NASCAR. The teams and drivers *are* starting to coming around though.
Also, I’m glad that you pointed out that it’s not only about the look and feel; you have to have compelling content to bring people back.
Oh, and at first, I was also shocked and confused by the $500,000 figure. Then I read the linked story and it makes much more sense – that cost includes consulting with a New York marketing agency, building an inhouse video studio, and redesigning/creating a new web site, etc.
I work for a company with a high-volume website and those numbers are not out of whack. (And having a friend’s kid who is “good with computers” build you a cheap site puts you right back to square one – you really do get what you pay for.)
dshaf- Thanks for pointing that out, it definitely was not the whole story. I updated the post to reflect that. Most teams are spending in the low to high five figures on their sites.
I agree… most official sites are all icing with no cake.
I have a good stable connection to the internet, but I don’t visit those sites because they still take a while to load the flash video… or the ENTIRE site is flash… music starts playing… useless stuff really.
I want content. I want pictures, I want stories about behind the scenes stuff… like, hey, just how do they build the chassis? Let’s see ‘em do the graphics on the car… maybe watch some pit stop practices… something.
The other thing that irks me is how they remove the content or just let it expire each season. No archives so you can go back to an interview you liked or… whatever.
If they had the good solid content with a minimum of doodads and geegaws, they could really use it to market things… and also sells some stuff to prolly.
-W