ConectUS Revs Up Partner Marketing with NASCAR’s Starr

Few things better represent speed, performance, precision and teamwork than a professional race car ripping down a track at 200-plus miles per hour. Yet, that’s just one of the reasons ConectUS, a Verizon Wireless Platinum Member of the Agent Program, has teamed up with four-time NASCAR winner David Starr.

Along with the mass media exposure and massive fan base NASCAR Series racing provides, its sponsors include hundreds of large and small business owners across every vertical market, points out Starr, who also is the founder of Team Texas High Performance Driving School. That means, on any given race weekend, executives and decisions makers from those hundreds of companies -all of which utilize communications technology – are wandering the VIP tents and sitting in the box seats watching all the logos go by.

For channel marketers at ConectUS specifically, associating the company’s brand and business services to NASCAR was a way of “breaking through the noise,” said Neil Farquharson, ConectUS director of marketing, while engaging their target audience in a way they want to be engaged.

According to Farquharson, recent changes in the “buyer’s journey” requires a shift in emphasis from the “sales funnel” to the “marketing funnel.” In a digital world, few buyers or prospective partners, if any, nowadays, want to be “sold to,” especially early in the relationship.

“The buyer’s journey is no longer easy to predict,” he continued. And research has shown that both B2C and B2B prospects often tend to interact with a brand’s “marketing” and self-sales materials – at a pace they prefer – long before they actively dive into any sales funnel. The appeal of NASCAR represented a way for ConectUS to meet potential partners and buyers at a place they were already at; stand out with compelling, high-powered video; and keep its audience engaged with behind-the-scenes content and access.

For partners and providers interested in revving up their revenue with the power of NASCAR’s appeal, sponsorship opportunities are available, said ConectUS executives, that won’t break the bank of smaller businesses.

Visitors to the recent ChannelPartners stopped by the ConectUS booth to meet David Starr and see his actual car on the show floor.