October 28, 2005 — (WEB HOST INDUSTRY REVIEW) — Web hosting is an extremely competitive business, and yet most hosts use a few subtle variations on the same formula of pay-per-click and banner advertising to promote their services. For a few hosts, the marketing challenge is finding a means of promoting their services in a way that truly separates them from the pack.
In its efforts to work outside the normal channels for promoting its hosting services, Chicago-based Readyhosting (readyhosting.com) found itself in an area well beyond the limits of the average Web hosting marketing plan ? the high-speed world of stock car racing.
Readyhosting spent the 2005 season ? just drawing to a close in October ? as a sponsor of the Venturini Motorsports team in the ARCA RE/MAX series. The Readyhosting logo was emblazoned on the number 25 car as it competed in 25 events around the US this year.
Tom Venturini, vice president of marketing at Readyhosting ? and director of public relations and marketing at Venturini Motorsports ? says Readyhosting’s involvement with racing came from president David Fricke’s own interest in the sport, and a track sponsor role at the Chicagoland Speedway. For three years, beginning in 2001, Readyhosting was the title sponsor of the Chicagoland stop ? known as the Readyhosting.com 200 ? on the ARCA RE/MAX tour, the proving ground for NASCAR.
From the track sponsorship, Readyhosting moved to the race team itself. The Venturini team contacted Readyhosting with a proposal that the company set up an identity for itself on the racetrack itself, with a car.
The racing sponsorship is totally unlike traditional advertising, says Venturini, especially for a company in a business as traditionally limited in its advertising imagination as Web hosting. And the success of a racing sponsorship is difficult to measure, a definite departure from the finite business of online marketing.
Having the Readyhosting logo on an ARCA RE/MAX series car places the company very noticeably in front of a very large audience, and one very different from the traditional audience for Web hosting. But it is an audience ? says Venturini ? with a strong understanding of the unique role sponsorship plays in the sport of racing, and a certain loyalty to those brands.
For Readyhosting, the more direct business opportunity presented by sponsorship is through the community of sponsors itself, says Venturini. Access to the world of racing sponsors has created an array of new customer opportunities for the company.
“Once you’re a sponsor of a series or part of a team, it’s almost like you’re part of a fraternity, and you have the ears of other corporations,” he says. “In addition to sponsoring Venturini, Readyhosting has become the official web hosting company of ARCA, the series. Obviously everyone in racing has a Web site. So this has allowed us to tap into a very niche market and capture new sales within.”
October marks the end of the ARCA RE/MAX series season, and Readyhosting, says Venturini, is excited about the role it has played.
“The big thing is that Readyhosting is doing something that other companies aren’t doing,” he says. “And we take pride in thinking outside the box when it comes to our advertising and our marketing. And we think it’s working.”
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