5 ways to optimise your endurance event’s visibility in 2024
Runners are increasingly flocking to beautiful and interesting parts of the world to combine downtime with endurance sports, seen here at the French Riviera Marathon.
Runcations are booming once again!
2024 and beyond is set to see record levels of endurance athletes, both amateur and professional, crossing international borders to find new and exciting sport races. And it’s not only running–triathlons, cycling, and swimming events are all seeing a similar upswing in attention.
For race organisers, this can be both a blessing and a curse. Naturally, the more international athletes you can attract to your event, the better. But while you may have an innate understanding of your own domestic market, it’s a much harder task to appeal to international athletes from around the world.
As an industry leader in the endurance sports space, World’s Sports Group’s speciality lies in matching participants with their next international race.
So if you want to know how to optimise your event’s visibility in order to attract more overseas athletes, you’re in the right place. In this article, we’ll cover our 5 best tips for achieving this, including:
Listing your race on an online event calendar
Using high-quality event images
Gathering post-race reviews
Opening ticket sales early
Utilising powerful marketing activities to turbocharge your event’s visibility.
Event calendars
If you imagine an athlete trying to find their next international race, you might picture them using a search engine. Perhaps they’re looking for half marathons in Italy, or a triathlon in Australia…how else could they find this information?
Search engines, however, can be overwhelming. And with endless results being generated for a single search, what is the likelihood of an athlete actually finding your event? If your SEO isn’t up to scratch, chances are that few of them are ever reaching your page.
These days, many athletes exclusively use event calendars, such as Ahotu or World’s Marathons, to discover and book new events. With these two calendars, information about nearly 50,000 races is compiled in one place and is accessible in 6 different languages. This greatly streamlines the selection process for athletes looking for global adventures.
Not only is this quicker than trailing through endless search engine results, but athletes can also fine-tune their search for a race. For example, on Ahotu, users can filter events according to:
Country
City
Sport
Terrain
Distance
Theme
…plus many more!
Ahotu receives 1 million monthly visitors using these filters, so you can see why listing an event with us greatly increases its visibility. As such, putting your events on Ahotu and World’s Marathons is one of the smartest things you can do as a race organiser.
Even better? You can also partner with us to sell entries on our platforms. We expect our partners to see a 3X increase in international tickets, which is partly achieved through our powerful marketing services–as you’ll see later in the article.
The endurance events calendar Ahotu highlights nearly 50,000 races from 29 different sports taking place all over the globe. Triathlons, such as the Mediterránea Triatlón València, are popular events.
2. Great images
It may seem obvious, but it’s worth repeating. High-quality, captivating event images are key to attracting international participants.
Put yourself in the shoes of a potential athlete: they’ve never participated in your event before, but have come across the race on an event calendar. Do the event images tell a compelling story? Will they convince this athlete, who perhaps lives on the other side of the world, to book all the necessary travel and accommodation in order to take part?
If you’re not sure, then we’re here to help. The best and most compelling event images highlight the most interesting and unique aspects of your race. These can include:
Important or noteworthy landmarks on the course
The emotion of participants–are they nervous at the start of a race? Exhausted but happy at the end?
Athletes in movement. Capture the vibrant energy of running, cycling, swimming, even walking…
Birds-eye view images that show the entirety of the race
Beautiful nature and scenery
Figure out the story that you want to tell with your event. Are you hosting a unique triathlon set in the beautiful countryside, or a buzzing city road race filled with enthusiastic crowds? The right images will help communicate this story in a convincing and powerful way.
Finally, make sure to update event images every year. This helps your event appear up-to-date and current.
Stunning event photography will help your event reach even more potential athletes. Here, X-WATERS Slovenia have combined the beauty of nature with an interesting landmark.
3. Reviews
Collecting feedback is incredibly beneficial for any event. It improves traffic and visibility, and is also a gold mine of social proof. In other words: the more reviews highlighting the best parts of your race, the more likely participants are to sign up.
Reviews are especially important for international athletes, who not only have to sign up for a race, but also need to plan and book an overseas trip. This is all part of the excitement of a runcation, but travellers are naturally cautious when it comes to such a big commitment. Authentic race reviews can sometimes be the deciding factor for an athlete looking to book their next race.
We encourage organisers to reach out for feedback at several touchpoints post-event. This could be immediately after race day, or one month down the line, touching base to stay top of mind.
Using a simple email like this, you can remind athletes of the importance of sharing their own race experience:
Dear athlete,
We are so glad you were able to join us at our event. We hope you had as much fun as we did!
If you have the time, we would like to ask you to kindly leave a review about your experience. Future participants use reviews from people like you to decide if our race is right for them, so all feedback is greatly appreciated.
One final tip? If your event is on World’s Marathons or Ahotu, we recommend that you direct participants to write their review there. This way, their feedback will be seen by the site’s one million monthly visitors.
Happy athletes? Don’t forget to ask them to leave feedback—future participants depend on it! (La Parisienne).
4. Early ticket sales
Without a doubt, opening up sales to your race as early as possible helps bring in more traffic.
Depending on the size of your race, it is most common to open up sales between 7 to 12 months before it takes place. Of course, with both the pre- and post-event period being filled with logistical and administrative concerns, opening next year’s sales might not be front of mind.
However, having sales open for a longer amount of time allows more people to find your race. It’s especially important for international athletes who, depending on where they live, will need to plan a more detailed trip.
Finally, make sure that all race distances (or as many as possible) are also live. This will greatly improve your event’s online searchability.
More participants will be able to sign up for your event if registration opens early (Ottawa Marathon).
5. Powerful marketing
Perhaps being visible to one million monthly visitors isn’t quite enough. Perhaps you’re looking to turbocharge your event’s visibility to global athletes in a more strategic way.
If that’s the case, then World’s Sports Group offers an extensive range of marketing activities for such purposes. These include:
Targeted email marketing, to a combined 120K subscribers. Choose from a slot in our monthly newsletter, or a dedicated email about your event that includes course details and travel tips
Social media visibility, to a combined 64K followers
Priority search visibility on our platforms
Prime position on our websites’ Landing Pages
With a range of marketing activities that offer different levels of outreach, we have the perfect marketing coverage for both big and small events. You can get in touch via sales@worldssportsgroup.com to hear more about how we can elevate your event’s visibility.
Our powerful marketing tools are the secret weapon to helping international athletes find your event (Milano21 Half Marathon).
Closing the gap between international athletes and your event
Embracing these strategies that we have outlined will undoubtedly elevate your race's visibility and attract a broader audience.
From utilising our comprehensive event calendars and powerful marketing packages, to collecting authentic race-day reviews, opening ticket sales early, and using high-quality images, each element plays a vital role in drawing international participants to your event.
By integrating these practices, you can create a compelling and successful race event that stands out to international participants in the competitive landscape of endurance sports.
Interested in promoting your race with World’s Marathons or Ahotu? Contact us on partners@worldsmarathons.com.
