How to Drive Record Attendance for a Destination Race: A GTIS Half Marathon Case Study

At Inspire Action Marketing, we believe the best way to help community events is to look at what’s actually working and do more of it. We recently finished up the 2025 season with the Clear Creek Booster Club for the GTIS Half Marathon.

By cleaning up their website, running simple social media ads, and staying in touch with runners through email, we were able to get the race in front of more people than ever before. Here is exactly how we did it.

The Goal: Grow Attendance to the Half Marathon Each Year

The Clear Creek Booster Club wanted to get the word out about the GTIS Half Marathon. They needed to find new runners across the country while making sure they didn't lose the local Colorado crowd that supports the race every year.

What We Did

1. Fixing the Website

Before spending money on ads, we made sure the website was easy to find and easy to use.

• Search Results: The site showed up for 228 different search terms, which brought in 11,311 visitors just from people searching on Google.

• Traffic: Overall, the site had 35,659 visits, with over 21,000 individual people checking out the race details.

• Health Check: We cleared up technical errors so the site loads correctly and works well on mobile phones.

2. Social Media Ads (Facebook & Instagram)

We ran ads from January through August to keep the race on people's radars.

• The Numbers: The ads were seen over 601,000 times.

• Efficiency: Because the ads were targeted to people interested in running, we saw 22,773 clicks.

• The Cost: We managed to keep the cost down to just $0.17 per click, which is a very affordable way to get people to the registration page.

3. Staying in Touch via Email

Email is still one of the best ways to talk to runners. We sent out 12 updates between January and August to a list of 7,625 people.

• Results: Those emails were opened over 34,000 times. It’s a great way to remind people about registration deadlines and race day details.

4. Testing Google Ads

We tried a national Google campaign to see if we could find runners looking for "scenic half marathons." It brought in 2,157 clicks, but at $0.49 per click, it was more expensive than social media. We shared this with the team so they can save that money next year and put it where it works best.

What We Learned for Next Year

• Stay Local: Even though we showed ads across the country, the vast majority of runners (over 22,000) came from right here in Colorado. Moving forward, we’ll focus even more on our home state.

• Invest in Good Video: This year, we hired a videographer to get drone shots and interviews. These videos are so good we can use them for the next few years, which saves the club money in the long run.

• Plan Ahead: We helped the club prepay for their website hosting through 2027. This locked in a lower rate and means one less bill to worry about for the next three years.

The Bottom Line: How to Drive Record Attendance for a Destination Race or Marathon/Half Marathon Event:

By the end of the project, the GTIS Half Marathon had over 9,150 direct clicks to their website and experienced a growing community of over 1,200 followers on social media. The end result: the race experienced record attendance of 1,400 participants to the start line. By focusing on what worked—social media and email—we’ve set the race up to have a great turnout in 2026.

Want to see how we can help your event? Send us a message and let’s talk about how to get more people to your big event!