Sections

1. The Importance of Retargeting

2. Landing Page Optimization

3. Custom Audiences

4. How to Structure Your Digital Campaigns

Landing Page Optimization

Pixels & Tracking

Before you start sending potential ticket buyers to your website you need to make sure you have all the proper tracking pixels loaded. A Pixel is a piece of code for your website that lets you measure, optimize and build audiences for your ad campaigns.

Why Use Tracking Pixels:

• Conversion Tracking
• Optimize Ad Campaigns
• Cross-Device Tracking
• Create Custom Audiences From Website Visitors
• Learn About Your Website Traffic

Custom Audiences

Take some time to create custom audiences before you start building your digital advertising campaigns. If you need a refresher on what custom audiences are & how to create them step by step, check out our guide here. 

1) Evergreen Website Visitors:

Facebook, Google, Snapchat, TikTok, and most other platforms offer the ability to create custom audiences based on how visitors interact with content on your website. The iOS 14 update impacted the ability to target some users like this on Apple devices, but most people still allow third-party cookies so this is still worth pursuing for the time being. Assuming you have the Facebook Pixel Installed, take some time to build the following audiences:

• All Website Visitors: Create an audience that contains anyone that has visited your website over the past 180 days (the max time-frame allowed). 
• User Segments: Create an audience for different segments of users. These segments can be very valuable because viewing specific event detail pages on your website shows intent. These users may not always fall in your standard demographic, so traditional methods of targeting are going to completely miss them. Here are a few ideas to get you started:
  • Season Ticket Info (landed on your Season Ticket Page)
  • Group Sales Info (landed on your Group Sales Page)
  • Comic Nights (landed on EDPs for games with Marvel, DC, etc.. promotions)
  • All Family Nights (all EDP visitors for family-friendly promotions)
  • Beer Promotions (all EDP visitors for weekday beer promotions)

What you will need: In order to create these audiences you will need to spend a little time going through the URLs of your games. Keep in mind that the first time is going to be the most time consuming. Once you have your audiences built it will only take a few minutes each season to update them. Here are a few steps to take:

• Create a spreadsheet with a column for each segment. 
• Go through the current games on your website one by one & determine what segment(s) the game falls into. Copy the URL (you can save time by only copying a unique portion of the URL) & paste it into the appropriate segment column(s) in your spreadsheet. Do this for all current games. 
• Follow these same steps on your Ticketing website. On Ticketmaster you can simply copy/paste the event ID in the URL.

Maintenance: Make sure you set aside a time prior to the start of each season to add new game URLs to your audiences. If your URLs change throughout the season for any reason be sure to add the new URLs to these audiences.

2) Evergreen Customer List:

Most advertising platforms offer the ability to create custom audiences by uploading a list of customers from your CRM (Salesforce, Ticketmaster, etc.). You will need to have the ability to export previous purchaser lists to create the following audiences:

• All Buyers: Create an audience that contains anyone that is in your database. Include people that have subscribed to your mailing list. 
• User Segments: Create an audience for different segments of users. These customers have purchased tickets to similar games or packages in the past, so they are most likely to convert. Here are a few ideas to get you started:
  • Comic Nights
  • All Family Nights
  • Beer Promotions
  • Season Ticket Holders
  • Group Leaders

What you will need: You will need to spend some time exporting users that have purchased tickets in the segments you identify. These are the same targeting methods we recommend using when segmenting your e-mail marketing, so you can kill two birds with one stone by following this guide to improve your email marketing as well. Here are a few steps to take:

• Export a .csv or .txt file that contains the following information (not all fields are required).
  • Email
  • Phone Number
  • Mobile Advertiser ID
  • Facebook App User ID
  • Facebook Page User ID
  • First Name
  • Last Name
• Additionally, you can include the following to help match your audience: 
  • City
  • State/Province
  • Country
  • Zip/Postal Code
  • Date of Birth
  • Year of Birth
  • Gender
  • Age

3) Evergreen Facebook Events:

Facebook offers the ability to create custom audiences based on who RSVP’d or interacted with your Facebook Events. Here are a few audiences you should build:

• All RSVPs: Create an audience that contains anyone that has responded Going or Interested to any of your events over the past 365 days (the max time-frame allowed). 
• User Segments: Create an audience for different segments of users. Here are a few ideas to get you started:
  • Comic Nights
  • All Family Nights
  • Beer Promotions

What you will need: The most efficient way to create these audiences is to spend a little time gathering Facebook Event IDs. Here are a few steps to take:

• Create a spreadsheet with a column for each segment. 
• Go through the all current & past events hosted by your page one by one & determine what segment(s) the event falls into. Copy the Facebook Event ID (the unique portion of the URL) & paste it into the appropriate segment column(s) in your spreadsheet. Do this for all current events. 

4) Game Specific:

Instead of guessing when someone may be interested in an event you can set up an ‘always on’ campaign to retarget users immediately after taking an action on your website. 

Create the following audiences for every single game on your calendar:

• Website EDP Visitor: Anyone that has visited the event detail page for the game.
• Website EDP Visitor (10 Days): Anyone that has visited the event detail page for the game (limit to the past 10 days).
• Ticketing EDP Visitor: Anyone that has visited the event detail page on your ticketing provider’s website. 
• Ticketing EDP Visitor (10 Days): Anyone that has visited the event detail page on your ticketing provider’s website (limit to the past 10 days).
• Facebook Event RSVP: Anyone that has responded going or interested to your Facebook Event.
• Converted: Anyone that has purchased a ticket for the game. You will want to exclude them from future marketing campaigns.

5) Other Audiences:

Here are other audiences you can create:

• App Activity
• Video
• Instagram Profile
• Facebook Page

For more ideas, check out our complete guide to creating custom audiences on Facebook.

Weekly / Monthly Maintenance: Make sure you set aside a time weekly or monthly to add new customers to your audiences.

Download The Sports Marketers Guide To Retargeting

How To Structure Your Digital  Campaigns

Drip Campaigns:

Every team has a different budget, so our recommendations below will remain relatively broad. However, most of these tactics can produce results with a modest budget. 

Before the season begins:

Assuming you have done the hard work of creating all of your custom audiences (above) the next challenge is setting up what we call drip campaigns. These campaigns are designed to serve relevant ads to people as they interact with specific content on your website. In most industries it is common practice to follow up with a lead no more than 5 minutes after the lead is received. You don’t know what prompted them to open up their browser & start researching your event, but you should seize the opportunity regardless of how far away the event is. The good news is that once you set these campaigns up you can walk away & move on to more active marketing strategies. 

Facebook Event Drip Campaign:

• Create One Facebook Event Drip Campaign: I suggest setting up one campaign on Facebook with a lifetime campaign budget cap set. This allows Facebook to serve ads to the adgroups it feels will perform the best. 
• Create an AdGroup for each home game / event: Set up your timing so that the adgroup starts serving about 30 days before your season begins & ends the day of or before your event. Target your game specific custom audiences you created (10 Days). No further targeting is needed beyond limiting ads to your DMA. This will ensure that shortly after someone starts researching an event they will be served an ad in their feed.
• Create an ad encouraging users to RSVP for your Facebook event: Asking for an RSVP is a softer sell than asking someone for a ticket purchase right off the bat. 

Keep in mind that your custom audience needs to reach a certain threshold in order to start firing ads (usually at least 500 users). Also, after the iOS 14 update many apple users opted out of cookies that allowed granular retargeting such as this. While it does take a little longer for your adgroups to begin to fire we still see really good results from these campaigns once they start running.

Facebook / Instagram Drip Campaign:

In addition to the Facebook Event Drip Campaign we suggest setting up a different campaign that retargets users across both Facebook & Instagram with a promoted post or video specific to each game. Follow the same instructions above, but focus on traffic / landing page views instead of event RSVP. 

A note about Conversion Optimization for sports marketers:

Most sports marketers (especially in minor league sports) don’t have a great mechanism to optimize for conversions. Tickets can be sold online through a primary ticketing provider, online through a group-sales service, over the phone, or in-person at the box office. If you set a campaign to optimize for conversions the algorithm will only take into account the conversions it can see, typically on your primary ticketing provider’s website. Also, most conversion optimization techniques take 2-3 weeks of data to figure out what works / doesn’t work. Most event marketers run short 1-2 week campaigns for events so you are never going to get out of the ‘learning phase’. Therefore, we always recommend setting up campaigns with other goals such as traffic / landing page views.

The way you target and communicate with your audience should change based on where the consumer is in their journey. If you come out of the gate throwing ticketing links at people instead of highlighting the experience at your game then your conversion rates are going to suffer. The four basic funnel stages are awareness, consideration, conversion, and retention. 

Download The Sports Marketers Guide To Retargeting

1) Awareness

This is your first impression on your audience. People may not be aware of your brand, so every ad in this phase needs to be created with that in mind. This is your TV, Radio, and OOH advertising. In digital advertising this would include the following audiences:

Targeting (minor league hockey):

• Affinity Audiences: Hockey Lovers, Movie Lovers, People that like the zoo/aquarium, etc.
• Demographic Targeting: Households with children present, etc.
• Managed Placements: Target specific websites/videos for placement of display ads/video pre-roll. Local news sites, hockey news sites, etc.
• Geofencing: Target people that recently went to a movie theater, zoo, aquarium, etc.
• Keyword Targeting: People searching for broad keywords related to family fun, things to do, etc.

Serve: General Awareness Ads & Content Marketing with an emphasis on engagement.

Goals / KPIs: Brand lift & Impressions are your goal with this type of advertising. Don’t expect many conversions yet.

Timing: Most minor league sports teams run their campaigns the week (or even 4-5 days) leading up to each event. This coincides with when people typically purchase their tickets.

Awareness campaigns will give you the best CPM with the worst conversion rate. Don’t let that discourage you. I’m a fan of working the funnel from the bottom up. If you have maximized your opportunities in the Conversion and Consideration phase then this is your opportunity to fill the funnel with new prospects. I like to refer to awareness campaigns as going fishing.

2) Consideration

The consideration phase is an opportunity for you to communicate with people that have shown interest but either need to be reminded or have an objection that you can address with some good content marketing. This is your e-mail blasts to your full database, direct mail to previous purchasers, phone calls to previous group leaders, etc. In digital advertising this would include the following audiences:

Targeting (minor league hockey):

• Web Visitors: All Visitors, User Segment Specific (Comic Nights, Family Nights, Beer Nights)
• Customer List: All Users, User Segment Specific (Comic Nights, Family Nights, Beer Nights)
• Facebook Events: All Event RSVPs, User Segment Specific (Comic Nights, Family Nights, Beer Nights)
• Facebook / Instagram Engagement: Include anyone that has interacted with your Facebook Page, Instagram Profile, or Events.
• Keyword Targeting: People searching for brand terms or keywords related to your promotion.

Serve: Content Marketing & Ads with a strong call to action focused on traffic to your website.

Goals / KPIs: Focus on CTR & landing page views during this phase. Keep an eye on landing page bounce rate and dwell time to see if the content on your page is resonating. If you see a lot of people bouncing immediately then you need to go back to optimizing your landing page. 

Timing: Most minor league sports teams run their campaigns the week (or even 4-5 days) leading up to each event. This coincides with when people typically purchase their tickets.

Beware of ad fatigue! It’s easy to send an e-mail to your full database before every game & load up every campaign with an audience that includes anyone that has visited your website. I’d caution against doing that outside of large tent-pole promotional nights. After a while people won’t even remember seeing your ads. They become numb to your constant presence. Instead, use the user segments mentioned above so that you can focus efforts on people that typically come to Beer Nights vs. Family Nights. Get creative with your advertising & remember that tailoring a landing page / ad to a highly targeted audience is going to be 10x more effective than blasting out a generic ad to everyone.

3) Conversion

If you have been following along you have probably realized that your conversion campaign is already set (your drip campaign). The purpose of the drip campaign is to follow up with prospects that are researching a particular game in real-time. I recommend throwing a little gas on the fire when you are about 3-4 days out from each event:

Targeting: Include the following custom audiences

• Web EDP Visitor (switch from the 10 Day audience to everyone)
• Ticketing EDP Visitor (switch from the 10 Day audience to everyone)
• Facebook Event RSVP
• Exclude users that have already converted
• Add All website visitors in the past 10 days.

Serve: Specific ads for that particular game/package with a strong call to action

Goals / KPIs: Conversions are our goal, but I would still recommend setting your campaign objective to clicks / landing page views. We mentioned the limitations of conversion rate optimization for event marketers earlier.

These campaigns will always be your most successful. For that reason I encourage you to make it a habit to lure users to your event detail pages frequently. Any time you send an e-mail blast, follow up with an old lead, or run an awareness campaign about a specific event you should be sending them directly to the event detail page. That way we can retarget them during the final mile in our conversion campaigns. 

4) Retention

It is exponentially easier to market to people that have already experienced your product. Unfortunately for us, we have seen that the vast majority of families in minor league sports markets only come to one event per season. Focusing your attention on encouraging those families to come back just ONE more time that season could have a substantial impact on your sales. You have to ask though..

Many marketers stop at the sale. If your organization does any e-mail marketing you have probably realized that your Thank You e-mails the day after each event receive the highest open rates. Following up with someone the day after they come to your event is an easy opportunity to introduce next steps. Here are a few tactics you can implement in the days following each event:

• Survey: Making sure your guests are having a great experience at your event is paramount. 
• Discount: If you factor in the realization that you are unlikely to see this person again this season this may be a good carrot to dangle. 
• Merchandise: Capitalize on the (hopefully) great experience they just had & encourage a sale in your online store.
• Group Sales / Fundraising Info: People love to share a good experience. This may be your best opportunity to pitch a group outing!
• Season Ticket Info: It’s very unlikely that someone is going to jump from a single game to a full season, but you never know. In order to sell a package your customers need to know they exist!
• Ask for a review: Asking customers for a review on Google My Business, Facebook, and/or Yelp is good for Search Engine Optimization & can help you in the long run. Most people don’t think to give a review when they have a good experience, so nudging your customers can help make sure your reviews are accurately reflecting the experience at your events. Don’t let the Karens of the world take over your reviews section!

Feeling Overwhelmed?

Don’t be. Small consistent steps over a long period of time will lead to success. I encourage you to implement one of these tactics today. Come back tomorrow & try another. Of course, if you simply don’t have the time we can implement these tactics for your team. We have been deeply involved in promoting live events for our clients for over 15 years. Feel free to reach out below & we can walk you through some next steps. 

Download The Sports Marketers Guide To Retargeting