How Bristol City & Bristol Bears Broke Records - Digital NRG

How Bristol City & Bristol Bears Broke Records

For Every £1 Spent… DNRG Returned £7.50!

DNRG is a UK-based digital marketing agency that prides itself on being the outsourced marketing department of choice for sports clubs. Specialising in supporting football and rugby clubs, we drive new revenues and attract new audiences through tailored, first-party data-led ad campaigns and audience-specific digital strategies. We have long supported our client, Bristol Sport, which comprises Bristol City F.C., the Bristol Bears, and Bristol Flyers.

It’s Not Outsourcing – Success Comes from a Partnership

For the last 20 months, we have been an extension of Bristol Sport’s marketing team. We’ve fully immersed ourselves in their business, understanding their objectives and internal strengths. Our role has been to support them with marketing specialisms while providing a fast-paced digital agency approach to manage the demands of a sporting club’s commercial goals. Bristol Sport boasts an incredible in-house team, but we have plugged some skill and knowledge gaps, utilising tools and support from our Google and META agency partnerships. By offering flexible working contracts during heavy fixture loads, we’ve collectively created amazing campaigns as a cohesive team.

The Commercial Sporting Challenge

For sporting commercial directors, ticketing and merchandise leads, and sports marketing professionals, the daily challenges of working in sport are immense. With limited time, insufficient staff, and a lack of digital specialists, combined with the pressures of numerous matches and events, the task of selling thousands of tickets, promoting merchandise, and managing hospitality sales can be overwhelming. Clubs rely on these revenue streams to succeed. Here’s how DNRG has supported a club just like yours.

In the 2023/24 season, DNRG was given clear objectives to support Bristol Bears rugby and Bristol City F.C.:

6 CORE Objectives:

  1. Drive ticket sales to break attendance records
  2. Deliver season ticket targets
  3. Drive merchandise and shirt sales
  4. Drive hospitality ticket sales
  5. Maximise ROAS (Return on Advertising Spend)
  6. Win new audiences (this is key to a sporting club’s long-term plans)

Back to Basics

While working with Bristol Sport, we recognised these challenges, prompting us to return to the fundamentals of marketing and understand the “buying motive” behind purchases. If games are scheduled on a Sunday afternoon and televised, this presents a ticketing challenge. If a third of the games are on a Friday night, younger fans and families with their own commitments on Saturday mornings are restricted from attending. This is why segmenting your fan base is crucial.

Every fan wants to attend the game, but not every fan can find that emotional buying motive to justify the ticket purchase to support the team. For a club to succeed in the long term, it’s vital to find and win new audiences for the future. Are you in a student town or city? How do you appeal to younger audiences and build lasting connections? How do you engage with your local business community to facilitate commercial connections while promoting sport?

Tailored Marketing Strategies

To address these objectives, we built 396 ad sets/audiences for Bristol Bears and 135 ad sets/audiences for Bristol City F.C. Why? It’s essential to treat each fan, prospective fan, and audience differently. You must appeal to the desires that each audience segment possesses and communicate what the team, the occasion, and the reason for attending mean to them.

This meant running 85 different campaigns with 531 different sets of ads—yes, 531 different creatives appealing to 531 audience types. Each ad set targeted its unique audience segment, focusing on demographics with differing buying drivers and emotional appeals.

Key Audience Segmentation Included:

  • Families: Promoting the idea of Sunday afternoons together at a match, encouraging fans to unite, enjoy pre-match activities, and celebrate victories.
  • Social Groups: Highlighting Friday night rugby as a great opportunity for socialising, extending the working week, and creating corporate team outings.
  • Local Businesses: Showcasing hospitality experiences that appeal to sponsors and business owners, emphasising networking opportunities in a premium environment.

It’s an Experience, Not Just a Game

We all want our team to win, but attending a game is about the experience. Fans enjoy shared passions, but how they derive satisfaction differs. In sports marketing, you must address these differences through data segmentation and tailored messaging that resonates emotionally.

Building 531 ad sets takes time, and achieving accurate data segmentation is half the battle. Knowing which fans have kids, attend with friends, buy hospitality, or are die-hard supporters is vital for increasing engagement on social media, emails, and ads, thus supporting improved ROAS results.

In addition to leveraging first-party data, DNRG has successfully attracted new audiences for clubs. Through META, Instagram, LinkedIn, and Google, we’ve driven new users and fans by targeting specific audiences and engaging them with what it means to belong to their local club.

What Did DNRG Achieve in Partnership with Bristol Sport in 2023/24?

Our ad campaigns across all social channels delivered remarkable results:

  • Bristol Bears:
    • Average attendance record of 18,936
    • ROAS of 7.48
    • 63 campaigns with 99,391 link clicks to the Bears website
  • Bristol City F.C.:
    • Average attendance record of 22,446 (9.6% YoY uplift)
    • ROAS of 4.97
    • 22 campaigns with 58,673 link clicks to the BCFC website

Additional Metrics:

  • 32.9% increase in group tickets per game
  • 12.4% increase in Under-12s per game
  • 11.9% increase in Under-19s per game

How to Win in Sports Marketing

  1. Segment your data and build multiple audiences.
  2. Understand your audience’s needs.
  3. Value good creatives.
  4. Build funnels.
  5. Avoid blanket sales messaging.

The Verdict

The partnership between DNRG and Bristol Sport exemplifies how targeted, data-driven digital marketing can achieve outstanding results in the competitive sports sector. By focusing on audience segmentation, creating tailored messaging, and delivering unique experiences, clubs can not only meet but exceed their commercial objectives.

For more insights into how our digital marketing agency can help you achieve similar success, explore our services in digital marketing, and audience engagement. Let DNRG be your partner in reaching new heights – get in contact today!

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