Digital Marketing Stratgey: Pittsburgh Riverhounds
By: Allie Corser-James
Who are the Riverhounds?
The Pittsburgh Riverhounds SC is a professional soccer team that plays in the USL Championship. Based in Pittsburgh, they play home matches at Highmark Stadium in Station Square!
Target Audience
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Families, young professionals, sports fans, and college students.
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People who live close, but don’t currently attend the games.
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Fans of live entertainment, outdoor activities, or sports, but haven’t attended a Riverhound game
📲 Digital Marketing Strategy
My strategy’s focus is to raise awareness by showcasing game-day experiences to drive first-time visits. To do this we will use geofenced social media ads, Google search campaigns, influencer partnerships, and look alike campaigns. Additionally we will target people through Email, Mail, SMS, and local partnerships reinforce the message and turn casual interest into ticket purchases.
Geofenced Social Media Ads
Strategy: Use paid ads targeting users within a 50-mile radius on
Geofencing is a location-based service by which Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, and Tiktok have available for use. It is a program that uses radio frequency identification, Wi-Fi, GPS, or cellular data to produce a social media advertisement when a device enters or exits a virtual geographic boundary.
Google Search Campaigns & Local Search
Strategy: Use Google Ads to target searches like “things to do in Pittsburgh,” “live sports near me,” or “family activities this weekend.”
The Riverhounds can use Google Search Ads to produce digital advertisements that would appear on the Search Engine Results Page when users search for specific keywords related to your business or product.
The Riverhounds can also use local search ads to create targeted advertisements that appear in Google Search results when users search for services or businesses in their nearby area.
Influencer Partnerships
Strategy: Partner with micro-influencers from Pittsburgh (foodies, family bloggers, lifestyle creators)
Influencers can post game-day experiences and run giveaway contests such as“Win free tickets & food vouchers!”
The Riverhound can easily access micro or local Pittsburgh influencers to help promote game days to a wider audience via:
Look Alike Campaigns
Strategy: Upload a list of current ticket buyers and use Meta Lookalike Audiences
Here we can target similar users who haven’t attended but share the similar online behavior.
Meta’s Lookalike system, “leverages information such as demographics, interests and behaviours from your source audience to find new people who share similar qualities. When you use a lookalike audience, your ad is delivered to an audience of people who are similar to (or "look like") your existing customers”
Email & SMS Campaigns
Strategy: Use email campaigns to provide more in-depth content, personalize messages, and longer-form messaging. Along with text messages to provide a direct and immediate channel for communication (allowing for higher click rates).
"SMS is best used for time-sensitive messages and quick updates. Email allows you to send longer messages with more context. Our data shows that using both channels together is the most effective approach, with multi-channel subscribers being 2.4x more likely to purchase than those who receive SMS alone.”
Aside from sending texts and emails out to potential fans the Riverhounds can partner with local businesses to gather leads or offer contest entries in exchange for emails.
“Experience the Game” Series
All of these ads strategies can follow this content series
This series displays the full game day experience. The sights, sounds, and community that make up being a Riverhounds fan. Inviting viewers to feel what they’re missing.
Content Ideas:
First-Time Fan Feature
Follow a new fan’s night at a game (possibly use a micro influencer)
Family Night Out
Spotlight family-friendly activities
Interview kids or parents post-game (for testimonals or social media content)
Taste of the Stadium
Highlight local and stadium food vendors (invite a micro food influencer to post about there experience getting food at a game)
Meet the Players
Quick Q&A with players
Include fan interactions
Metrics to Track
Before launching this campaign, we need to ensure that our strategies align fully with our goals and are capable of delivering measurable results.
Google Analytics and Meta Ads Manager are two tools that are highly effective in evaluating a campaign’s performance. Google Analytics is a tool that can track and learn how visitors interact with a website. This is very useful for marketing because it provides a data driven image of the consumer journey.
Google Analytics is able to collect demographic data about website visitors, as well as information on where they came from (search engines or social media, etc.).
It can also provide insight on how long visitors stay on a page within a website, the actions they take on the page, and what devices they use to access the website (mobile, computer, or tablet).
All this data can then be compared and contrasted with data from previous years, as well as analyzed in many other ways.
Meta Ads Manager can track numerous different metrics to showcase how well a marketer’s ads, and or posts are performing.
With Meta Ads Manager marketers can see:
How many times an ad was displayed to users
The ads audience reach
The number of clicks it got
Click through rate
Cost per click
Conversions, conversion rates, cost per conversion
Return on ad spending
Engagement
The frequency an ad is being shown
Making sure this campaign utilizes these reporting systems is key to getting to the root of what is making this campaign successful, or what this campaign needs in order to improve.