Digital advertising campaigns : worthwhile for the events sector ?

Solène Jimenez
Apr 18, 2024
If there's one subject that divides the marketing departments of cultural and sports organizations when it comes to allocating their advertising budgets, it's digital advertising. Should they do it? Which formats should be chosen? Does it really make money? And in a world increasingly geared towards consent-based marketing, how is it perceived by audiences?

To help you make sense of this, we'd like to take a look at the objectives that can lead to the launch of a digital campaign, and give you a few well-thought-out activation ideas for the cultural and sports sectors.


What are the objectives ?

As with any other marketing project, the question of objectives is central if you're considering setting up a digital campaign. Why should you do it, and how will you measure its success? These are the first questions you need to ask yourself. We've listed below the objectives we feel are the most relevant.

Acquisition. If you're in the marketing business, you're working on two levers: loyalty and the development of new audiences. Acquisition consists in capturing qualified, legitimate and usable data to develop your database and start a relationship with new contacts. Competitions are generally a very effective mechanism for an acquisition campaign. Your main evaluation criterion will be the number of new contacts qualified as a result of the operation.

Ticket sales. Beyond the acquisition of new contacts in your database, one objective can be the sale of tickets for an event. In this case, the aim is to expose a precisely targeted audience to an impactful message, designed to provoke rapid acceptance and subsequent purchase. Your main evaluation criterion will be the financial return on investment generated in ticket sales by this campaign.

Notoriety. Building brand awareness means making your event or venue better known. This is particularly important when (re)opening a venue or launching a new event format. The evaluation of a notoriety campaign is generally carried out through a post-visit study.


What are some examples of activation ?

The embasement campaign. This consists in collecting qualified data on a contact who is not yet in your database. The idea is to reach a prospect interested in your offers and capture the minimum data required to contact them again (first and last name, email address, consent). This can generally be achieved by means of a competition. The most effective contests are those that offer, for example, tickets to a popular event, or even better, a prize that can only be accessed through this operation. For example : an exclusive meeting with an artist. To optimize the performance of this type of campaign, choose the distribution channels or social media best suited to your target audience, and allocate a budget to content sponsorship.
 
 


Visuals used by the Folies Gruss as part of a contest on social media.

 
The lookalike campaign based on CRM data. Who is just as likely to come to your events as your already-conquered audiences? Audiences who have the same interests and habits. In other words, audiences who are similar to them: their "statistical twins". By launching your sponsored campaigns from a marketing platform like Arenametrix, you'll benefit from a wealth of data that will enable you to make your targeting much finer than if you were to use social network targeting tools alone.
 

The acquisition campaign prior to a major event. Some events, such as festivals, renew a significant part of their audience every year. In this respect, an acquisition campaign can be a good tool for making yourself visible to a well-targeted audience at the opening of ticket sales, and gradually, thanks to repetition, as the event draws nearer. But does it really work? To find out, it's essential to be able to measure the conversion of this type of campaign by installing scripts on your ticketing system. These scripts will make it possible to know precisely how many people reached by the campaign bought their ticket after clicking on it.

 

Visual used by the Montjoux Festival as part of a digital acquisition campaign.
 

Retargeting loyal audiences. It's often said that a person needs to be exposed to a message several times before it is memorized. Repetition is therefore an important lever in any communication campaign, and retargeting can be a good tool when used intelligently, in moderation, and with a well-targeted audience.
This mechanism can be used as part of a subscription launch campaign, for example. This involves targeting loyal audiences with an email campaign, then retargeting them on social networks with a campaign reminding them that it's time to subscribe for next season.


Valuation and arbitration

At a time when digital advertising is being called into question (rising costs, data management by the major platforms, etc.), it is vital to continue to examine the marketing levers available to the cultural and sports sectors to develop audiences and build loyalty. 

Digital advertising can be one of these levers, provided it is used wisely, in a targeted way, and with measurable objectives. It must also be considered as part of an overall relational strategy. Expanding your digital audience with new contacts is only the first step in a long-term strategy, in which future communications with this audience are anticipated and personalized. On this subject, take a look at our article on using marketing automation to build loyalty around an event.

To this end, the use of a marketing platform like Arenametrix can be a good tool for maximizing a campaign's chances of success (knowledge of audiences, their behaviors and targeting optimization), evaluating it after the fact, and integrating this action into a much more global marketing strategy, enabling future marketing choices to be arbitrated in the light of past experience.