Facebook and ESPN work in perfect posting harmony
When Sports New Media took control of close to 100 unofficial fan pages of facebook back in the autumn of 2009, managing director Nick Thain quickly realised the company had a great opportunity in the football marketing sector.
As a business, Sports New Media instantly set about ‘officialising’ these player fan pages in a move that would secure the company’s position on the social networking site. At the time, an impressive 1.8 million fans were directly accessible to Thain and his colleagues. Now, with continuous hard work and development of a further 300 plus pages, Sports New Media have a reach of over 4.2 million people globally through this one channel.
It was decisions made in the early stages of the Facebook Pages that paved the way for this growth, and that includes working with advertisers
Sports New Media have a reach of over 4.2 million people globally through this one channel
Thain reflects on the importance of the deal with ESPN. “This deal is definitely the best case study we could possibly point too. They were the perfect client for us, as at the time they were new to the UK market and were happy to gives us flexibility to play to our own strengths.
“ESPN were looking to improve their brand awareness as a first objective, and were understandably excited about our ability to directly target a broad base of close to two million people.”
As one of the first company’s to take advantage of the Facebook Pages, ESPN understandably wanted to test what they would be getting for their money. Marketing manager Alex Lowe made an initial investment, and would then go on to sign-off further budget following the success of the first test.
“Spurs v Manchester United was used as the first game for us to promote ESPN to the fans on facebook, and so we targeted messages directly to the fans of players specifically related to each team.
“Three separate messages were sent over five days. Firstly, we sent a picture messaging carrying the ESPN slogan; ‘It’s great to be here’. Two days later, we posted the new ESPN advert directly onto the player walls. Finally, on the day of the game, we posted a message a couple of hours before kick-off. The purpose of this was to remind fans about the imminent ability to watch the game.
Facebook Pages are one of the most reactive and successful advertisement mediums available
“All these messages had click to subscribe links back to the ESPN website and noted that ESPN was the only channel to watch the game in the UK. The delivery of 5-6% click through rates understandably led to a bigger deal being signed off the next week.”
That deal would mean facebook promotion for ESPN over the next two months, with every live and exclusive Premier League game being promoted on the channel until the end of October.
The CTR would suffer a slight drop off over time, something anticipated by Sports New Media, but the overall average of over 2% still makes the Fan Pages on facebook one of the most reactive and successful advertisement mediums available.
Rather than standing on their own laurels, Sports New Media took immediate strides to make improvements to their product, learning lessons from the first major campaign.
“Despite delivering quality results, it’s important to learn lessons and that was definitely the case here. We saw the importance of time targeting, with an extremely reactive final message just hours before the game, while the picture message didn’t work so well because people clicked on the picture which unfortunately doesn’t lead to a different link outside of facebook,” notes Thain.
“I would also say that we learned to limit the number of messages sent over a specific period, and now we would only agree two messages maximum in a week. We also learned that fan updates (inbox messages) would need to be used sparingly to have a relevant impact.”
ESPN moved away from brand awareness and towards direct response at the end of the original deal, and also internally they continue to work on their own social media strategy
These issues are not to detract from the success of this particular campaign though, which at the time fitted the needs of both parties.
Sports New Media have used this case study on a number of occasions in front of both current and potential clients, including ESPN with a view to future deals. Their changing strategy meant that the original deal concluded without future sign-offs, but this doesn’t mean that there is a lack of opportunities for dealings between the two at a later stage.
“ESPN moved away from brand awareness and towards direct response at the end of the original deal, and also internally they continue to work on their own social media strategy,” says Thain.
“They know first hand that we can deliver, and it’s a case of us getting back in-front of them and discussing the strategies. We’ve already spoken about a massive deal promoting all sports shown on their channel, and it’s something that could very much be in the pipeline.
“Additionally, we have proven that we can produce impressive results to clients in the same field as ESPN. Although you’d envisage a slightly lower click-through rate for a well-established company like Sky, we will actively be looking to speak to such clients.
