Golden State Warriors

Success Story

Courting fans and customers

The NBA team ran a video and link ad campaign to drive local ticket sales and sell merchandise globally during the 2014–15 season, achieving a 29X return on ad spend for ticket sales and a 19X return for merchandise sales.
  • 29X return on ad spend for ticket sales
  • 19X return on ad spend for merchandise sales
  • 55 million video views on Facebook during NBA playoffs (organic content)

Their Story

Golden glory

The Golden State Warriors are a professional basketball team based in the San Francisco Bay Area. The team won the NBA Championship for the fourth time in franchise history during the 2014–15 season, and for the first time since 1975.

Their Goal

Netting sales, fans and engagement

The Warriors’ primary goal was to increase online ticket sales with its local audience and sell more team merchandise globally, while continuing to grow worldwide awareness of the brand.
When we use Facebook as it was intended, we get great results. It’s not about algorithm magic, but personalizing the fan’s journey so we deliver the right message to the right audience, triggered by behavior.
Kenny Lauer, VP, Marketing & Digital, Golden State Warriors

Their Solution

Practice makes perfect

Working with agency Blitzmetrics to run the year-long campaign, the Warriors used Facebook organic content and best practices to optimize the campaign.

Test creative variations to land on a winner

The Warriors used Page posts to test ad creative. Using images and videos that resonated best with its audience, the team created ads in Ads Manager with call-to-action buttons to drive paid campaigns. Link ads and video ads promoted season tickets, renewals and waitlists to local fans, and also promoted merchandise globally. The team’s best-performing ads had very few words and featured close-ups of players facing opponents on an artfully styled background.

Create lookalike audiences from your highest-quality customers

The sports organization created Custom Audiences and lookalike audiences to find and sell to people similar to its best customers. The Warriors segmented these lists as follows:
  • Current/interested customers who had visited its website or made a purchase
  • Repeat high-value ticket purchasers, identified with a Facebook pixel on the Ticketmaster checkout page
  • People who downloaded the Warriors’ mobile app

Track conversions

To measure the return on ad spend for ticket sales, the Warriors placed a Facebook pixel on Ticketmaster’s checkout page.
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Использованные продукты

Цели

Their Success

Slam-dunk success

The Warriors’ Facebook campaign was as successful as the team’s championship season, achieving impressive returns that outperformed all other paid media channels. And after using this campaign to refine and improve its Facebook advertising strategies, the team reached even greater marketing success during the 2015-2016 season.
Results from the 2014–2015 campaign include:
  • 29X return on ad spend for ticket sales
  • 19X return on ad spend for merchandise sales
  • 53% increase in international fan base (2013–2015)
  • 55 million video views on Facebook during NBA playoffs (organic content)