CASE STUDY
STN Digital Generated 6 Million Impressions and a Sold Out Stadium for Wave FC’s Opening Game
Our Role
Paid MediaWith an ongoing partnership since 2015, Wave FC scored big with STN Digital’s paid media strategy to boost single-game ticket sales and generate season-long excitement. Our team proposed a two-phase paid media strategy to create top-of-mind awareness and help Wave FC reach its ticket and sales goals.
The first paid media phase was centered around creating awareness and excitement for the team as they progressed through their inaugural season in San Diego. The second paid media phase was focused on selling single-game tickets for the remaining home games at USD’s Torero Stadium and eventually for their inaugural match at the brand-new Snapdragon Stadium.
With the monumental move to Snapdragon Stadium, Wave FC made history by selling out the stadium and in doing so, set a new NWSL attendance record. Our team’s paid media efforts had a powerful impact onad recall and brand awareness leaving a lasting impression on San Diego sports fans.
How STN delivered 6M impressions and helped set a new NWSL attendance record through ticket purchases for San Diego Wave FC via paid media
In the awareness phase, our team set out to target the audience personas that most closely aligned with Wave FC’s target audience and fans in order to maximize exposure. Careful placements on Facebook and Instagram were the main drivers of awareness and excitement during this initial paid media phase.
Our team captivated a wide audience with scroll stopping content that displayed Wave FC game information for the inaugural match at Snapdragon Stadium. Utilizing paid media to gain exposure increased the size of the retargeting audience which we then used in our second conversion phase.
During the conversion phase of the paid media campaign, STN utilized targeting techniques to re-engage audiences previously exposed throughout the awareness phase. By using Meta’s targeting capabilities such as lookalike audiences, STN was able to grow the targeting pool. It hit users that most closely resembled the engagers, video viewers, and site visitors that were attained in the awareness phase.
This segmented and sequential paid media approach allowed for heightened awareness levels among a brand new audience, while continuing to push them down the marketing funnel towards a ticket purchase, resulting in over 913 purchases at 1.5x return on ad spend.
The Results
As a whole, STN Digital delivered 6M impressions and reached nearly 60% of the available San Diego audience with Wave Media.
The paid media campaigns received 1.5x return on ad spend. There was also a 17% reduction in conversion costs relative to the start of the campaign.
The team sold out their opening game at Snapdragon Stadium – proving to be a historical moment and set a new NWSL attendance record.