How a Small, Yet Social Community Can Drive Growth

Likes, shares and the number of followers are on everyone’s mind when it comes to social media metrics. The question is, how do those metrics amount to sales? While industry giants such as Active and Athlinks spoke of an overall 12% decline in race registrations, the New York Triathlon was able to continue the momentum it gained from last years turn-around with an overall 47% year over year growth in attendees. How did we do it? We concentrated on the metrics that mattered the most.

When building an active, social media community that results in a lift in sales, the most important metrics that matter are how much awareness are you generating, is your community engaged and better yet, how often are they converting? We spent this last year focusing on the key metrics that mattered, which resulted in the ability to build relationships in a small, highly targeted community of athletes – from around the world.

About

The New York Triathlon (NYTRI) has been fully dedicated to putting on fun, safe and successful races throughout the NYC, Staten Island, Long Island and UpState NY areas since 1983. Since then, over 600 multi-sport events (triathlons and duathlons) are credited to its long history. Over the years, NYTRI has gained a following among 350 members and can boast a reach of around 15,000 athletes in the area.

Fast forward 30 years and with 100’s of new race series to choose from, NYTRI was having a tough time keeping up with the competition. Overall attendance was on a steady five-year decline, largely in part due to NYTRI’s aging infrastructure and old technology. We joined forces with a new Race Director in 2016 to help stop the decline and to resurrect the iconic NYC race series.

The Challenge

Every year, each multi-sport race series kicks off with a March event. In 2018, this race season kicked off with three back-to-back nor’easters, an overall decline in industry registrations and the biggest social media scandal of all time. Fantastic!

Choosing the right channel for a brand, especially one with limited resources, is important when creating a social media selling strategy. Asking very important questions such as: ‘Where are my customers?’ and ‘Where are my competitors?’ helps to determine which channels the brand should have a presence on. In 2017, Facebook was the chosen channel for NYTRI to focus on. In March of 2018, after the Cambridge Analytica crisis hit, Facebook’s reach plummeted and ad costs more than doubled. To say the least, it was time to put on our thinking caps.

Strategy & Consulting

Branding & Design

Integrated Marketing

Pintrest home page for New York Triathlon shown on a website, tablet and mobile devices for a social media case study.

The Solutions

A Campaign Built for Its Community, By its Community.

As digital marketers, we were aware of Pinterest’s marketing superpowers, however, using Pinterest for selling to a male-dominated sports community seemed like a bit of a reach. Especially for our race director who knew of Pinterest as a place to “look for things to make for Christmas”.

We knew with a global health and wellness industry in the trillions of dollars, Pinterest was a place for both men and women to search for everything mind, body and soul related. With 2 billion health and wellness pins and 61% of Pinners saying they turn to Pinterest for ideas to “be their best selves”, we redirected some of this year’s allocated Facebook media spend to introduce a new channel to the NYTRI community.

Simply adding in a new channel wasn’t going to offset the impact of the current events taking place at the time. we had to dig deep to get people geared up ready for this year’s race season. We promoted the individual successes of our athletes, answered customer questions, connected with new potential customers and created an overall buzz for the events well before and after each event took place. The results – a campaign built around a growing community, which our community loved.

Pintrest

With a small spend and within a short amount time, Pinterest became the number one driver of new traffic to website.

Examples of the New York Triathlon (NYTRI) Pintrest home page.

Facebook

While, yes, Facebook was having some issues, we didn’t want to abandon the platform that our community expected to find us on. We continued to promote the upcoming races on Facebook and Instagram using the hashtags #nytri and #readytotri. With the overall decline in reach, we showcased the NYTRI community like we had never done before to help drive engagement, and help with overall reach.

Ads +
Boosted Post

Two examples of New York Triathlon (NYTRI) Facebook Ads

Posts

Hashtags

We continued with our #readytotri hashtag to help encourage beginner athletes to try a triathlon or duathlon for the first time. We also encouraged our community to use our #nytri hashtag when they posted their own photos to various social media sites.

A series of six New York Triathlon (NYTRI) Instagram posts

The People

One of the best things about social media is building off-line relationships with your community. After running the peoples campaign for just under a year, we got to know our athletes better, and even started to bump into our ‘stars’ while while out training and attending other industry events. Now that’s what social media is all about!

New York Triathlon (NYTRI) Facebook post with Race Director Ron Darress and NYTRI athlete

The Results

+47%

Increase in YOY Sales
(with increased media spend)

2,362

New Athletes Added 2+
(with increased media spend)

+98%

Increase in Registrations for
2+ Races Per Year (2016-2018)

A Word From Our Client

Ron Darress,
Director, New York Triathlon

When I met Robert at a trade show, I noticed how well he worked in a team. When we spoke on the phone Robert reached into my business for my ideas. The follow up questionnaire was very detailed. It helped to get a handle of what was going on with every piece of my project. The quote was spot on and made my budget very happy. There is a lot at stake when you recommend someone, I have complete confidence that they will be satisfied with the efforts and results.