March Madness is one of the most highly watched collegiate sporting events. According to The Athletic, both the men’s and women’s tournaments fostered high viewership.
“On the men’s side, the Sweet 16 produced its best performance in 28 years, averaging 12.9 million viewers across CBS and TBS, marking a 12 percent increase from 2019. The average of 6.46 million viewers was an improvement from the 5.74 million viewers that watched two years ago, per Sportico’s Anthony Cupri.
The women’s games brought in 1.559 million viewers on ABC for UConn vs. Iowa, while 1.223 million watched Baylor-Michigan. In addition, Monday’s UConn-Baylor Elite Eight game drew 1.703 million viewers — so far the most watched game of the women’s tournament so far.”
It’s no surprise that ratings skyrocketed this year, with sporting events taking a back seat majority of 2020. Despite that, March Madness is usually always one of the most highly sought after tournaments, with many fans and non-fans alike creating brackets for the event. With bars, restaurants and sports resuming as usual, people were itching to watch these games in public.
Cue Sports Kitchen.
Sports Kitchen opened its door in the beginning of 2021, just in time for March Madness. With over 30+ TVs, draft beers, specialty cocktails, and a great environment, this was the perfect spot to watch the games with your friends.
We helped Sports Kitchen launch a series of mini ads based on the rounds of the March Madness tournament. Despite having a small budget, these campaigns churned great results – a perfect example that not all small budgets are constricting.
First Ad Set
First, we launched an initial awareness campaign. This touched upon March Madness and Sports Kitchen being open. We chose to run a reach campaign for this motive.
Budget: $100
Our ad targeted specific interests in:
- Sports
- Basketball
- NCAA basketball
- March Madness
- Bars
- Going out
The flight was short, only running for 4 days.
The call to action was clear: call to reserve a spot now.
Results:
The results proved to be a little different than what we expected, as women were the most reached demographic over men. Since this campaign was launched as more of an awareness campaign of Sports Kitchen being open, we expected the numbers to start off on the lower end of things as we spread the word.
Second Ad Set
After the results from the first flight were in, we decided to step up our creative for the second round. Our team launched a second campaign that highlighted the Sweet 16 and Elite 8 seedings. Our creative was a gif-like video showing people in Sports Kitchen, the TVs, and a beer glass.
Budget: $200
Our ads specifically focused on targeting:
- Sports
- Basketball
- NCAA basketball
- March Madness
- Bars / Foodies
- Elite Eight
The flight was a little longer, lasting 6 days.
The call to action was the same: call to reserve a spot.
Results:
Women were the main target demographic interacting with the ad, again – this time was much higher than the men. The numbers increased, having a great cost per result for both genders. The amount of people reached and served increased, which led to many phone calls for reservations.
Final Ad set
The third, and final, round of ads we put out were for the Final Four and Championship games. This was the last effort to push people to make reservations at Sports Kitchen to watch March Madness. We decided to keep a gif as the creative, but added more pictures to keep the ad from going stale.
Budget: $250
The ad was even more granular – targeting:
- Sports
- College Basketball
- NCAA basketball
- March Madness
- Alcoholic Beverages
- Final Four
We kept the flight the same, running it for 6 days.
The call to action was the same: call to reserve a spot.
Results:
The final ad did the best out of the three campaigns. The amount of people reached sky rocketed, as well as impressions served. Both genders maintained a great cost per result and Sports Kitchen received double the amount of reservations with the third ad set.
Our series of mini ads for Sports Kitchen proved to be an excellent example of how a small campaign budget can be a great solution for an objective of this stature. While small budgets tend to be looked down upon in ad spend, this proved to be the opposite.
Next time you want to launch a series of mini ads, reach out to us and we’ll get your campaign the results you want!