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Optimizing The Google Ads Grant

About the Winnipeg Blue Bombers

The Winnipeg Blue Bombers are a non-profit professional Canadian football team, who are governed by a 13-member volunteer board of directors. They compete in the Canadian Football League (CFL) in the West division and have won the Grey Cup championship 12 times. They are a successful team, competing 26 times in the Grey Cup, which is the highest record of any team in the league.

Client Challenge

The Winnipeg Blue Bombers’ goal is to further the well-being of those in Winnipeg and the surrounding areas through sport and other community involvement initiatives. As a non-profit corporation, operation budgets and marketing dollars are limited, and the Winnipeg Blue Bombers were looking for ways to increase awareness of their initiatives while keeping to a set budget.

Our Digital Marketing Strategy

After consultations with the Blue Bomber’s senior management, a proposal was put forward to gain a Google Ads Grant for the Blue Bombers with three main targets. One focus was on educating the public about football, transportation options, and standings on the team. We also focused on sales by identifying consumer interests that match up with set ticketing options ranging from family nights to season tickets. Finally, we focused on merchandise by increasing the exposure to the Blue Bombers’ latest merchandise line.

Google Ads Grant

Working with the Blue Bombers’ management team, we were able to gather the required legal documents and facilitate the application for the Google Ads Grant. We were successful in securing $10,000 USD per month for the Blue Bombers Organization to utilize on their Google Ads search campaigns.

Campaign Set-Up

We created 3 campaigns that focused on the identified target areas as well as a branded campaign that would help funnel traffic to high-importance pages. Each campaign had an average of 10 sub-AdGroups underneath the main campaign to help narrow the focus of the campaign and increase the relevancy of the campaign.

Special Enhancement

In order to add urgency and push the limits of the capabilities of the campaign, we enabled dynamic ad customizers that automatically update ad copy to reflect the next team that the Blue Bombers were playing at home, and had a count-down timer for the amount of time left to purchase a ticket for the game.

Results

+35,000

website visitors

+250%

change in CTR

+13%

change total site traffic

Comparing the digital marketing performance of the Blue Bombers from the previous year to the new year, we saw the following success in the 2 months leading up to the season:

Additional Traffic

35,000 additional visitors to the website with an average CTR of 4.25% despite there being a limitation on the maximum keyword bid allowed on the non-profit account.

Total Site Traffic

This resulted in a 13% increase in total site traffic despite decreases from all other channels compared to the year before, without drastically increasing their marketing budget by a single $1.

Testimonial

1UP Digital Marketing was instrumental in securing the Google AdWords Grant for our organization and was able to increase the number of visitors to our site. Phil and his team were very professional to work with, and are really experts in what they do.

Wade Miller, President & CEO, Blue Bombers Football Club