Approach
Cricket Wellington is the governing body for cricket in the Wellington region. In 2022 they reached out to Virtual Marketers to help them solve an urgent resourcing issue after their marketing manager moved on to a new role. They were looking down the barrel of a busy season with no one to drive the awareness and sales for their membership and ticketing campaigns.
VM stepped in to offer end-to-end marketing support, assembling a virtual marketing team to cover a wide range of their marketing activity for the upcoming season.
Solution
After very quickly deep-diving into what was needed for Cricket Wellington, we mapped out a clear plan. We focused on their strategic marketing direction and how this was delivered across the many brands, which included brand and market research, community engagement and growth, email marketing and comms support. We also developed and implemented SEO & SEM strategies, looked after campaign design and management, ad and media management and optimisation, website management and coverage of live events at their home grounds. With all of this going on, combined with the resourcing task at hand, we saw the opportunity to refine and focus all of their marketing activity to drive the most important outcomes with the resources available.
One of our key deliverables was a new marketing strategy for high-performance teams and the Cricket Wellington and community brands. Ticket sales were right up there as one of the most important outcomes; our goal was to fill the Basin Reserve with a sea of black and yellow. Part of the work we undertook was the development and execution of a comprehensive social media strategy across their brands, spread over more than 10 different channels. We also built out and managed an email marketing calendar for the entire Cricket Wellington database.
Additionally, through this work we’d explored some shortcomings of the existing website, and made a recommendation to support the Firebirds and Blaze to create a new website separate to Cricket Wellington. We worked closely with the team to create a new website, on a new platform and domain with a totally new look and feel, fitting for the capital’s professional cricket teams.
During Super Smash home games, we ensured match coverage across their range of social media platforms. We developed a Google dashboard that shone a light on the incredible digital activity they're doing as a whole. We helped them understand where their web traffic was coming from, even uncovering previously unknown vital information such as the fact that roughly 50% of their website users are based in India, and what channels were actually driving conversion.
When it came time for them to increase their internal marketing resource our knowledge meant we were primed to step in to help review CVs and interview potential candidates.
Key Outcomes
Our end-to-end partnership with Cricket Wellington was a success, and we delivered what was needed, and much more, during their time of need.
- A 261% increase in online ticket sales
- Brand new Blaze and Firebirds website
- Overall more focused, effective and data-driven marketing activity, paving the way for an even more successful 2023 season
“We were delighted to find Virtual Marketers, who managed to step in as an extension of our team and really hit the ground running. Their skill sets are so broad and they really helped us reshape our marketing activity so it can be built on and deliver results for years to come.”
- Cam Mitchell, CEO
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