How can challenger brands acquire new customers? Guillaume Lelait, Chief Growth Officer, M&C Saatchi Performance, and Matt Ferrel, Head of Marketing, TickPick, sat down to discuss three tactics that enabled TickPick to acquire new customers. Watch their full presentation available here, below is a summary of the discussion.
Starting with data from the M&C Saatchi Performance Insights team a media plan was developed that was designed to target both broad and niche audiences to achieve growth KPIs. These strategies were;
- Winning on TV
- Riding cultural moments
- Finding niche audiences and delivering ROAS through podcasts
About TickPick
TickPick is an online ticket marketplace that allows users to buy and sell tickets for various events, including concerts, sports games, and other live entertainment events. The M&C Saatchi Performance team has been working with TickPick since 2023 to raise brand awareness and drive conversions and app installs.
TickPick is a challenger brand operating in the highly competitive ticketing sports and entertainment marketplace. It sets itself apart by offering a no-fee ticket-buying experience with the tagline “The price you see is the price you pay.”
TickPick’s marketing efforts see seasonal spikes due to sports leagues such as the NFL, MLB, NBA, and MLS. Music ticket sales are also an important element of the business, depending on which artists are on tour.
Strategies to acquire new users;
1. Winning on TV, and Measuring Success
TickPick approached TV creative with a healthy dose of humor. “The idea was for the TV commercial to be memorable, make it fun and increase the brand’s awareness and popularity”. Matt Ferrel, Head of Marketing, TickPick
While certain months generate higher revenue and attendance due to the seasonality of sports, etc., TV advertising enabled TickPick to increase overall awareness across all categories they were targeting. This approach has allowed TickPick to scale its brand effectively and reach a broader audience.
The entire TickPick campaign had a focus on performance marketing right from the start, with an emphasis placed on media measurement. The M&C Saatchi Data & Analytics team worked with TickPick to ensure measurement focused on incremental lift in installs and unique visitors delivered by the campaign. This allowed TickPick to achieve expanded reach at a low CPM while also enhancing brand awareness.
2. Riding Cultural Moments
Major cultural moments, such as Lionel Messi joining the MLS or the interest in the Super Bowl in 2024 (resulting in ticket prices for the 49ers vs. Kansas City Chiefs final averaging $9,800), provide an opportunity that a challenger brand such as TickPick should not overlook. As a brand, TickPick is ambitious to hit performance metrics while understanding the power of combining organic and earned marketing and paid placements.
For performance marketing, the strategy was to target niche audiences through paid media. For example, to reach Messi superfans, creatives were also developed in Spanish to appeal to a Latino fan base. This allowed TickPick to make the most of a cultural phenomenon with highly targeted media to back up organic awareness and reach.
3. Finding Niche Audiences through Podcasts
According to eMarketer, 130 M people in the USA listened to a podcast in 2023, in 2024, 59.2% of US digital audio listeners will listen to a podcast at least once per month, totalling 135.4 million people. YouTube, Spotify, Apple, iHeart Radio are the leading podcasting channels.
The team at M&C Saatchi Performance saw an opportunity to test podcast advertising to reach niche audiences. Using our unique ‘Action Planning Framework’, the M&C Saatchi Performance media team hypothesized that podcast audiences outside of the obvious male sports fan audience could provide incremental reach.
Through testing, this proved to be the case, with “F1R The Girls” offering the best performing results accounting for 9k weekly downloads of which 89% were females aged between 23 and 34. Audiences were reached via programmatic buys, and host read placements.
“To see something that significantly challenged our assumptions was great. Their (M&C Saatchi Performance’s) ability to go far and wide regarding the podcasts we were targeting gave us a unique opportunity to learn more about our consumers.”
Matt Ferrel, Head of Marketing, TickPick
Overall podcast ads showed a significant positive lift in purchases and installs with results such as +117% lift in purchases and +144% increase in ROAS.
Find out more about how podcasts delivered results in this case study
In Summary
The success of TickPick’s TV ads showed that advertisers can afford to be funny and creative, especially in the case of challenger brands. Their targeted campaigns on TikTok and Meta resulted in 100,000 installs in two months. The brand’s strategic focus on niche audiences via podcast placements delivered new audiences. This combined approach allowed TickPick to scale its brand and reach its audience effectively.
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Further Reading
