Bowls England is the national governing body for the sport, passionate about its growth and development.

Four years ago, when Jon Cockcroft first discussed running Meta campaigns for their new Let’s Roll initiative, it was a huge shift for the organisation as using paid social and PPC advertising as a means of reaching their audience had never been trialled before. Our campaigns quickly proved their value, and over the years have improved in learning and data to provide a very stable and reliable platform from which to promote their events.

2023 CAMPAIGN - BOWLS BIG WEEKEND 2023

THE CHALLENGE

Following on from two successful Big Bowls Weekends, the objective of the 2023 campaign was to build on this success and attract players, new and old, to try out the sport at a local club.

THE STRATEGY AND RESULTS

With two years of data and learning behind the Bowls Big Weekend campaign, we were able to refine targeting and creative more efficiently and effectively this year, which is extremely valuable in a short campaign.

As a result, we were able to bring in more sign ups at a lower cost than either of the previous years, which set Bowls England up for another highly successful event to kick start their summer season.

The learnings from this years campaign have been fed back for Bowls England to produce optimal assets for next year… and once again, we’ll be ready to roll….

2022 CAMPAIGN - NATIONAL FINALS, PLAY BOWLS & BOWLS BIG WEEKEND 2022

THE CHALLENGE

After the successes of our initial Let’s Roll campaign for Bowls England in 2020, and the 2021 ‘Big Bowls Weekend’ campaign, 2022 brought some really exciting new developments.

The National Finals were being held in Leamington Spa, hot on the heels of the same venue being used for the Commonwealth Games. For the first time, Bowls England wanted to use digital advertising to increase ticket sales to the event and maximise the opportunities from the Commonwealth coverage and enhanced spectator facilities.

In addition, over the winter, Bowls England had developed an innovative new site, Play Bowls,  allowing anyone to sign up to play bowls at their local club on a ‘pay as you play’ basis. The objective of the ‘pay as you play’ summer campaign was to drive new traffic to the site and increase participation in the sport at a local level.

A new version of bowls, Bowls Bash, had also been developed over the winter, and Bowls England were keen to test its popularity through the new Play Bowls website.

Given the success of previous campaigns, and new opportunities to reach previously untapped audiences this year, Bowls England expanded their advertising to include Google Ads.

THE STRATEGY AND RESULTS

Working on two new sites this year, Eventim for National Finals ticketing, and the new Play Bowls site, there was critical groundwork in campaign set up, tagging and design.

With a short lead time to the National Finals, and working with previously untested creative, we launched with a range of video, carousels and images, and prioritised testing calls to action. Retargeting proved critical in the campaign, so the funnel was optimised, largely with the use of video, to bring in conversions as cheaply as possible. 

We delivered a blended ROAS of over x6, and look forward to using the data and learnings from 2022 to build on this success in 2023.

In order to drive new traffic and generate sign ups on the new Play Bowls site we heavily leaned into the data collected in the previous two years, and the learnings from creative, copy, CTAs etc. With the support of the Google Ads campaigns, click thru rates and engagement were both higher than anticipated for a new website, and the cost per click lower.

The Bowls Bash test campaign ran in a small geo-targeted area. We had bold creative to work with and initial results were strong. By running a small test area for this offer we were able to identify weak spots in the customer journey and advise on improvements for what we hope will be a nationwide test for summer 2023.

As always, it was a real pleasure to deliver campaigns for Bowls England, who have demonstrated that investing in consecutive campaigns, and innovating with their delivery, have reaped huge rewards in bringing new bowlers to the sport, both as participants and spectators.

2021 CAMPAIGN - BOWLS BIG WEEKEND 2021

THE CHALLENGE

After the success of our 2020 campaign, Bowls England asked us to drive sign-ups for their nationwide ‘Bowls Big Weekend’ via paid advertising campaigns driving high intent traffic to a sign-up page.

THE STRATEGY

With a tight timeline we focused on a structured funnel, geo-targeting participating clubs. We were quickly able to establish the best performing audiences and copy, however encountered a slow conversion from the existing landing page. Testing adjusted pages as well as on-Facebook lead generation found the lowest friction route to sign ups, which we were then able to scale for the remainder of the campaign.

THE RESULTS

Rigorously testing ad copy and audiences with the limited creative assets available enabled us to refine the most cost-effective audience to target in order to maximise sign ups and drive down the cost per acquisition.

We had previously proved this to be a fresh, accessible and flexible route to market for the sport and this campaign built upon that, driving sign ups to more than 450 clubs nationwide for a minimal acquisition cost.

END OF CAMPAIGN REPORT FEEDBACK FROM FACEBOOK SENIOR MARKETING EXPERT

"Campaign was watertight and excellently structured", she said that we had "used the pixel data to get the absolute most out of the campaign for your money" and that she had "no recommendations for anything that could have been done better."

2020 CAMPAIGN - LET’S ROLL

THE CHALLENGE

Bowls England wanted to target existing bowlers and inspire them to advocate the sport to their friends and family, encourage them to find their local club and give the sport a go. Improving the image of the sport across a wide demographic, engaging existing participants, and welcoming new participants were the key goals. They had no previous experience with digital advertising and demonstrating return on ad spend was key.

THE STRATEGY

Our strategy involved a simultaneous mix of ad objectives to increase awareness, drive engagement and gain sign ups in a short space of time, achieving success in what was a quick-fire campaign, the UK was easing out of the first lockdown and getting the messaging right was essential. Through our system of thorough audience testing, ad format testing, copy testing and creative testing we were able to identify winning ads and audiences that allowed us to exceed the KPI’s for the campaign. We left no stone unturned to squeeze better performance from the account.

THE RESULTS

Bowl's England gained new sign ups, data capture, increased social engagement and nationwide awareness from the campaign. Important data points and metrics were also established for future campaigns.

We clearly demonstrated that ads connect with Bowls England’s target audience and delivered a strong and measurable ROI for their stakeholders, as first-time digital marketing users we also proved this to be a fresh, accessible and flexible route to market for the sport.

WHAT THE CLIENT SAID

“We chose to work with Nutshell this year as we wanted a nimble, creative and hands-on approach to digital advertising.

Julie & Sophie really grasped what we needed and delivered a diverse campaign to get more people to give bowls a try. The campaign raised nationwide awareness, generated new membership sign-ups, increased engagement and demonstrated a strong Return on Investment in a challenging year.

Nutshell were an invaluable part of our marketing approach and we really enjoyed working with them. It certainly won’t be our last campaign with them and I wouldn’t hesitate in recommending them to other sporting bodies and rights holders.”

Jon Cockcroft, Chief Executive