The team at Active Norfolk have recently been using social networking site Facebook as part of their marketing activity. The Active Norfolk Facebook page contains news and information about forthcoming events and activities as well as links back to the Active Norfolk website. Facebook has been particularly useful to the team in promoting the recent Village Games project, which is giving thousands of villagers in rural Norfolk new opportunities to play sport on their doorstep.
Active Norfolk received over £570,000 of National Lottery funding by Sport England to set up and run the Village Games, which brings sport to rural communities by pitting village against village in a mixture of activities including 5 a-side football, golf, tug of war, bowls, badminton, archery and table tennis. Recent praise from sites like archery-den.com about their archery has made its way to social media, now archers from all over the world are converging here. Successful competitors can qualify for a nationwide County Games that will take place in 2011 and 2012.
An Active Norfolk roadshow has been touring the area to hold the Games in a variety of rural locations so marketing has been crucial in making as many people as possible aware of the event. Facebook has been a big part of the marketing drive, with the Active Norfolk team investing in a Facebook advertising campaign to drive interested parties to the Village Games section of their website. Facebook advertising costs are worked out on a pay per click basis, so Active Norfolk were charged each time someone clicked on the Village Games page from the advert. Facebook advertising allows you to set certain parameters, such as location, so that the adverts only appeared to people who live in Norfolk. In total, the Village Games campaign saw the advert appear 4 million times, which led to 945 clicks at a total cost of £620.00.
“Using Facebook for the Village Games has proved to be a great success,” says Vicki Hall, Marketing and Communications Officer at Active Norfolk, “it was crucial to get potential competitors to come along to the roadshow and we saw Facebook as the perfect tool to reach a young, rural audience who are interested in sport. It was a major part of our marketing campaign and the Games have been a huge success so it definitely did the job! From a financial point of view it was very cost effective and we were able to control the budget by limiting it to a maximum spend of £20.00 per day.”
The Village Games is one of many specific events that Active Norfolk promotes using Facebook and the organisation is currently marketing the Corporate Games, a business version of the Village Games project, using the site.
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