Colchester Sports Park

Audience Generation Marketing Strategy

About Colchester Sports Park

Colchester Sports Park is a 76-acre site, offering the very latest facilities for both indoor and outdoor sports as well as an extensive range of leisure activities.

Unique to Essex, the Sports Park features a 1-mile floodlit Cycle Track, Pump Track and Learn to Ride area, providing a safe space to improve your cycling skills whatever your level of experience. As well as being home to Colchester Rugby Club and Colchester Archery Club, Colchester Sports Park also offers a state-of-the-art gym, a fitness class studio, interactive indoor velo suite, a large sports hall with specialist cricket facilities, a 4G rugby league pitch and numerous grass pitches.

Part of Leisure World, the 300 car park spaces mean there is room for all, whether you are visiting for a structured training session, a picnic and kick-about or a coffee and catch up in the Paddy & Scott’s coffee shop.

What was involved?

Colchester Sports Park launched in April 2021, just as the world was starting to re-emerge from the Covid pandemic. In November 2021, KAT Marketing was asked to develop a new strategy for introducing new people to the facilities at the Colchester Sports Park, with a particular emphasis on targeting use of the 1-mile Cycle Track and increasing the number of children’s birthday parties held at the club. Alongside this, KAT Marketing restructured Colchester Sports Park’s digital offering with the build of a new website, a social media content plan and a PPC campaign. This was supported by a videography and photography shoot to be used to inform website content and social media and advertising campaigns.

In addition, KAT Marketing embarked on a cross-promotional campaign to build relationships with cycle clubs, athletic clubs and cycle shops across the region to build greater awareness of Colchester Sports Park and the facilities on offer, with a focus on increased use of the Cycle Track for group ride sessions and race events.

How did it go?

Website

Working to a tight deadline, KAT designed and built a new website to emphasise the unique brand of Colchester Sports Park within the Leisure World umbrella. This was launched before the crucial period of Christmas, when browsing activity is at its highest and when there is a surge in individuals searching for solutions for a healthier lifestyle.

The website also incorporated an intuitive and easy to use back-end content management system and a detailed user guide which allowed Colchester Sports Park staff to quickly and dynamically update content on the website moving forward.

Digital Marketing

KAT Marketing’s digital campaign included content for each of Colchester Sports Park’s existing social media platforms including in-feed content, reels, stories and shorter Twitter messaging. Social schedules and graphics were created by KAT before being approved by the Colchester Sports Park team and then posted by KAT.

KAT created a Winter Wheels social campaign using organic posting and tagging of regional riders and clubs to generate interest and conversation in the Cycle Track at the facility.

Social media adverts were placed through a newly created Colchester Sports Park advertising account while the KAT team also implemented a Facebook Pixel to the website and ran a remarketing campaign to retarget previous visitors to the site as they went about their online activity.

PPC campaigns for birthday parties, gym memberships and the Cycle Track were created, using targeted offers to generate interest and drive traffic to the Colchester Sports Park website. KAT Marketing also implemented the main campaign video that had been created as a YouTube advert.

Cross Promotion

KAT Marketing contacted more than 20 cycling clubs and other athletic groups across the region to increase awareness of the Cycle Track as a facility. Representatives from 5 local cycle clubs attended trial sessions and 3 of those went on to confirm significant new block bookings for throughout 2022. In addition, KAT Marketing was able to discuss with clubs that had previously used the Cycle Track and discover ways in which the Colchester Sports Park team could encourage greater re-engagement.

Conversations were also held with cycle shops to start discussions around partnership and retail opportunities on the Colchester Sports Park site. KAT Marketing also created a Strava Club for Colchester Sports Park to encourage cycle clubs and individuals to take up regular challenges, creating another avenue to reach a key target market.

Schools Promotion

KAT implemented a schools campaign specifically targeting families promoting the Learn to Ride area, Pump Track, children’s sports clubs and birthday parties. The campaign raised brand awareness and generated leads.

More than 250 primary schools were contacted across the Colchester and Chelmsford areas. 164 of these schools agreed to distribute information from Colchester Sports Park, either as leaflets or in a digital format.

The Sports Park in action
The results
3,548
Followers on
Facebook
159
Members on
Strava
191,000
Reach on
Instagram
What they said

Having Julian contact our cycle club and provide details of the Colchester Sports Park has introduced many cyclists from our club to this facility. These include a large number who would not have tried it under their own steam. All from CC Sudbury who tried the rides gave feedback that the track surpassed their expectations. Once the block booking system was understood this also worked well.

Rob Davies, Sudbury Cycle Club