Last week, we promised we would highlight the numbers from our “Listen Like the NBA: ¡Con Emoción!”story, as well as how the NBA’s Hispanic marketing group leverages social media in order to keep their fans in the know and excited about the season even during the recent National Basketball Association (NBA) lockout.
“Numbers were up during opening week this season. Hispanics tuned in, continuing to build on the year-to-year growth we’ve experienced since the launch of the campaign in 2009,” said NBA Vice President of Multicultural Marketing Saskia Sorrosa.
But how big is this growth exactly?
Last time we spoke, NBA Hispanic Marketing: “Social Media a Key Component of Our Strategy,” éne-bé-a had more than 248,000 fans on Facebook and 1,800 on Twitter. Today, they have nearly 310,000 fans (25 percent growth) on Facebook and 5,600 on Twitter (211 percent growth).
One would think growth like this is due to a heavy social media ad campaign, but to our surprise, it was not.
“The growth we’ve seen on our social media assets is mostly organic. We have TV, radio and online ads that drive viewers back to our enebea.com page, but we don’t buy ads on Facebook anymore,” Ms. Sorrosa explained. “One strategy we’re currently focusing on is heavily cross promoting our éne-bé-a pages with our general market [English-language] pages.”
Ms. Sorrosa explained that 12 percent of the NBA’s (English-language) Facebook and Twitter followers – more than 11 million likes and 3.8 million followers, respectively – are Hispanic. Cross promoting allows the team to push culturally relevant content among bicultural, bilingual fans across the NBA, and drive them back to éne-bé-a social media assets for customized engagement. She also shared with us that they are keeping many strategies they have been using for years, like their “blog squad, videos, and Q&A sessions.” Overall, they are now focusing on cross promotion through the multiple online channels where they know Hispanic fans are consuming, while allowing social media to serve as their primary engagement piece.
We examined how éne-bé-a has driven an increase of fan engagements from an average of 70 per post during the 2011 season, up to 85 engagements per Facebook post so far in 2012. Ms. Sorrosa attributes the growth to the fact that “the content we are providing is better, and we are cross promoting on our English-language social media pages where we know Hispanic fans are also following our game.”
Ms. Sorrosa enjoys seeing Facebook’s new “Talking About This” tracker as well as Facebook Shares, which is now a feature that appears on each post.
“These features are incredibly important. They allow us to track how many stories are going viral, being shared, and sparking conversations,” Ms. Sorrosa said. “Since we are learning more from our audience, we (the éne-bé-á) know what (fans) want to see.”
And without further ado, here are the numbers:
Hispanic regular-season viewership was up 59 percent in 2010-11 in comparison to the previous season (vs. 27 percent growth in non-Hispanic viewership)
During Opening Week 2011-12, Hispanic viewership was up 26 percent on ABC, TNT, and ESPN, over-indexing in comparison to non-Hispanic viewership by 160 percent
Over the past three years, the growth of the NBA
The enebea grew by an incredible 211% on their Twitter page since November of 2010
The enebea Facebook page has experienced 25% growth since Nov 2010.
Facebook engagement has grown by 21% since last season, up to 85 engagements (likes, comments, or shares) per post.
Sales of Noche Latina merchandise at NBAStore.com was up 104 percent in 2011 in comparison to the previous year
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