The Australian Ballet

The Australian Ballet has been combining dazzling displays of human dexterity, poise, and skill with sublime symphonic performances to create unforgettable productions for over 60 years.

Today, it stands, spins, and leaps as Australia’s largest classical ballet company, and is recognised as one of the world’s major international ballet companies.

From 2016-2021, The Australian Ballet decided to finish off the 2010s in stylish success. It set goals for its marketing initiatives to get more people in seats, more eyes on the stage, and its name on smartphone and computer screens.

Newly hired and with a spring in its step, GO Digital began with implementing bid strategies and countdown ads in an on-going test and learn rhythm.

This was followed by heavy yet shrewd investiture in new videography advertisement launches, upper funnel growth items that made it possible to reach new audiences, especially millennials.

New initiatives with regional campaigns and events across the country allowed new partnerships to take flight.

The troupe might live for the theatre, but their potential patrons sit idle and entranced elsewhere, their handheld shrines seldom dimmed and never too far. The Australian Ballet needed to revamp its promotional channels to meet these distracted demographics midway, and to play its competition to its advantage.

GO Digital sketched out a classical marketing funnel to enrapture these new would-be ballet fans.

Awareness. Engagement. Conversion.

Each phase using Programmatic Displays, savvily deployed YouTube Advertising, and sustainable Paid Search stratagems. From there, strong and diverse campaigns were put into action.

On the regional front, GO Digital cross-promoted a tour during the COVID-19 Melbourne lockdown to expand via YouTube & Discovery Ads. When it came to Segmented Audience Messaging, we created unique messaging for returning users to The Australian Ballet’s website.

Custom Affinity Audiences selected for their particular interests and hobbies were targeted by affixing the Australian Ballet to popular keywords and websites they visited.

The Regional campaign generated 13k impressions and 1.3k clicks.

The Segmented Audience Messaging acquired 479k impressions and 4.5k clicks.

The Custom Affinity Audiences gave The Australian Ballet 5M impressions and 12.9k clicks.

Utilising Life Events was likewise fruitful as it resulted in 730k impressions and 3.1k clicks.

COVID-19 caused the cancellation of The Australian Ballet’s 2020 + 2021 season packages. Shows were suspended due to travel and safety restrictions.

GrowthOps helped their wobbling client rebalance with agile budget allocation.

Together, they had the performances adapted for online formats while raising awareness for these shows that audiences could watch at home.

The Australian Ballet wished to refine their marketing channels to better prepare with the obstacles posed by the recent COVID-19 pandemic.

The Australian government wished to leverage Discovery in particular to cast a wider net with digital media, Enhance Google Remarketing, Clear CTA, and to use those gains to reconfigure their approach into a more Conversion Focused model to consolidate the new users they accrued through raising awareness.

GO Digital introduced Discovery Ads , which assisted in significantly reducing the overall cost per acquisition of The Australian Ballet, producing a low CPA compared to GDN and CYO paid search.

Discovery Ads played a crucial role in retargeting people in the Melbourne and Sydney. As it had a healthier ad spend and performance than Google Display, it was determined that Discovery Ads should be considered the preferred option for retargeting.

It was also determined that Discovery Ads allowed for the uploading of multiple images that their artificial intelligence algorithm could whip out depending on what would be most appropriate for the current user. The AI used proved more advance than GDN’s, so it was advised that Discovery Ads be used to test different creative ad copy rather than GDN.

As Australians are engaging more and more with YouTube, The Australian Ballet decided to reengage with high intent buyers via TrueView to reach qualified audiences and increase its brand awareness.

A wise decision, as advertisers that combine platforms can see an 8% increase in higher search volume, a 3% increase in conversion rate, and a 4% decrease in search CPA if they use YouTube and search run together.

Younger demographics would also be easier to reach with the platform. This made promoting ballet on YouTube a valid and promising venture.

Despite only running 6-15 second videos with voiceovers, YouTube view rate performance was quite impressive, keeping engagement high and costs down.