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Daily ad performance reports and analysis →
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Most people who'd enjoy croquet don't know it exists near them. Digital advertising puts croquet in front of the right people, in the right areas, at the right time. The East Brisbane pilot is live and running its initial analysis phase.
East Brisbane is the first club to run a paid digital advertising campaign. The club has done the groundwork: committee alignment, Come & Try preparation, and a welcoming culture ready for new faces. Advertising is the next step because the club is ready to receive the people it brings in.
CAQ is spending $1,000 on Facebook and Instagram ads targeted at people who live near the club. The budget runs in three short bursts of about $300 each, spread across intake periods. Bursts concentrate the spend, generate usable data quickly, and give the club time to welcome each group before the next one arrives.
All ads point to comeandtrycroquet.com, where someone enters their postcode and gets matched to their nearest club. From there, the email sequence takes over.
Before spending a dollar, we pulled ABS Census 2021 data for every postcode within range of East Brisbane. We looked at age profiles, dwelling types, household composition, income, and labour force participation. The original plan concentrated 70% of the budget on one postcode. The census data showed that was wrong — that postcode held only 19% of the target demographic. We'd have been showing the same ad to the same 1,500 people 35 times each.
The revised plan spreads across five postcodes: 4169, 4170, 4171, 4151, and 4102. That's about 11,800 people aged 55 to 69, roughly 7,600 to 8,200 of whom are reachable on Facebook. The budget goes further because it reaches more of the right people at a healthy frequency.
The census data also shaped the ad creatives. Four different messages speak to four different situations, matched to what the demographics actually show:
Facebook's algorithm works out which message lands with which person. We built the messages from the data. The algorithm does the matching.
The whole pilot is a $1,000 experiment to answer one question: how much does it cost to get a stranger through the gate using digital advertising?
We're measuring everything end to end. Which ad someone clicked. Whether they filled in the form. Which emails they opened. Whether they showed up. The realistic range is 8 to 20 sign-ups and 4 to 14 people who actually visit. Even the low end is useful, because the data tells us what a reliable cost-per-lead looks like for a niche sport in inner-city Brisbane.
That number becomes the foundation for every future club's advertising plan. If it costs $50 to get someone to the gate and one in three becomes a member, clubs and CAQ can plan budgets with confidence instead of hope.
Over 70% of Australians aged 55 to 70 use Facebook daily. The cost per click is a fraction of Google. And Facebook lets us target by exact location and age, so we don't pay to reach people who live too far away to join.
Croquet isn't something people search for. You can't Google a sport you've never heard of. But you can see an ad on your phone while you're on the couch, and think: huh, there's a club near me.
Digital advertising is one piece of a larger pipeline. An ad gets someone's attention. The comeandtrycroquet.com website captures their details and finds their nearest club. An automated email sequence builds their interest over four weeks. By the time they visit, they already know a bit about the game and what to expect.
No single piece does the job alone. Advertising without the website is a dead end. The website without the emails leaves people to forget. The whole system works because the pieces connect.
Hit Croquet's Aims: Every ad is designed to do one thing: get someone to the gate. If it doesn't contribute to that, we don't run it.
Co-operate for Croquet: What works at East Brisbane gets shared. The targeting, the creative, the cost-per-lead data. Every club that follows gets the benefit of what this pilot learns.
Keep It Simple: Clubs don't manage ads. They focus on welcoming people. CAQ handles the rest.