The Partner

As the national governing body for Netball, Netball Australia oversees a community of over 1.2 million players who take to the courts across the country. Netball holds the title of the number one participation sport for Australian girls, and 2024 proved to be a landmark year for Netball as the country's most watched and attended women’s professional league.

The organization’s official grassroots program - Woolworths NetSetGO - is at the heart of this growth, preparing the next generation for a future in netball.

The Challenge

Launching a grassroots campaign from a national level, nation-wide. 
Coming into Woolworths NetSetGO month - an annual initiative to bring more attention to their grassroots program - Netball Australia planned to drive more eyeballs to their program than previous years, with the following campaign objectives in mind:

1. To celebrate and highlight the Woolworths NetSetGO program and the champions behind it, nation wide
2. To increase registrations to the program for the second half of the year
3. To collect user-generated content and stories from their grassroots community to amplify and learn from
4. To leverage their existing partnerships to amplify the campaign’s reach and impact.

And they wanted to do all of this by working within their existing budget and ecosystem. Hayley Hamp, Marketing Manager at Netball Australia noted, 

“Woolworths NetSetGO Month is a celebratory initiative. It allows us to celebrate all of the amazing work that happens in that space from your administrators, to volunteers, to coaches, and it also allows us to get a secondary boost in registration for the rest of the year.

The purpose of it is to align all states and territories with the idea that if we’re all putting in effort at the same time, we’ll have more impact. We don’t have the biggest budget so when we do things like this, we’ve got to make sure that we can lean into all the levers available to us”

The Strategy

Netball Australia planned to rejig a campaign run previously but to do it at an even bigger scale.

They introduced their “Nominate your Hero” UGC campaign as a tool to engage, celebrate and promote their grassroots initiatives over Woolworths NetSetGO month and to capture and amplify the unique stories tied to the program.

Nominate your Hero: Execution

The TL;DR on the Campaign:

The “Nominate your Hero” campaign used one of Tradable Bits’ 50+ engagement templates as the vehicle to collect nominations and the stories behind them from grassroots participants. To encourage participation, Netball Australia collaborated with one of their commercial partners - Westfield - to provide a valuable $1000 incentive to both the nominator, and the nominated ‘hero’ winners.

Timing and Duration:

Mid-June to Mid-July.
Netball Australia launched the campaign in mid-June right before the start of Woolworths NetSetGO month to give ample time for participation, and chose winners in mid-July, right before the Suncorp Super Netball Finals.

This strategic period allowed them to promote the program over the school holidays across Australia, while avoiding conflicts with other sponsored sports programs. It also allowed them to promote the stories collected by the campaign during their Suncorp Super Netball Finals - bringing their grassroots to elite engagement full circle.

Multi-channel Approach:

Netball Australia focused their efforts on promoting the campaign where their grassroots audience was most active. They diversified their distribution plan to include

1. Mobile App Banners in State and Territory Netball Apps (where their targeted audience would be weekly)
2. Social media posts with paid promotion
3. QR code posters for club pinboards
4. Email marketing to existing databases
5. Other targeted assets across state and territory organizations.

Stakeholder Engagement

The campaign’s success relied heavily on collaboration with:

1. State and Territory Netball organizations
2. Commercial/corporate partners
3. Internal teams at Netball Australia (including community and marketing)

To make all of these levers function well together, Hamp described,

“We had a clear vision for what we wanted to achieve and why it mattered. This clarity allowed us to identify our target audience (grassroots in this case) and devise the best ways to reach them. It also highlighted the tangible benefits of this initiative, making it easier to present to stakeholders and sponsors and secure the $1000 prize.

Without this clear plan, we wouldn’t have been able to effectively target the right audience or convince other clubs and sponsors to join us.”

Rolling Thunder:

The campaign focused on collecting and sharing stories from the grassroots community as valuable content to foster a sense of community pride. In addition to their initial launch, these stories were shared across multiple channels throughout the month, calling back to the campaign to re-promote it.

Key Success Factors

1. Leveraging existing networks
   To gain access to state and territory apps and club pinboards to get in front of their target audience without additional costs.
   
   
2. Consistent Branding
   Netball Australia created a digital toolkit with templates and assets to ensure uniform messaging across their markets (and easy pick-up from their stakeholders).
   
   
3. Strategic partnerships 
   Collaborating with Woolworths and Westfield to expand reach and offer attractive incentives.
   
   
4. Grassroots Focus
   The campaign was tailored to celebrate and engage the community directly involved in the Woolworths NetSetGO program while allowing the Netball Australia team to build stronger relationships.
   
   
5. Creating Game-day Connections
   Bringing the campaign full circle by sharing these stories live during the Suncorp Super Netball Finals created a clearer connection between the program, players, fans and future athletes.

Results

The “Nominate your Hero” campaign demonstrates how to engage grassroots communities through strategic planning, stakeholder collaboration, and targeted marketing efforts, even with limited budgets.

Seeing thousands of views and over 700 heartfelt nominations, Netball Australia successfully:

• Increased visibility compared to the previous year
• Generated valuable user-generated content for ongoing marketing efforts
• Strengthened relationships with state and territory organizations
• Gained insight into local program implementation and community engagement 

Congrats to the team on such a success!