The Picklr

Indoor Pickleball Franchise, Picklr, Uses Strategic Use of Out-of-Home Advertising to Drive Membership Growth

Background

Picklr, a rapidly expanding premium indoor pickleball club franchise, has sold over 400 locations across the U.S., with 23 locations open and 50-60 more planned. As the brand grows, one challenge Picklr faces is driving consistent membership growth, especially when entering new markets. To solve this, the company has turned to out-of-home (OOH) advertising, particularly digital billboards, to raise awareness and promote grand openings.

 

Challenge: Building Brand Awareness and Driving Grand Opening Attendance

For Picklr’s marketing team, a significant challenge is converting leads into members, especially around grand openings. As a franchise, Picklr sells memberships before the clubs open. While they generate up to 1,000 leads per club rollout, only 20-40% of those leads convert into founding members, leaving hundreds in the “wait-and-see” phase. To tackle this, the team needed a way to create urgency and build trust with potential members in new areas, driving grand opening attendance and membership conversions.

 

Solution: Out-of-Home Advertising with Blip

Picklr found that Blip’s digital billboards offered several key benefits for their grand opening campaigns:

Flexibility:
Blip allows campaigns to start and stop quickly, ideal for time-sensitive events like grand openings. Picklr can easily launch campaigns with minimal lead time and end them once the opening has passed.

Creative Control:
Blip enables Picklr to swap out creative and adjust messaging based on performance, ensuring their ads stay relevant and impactful.

Geographically Targeted Campaigns:
By targeting specific areas near new locations, Picklr ensures their billboards reach the right audience, driving local awareness.

Picklr ran two types of campaigns for their grand openings:

Brand Awareness Ads:
These ads positioned Picklr as a premium indoor pickleball brand, building recognition in new markets.

Grand Opening Ads:
These ads promoted the actual event, creating excitement and urgency around the opening, which helped convert leads into members.

 

Results: Measuring Success through Awareness and Attendance

The company has seen measurable success, including key metrics such as:

Grand Opening Attendance:
Attendance has been strong across locations, with high foot traffic at openings due to OOH ad visibility.

Increased Brand Awareness:
The visibility and creative impact of Picklr’s digital billboards have significantly raised awareness in new markets, making the brand stick in people’s minds.

Local Conversations:
Many people have recalled seeing the Picklr ads on highways, which sparks local word-of-mouth marketing, boosting brand recognition further.

Early Membership Sales:
Some locations have sold a significant portion of their memberships before opening. For example, one location sold 572 founding memberships and 36 additional memberships, nearly half of its capacity, before doors opened.

Scalability and Franchise Support
The success of OOH advertising has extended beyond corporate-run locations. Picklr has incorporated OOH into its franchise model, advising franchisees on how to use digital billboards for their own grand openings. This is part of Picklr’s Franchise Disclosure Document (FDD), which allocates a portion of the franchisee’s marketing budget—typically around a third—towards OOH advertising.

 

Conclusion

Picklr’s use of out-of-home advertising has proven effective for driving membership growth and building brand awareness, particularly during grand opening events. The flexibility of digital billboards, combined with creative control and geographic targeting, allows Picklr to stay agile and maintain a premium brand presence in competitive markets. As the franchise continues its rapid growth, OOH advertising will likely play a key role in sustaining Picklr’s success across the U.S.

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