Radio Wins Gold: How a Sporting Goods Retailer Turned a Smaller Budget into 16X ROI
A global sporting goods retailer entering the Canadian market used Marketing Evolution to gain real-time, full-funnel visibility into what actually drove omnichannel traffic and revenue — and found radio at the top.
Client: Global Sporting Goods Retailer
Problem
As a relative newcomer to Canada, with its first store opening in Quebec in 2018, a global sporting goods retailer needed to build brand awareness while driving omnichannel growth. Traditional measurement tools left the team without attribution visibility across traditional and digital media, no clarity on which tactics drove in-store vs. online traffic, and no ROI metrics for brand-building channels like TV and radio.
Solution
The retailer and their agency Cossette Media partnered with Marketing Evolution to bring full-funnel transparency across a two-phase campaign in spring and winter 2024. This enabled the team to:
Compare ROI across both campaign phases across the entire funnel
Visualize the impact of each media channel across digital and traditional on both online and in-store traffic
Analyze TV performance at the program level to identify top-performing placements
Evaluate cost-per-visit and isolate incremental revenue by tactic in real time
Insight
Radio leads on revenue — radio generated 2X more total sales than any other single media channel, underscoring its role as a high-performing, cost-efficient channel in an omnichannel mix
TV placement matters — morning shows and primetime both performed well, but the leading morning show and top reality TV series each contributed 30%+ more revenue than the next best placement
Results
16X ROI in Phase 2 vs. 12X in Phase 1 — despite a smaller budget
Radio drove 2X more sales than any other single channel
Live data enabled mid-flight budget reallocation to top-performing tactics
Clear framework to justify upper-funnel spend with measurable outcomes going forward