Putting Limassol on the International Running Map

The Challenge

The XM Limassol Marathon had a strong local following. The ambition was bigger. The brief was to grow the event's international profile and attract runners from key European markets, within a fixed budget and a defined campaign window. Every channel decision and spend allocation had to earn its place from day one.

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What We Did

We designed and executed a phased, 9-month multi-channel campaign across Meta, Google, and TikTok. Three things made it work.

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We chose markets with data, not gut feel.
Target countries were selected using historic registration data, incoming flight volumes to Cyprus, and direct flight availability around race dates. We were only spending on audiences who were interested in running and could realistically get there, keeping the path from awareness to registration as short as possible.

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We followed the money as it moved.
Budget wasn't distributed evenly across the campaign. The early bird window built awareness and captured price-sensitive audiences with a strong offer. As the campaign progressed, we tracked performance by market and moved spend toward the countries where registrations were growing. The budget worked harder the closer we got to race day.

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We let the creative data decide.
Videos and reels consistently outperformed static formats across every market. The creatives that converted best combined a clear, time-sensitive offer with an aspirational hook, the race experience, or Cyprus as a destination. Rational and emotional, together. That combination drove the highest engagement and click-through rates across the full campaign.

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Retargeting that converted.
We built a retargeting audience progressively, everyone who had engaged but not registered. By the final weeks, that audience was delivering a 2% CTR. The warm-up period had done its job.

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TikTok for local reach, fast.
TikTok ran as a local awareness channel alongside UGC from creators documenting their training and race-day experience. In a short burst, it delivered over 1.49 million impressions.

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CRM to convert what we already had.
Paid media was supported by a CRM strategy targeting returning registrants. Email campaigns were timed around key campaign moments, no conversion window left unused. Upselling campaigns were tested on already-committed participants to unlock additional value.

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Brand storytelling that ran alongside the numbers.
We developed a 12-video content series documenting the marathon's community initiatives, safety standards, and social impact. This ran alongside the performance campaign, building the brand narrative for the long term while the ads drove registrations in the short term.

Key Results

• 27% increase in international registrations
• 73% of international registrations were new runners, not returning participants
• 10M+ total ad impressions
• 186K+ total ad clicks