Nedbank Gravel Burn
Content strategy, production & reporting across Instagram and YouTube.
01 — Performance
Metrics Dashboard.
Each platform has its own period switcher — Recent Month auto-shows the latest month vs. the one before; Compare Months lets you pick any two from the dropdowns. Live-linked to Google Sheets.
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Metrics Dashboard.
Each platform has its own period switcher — Recent Month auto-shows the latest month vs. the one before; Compare Months lets you pick any two from the dropdowns. Live-linked to Google Sheets.
Followers
Views
Interactions
Top Content
Audience
The YouTube audience is significantly older and more female than the @gravel_burn Instagram audience — 42.5% are 55+, and nearly 4 in 10 viewers are women.
For a cycling property, a 39.2% female YouTube audience is well above the category norm. The story-length format is reaching an audience the race itself doesn't yet.
02 — Scope
Services.
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Services.
- Content Strategy & Creation
- Community Management
- Monthly Reporting
- Campaign, Sales Focused
03 — Strategy
Off-Event Content Strategy.
Everything posted between now and race week, built to drive entries — phased across the five months from 1 June to the start line.
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Off-Event Content Strategy.
Everything posted between now and race week, built to drive entries — phased across the five months from 1 June to the start line.
What the off-event programme is for
Every post we publish before race week is doing a job. Three jobs, in fact — in this order of priority. The further down the calendar we go, the harder everything tilts toward the first one: entries on the start line.
Drive entries
The number that matters. Every phase ladders toward it — moving people from "aware of it" to "entered". The strongest, most direct conversion pressure lands in the final months, but the groundwork that makes that push convert starts on day one.
Build awareness
Grow reach and reputation so the pool of people who could enter keeps widening — positioning Gravel Burn as the gravel event to do in Africa. Awareness today is the audience we convert later.
Serve the sponsors
Post and amplify sponsor-agreed content to deliver the contracted brand exposure for Nedbank and partners — woven into the storytelling so it earns attention rather than interrupting it. Runs underneath all five phases.
Five months, five phases
01
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Entries are already open — so June is about re-lighting the channel after the 2025 event, reminding the audience that 2026 is locked in, and getting Gravel Burn back in front of every gravel rider who should know about it. This phase isn't about hard-selling — it's about rebuilding reach and reminding people the window is open, so the conversion phases later have a warm audience to push.
Entries are open on block (tiered) pricing. The lever now is the current tier: remind people they're on the cheapest price available and set the expectation early — enter now, it only gets more expensive from here.
- 2026 date reminder — "it's on, and entries are open" momentum post
- 2025 highlight recut — the hero proof piece for what this event actually is
- "What is Gravel Burn" explainer for newcomers
- Karoo region tease — landscape, scale, the adventure promise
- Current-price reminder + story sequence with the entry link
- Behind-the-scenes "building 2026" to signal momentum
- Reach / video-views campaign on the highlight film to cold cycling audiences (SA + key international markets)
- Goal: build the warm audience — video viewers & profile visitors — to retarget in later phases
- Boost the entries-open post to extend it beyond existing followers
02
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Make people want it. Shift from "I know about it" to "I want to be there" — the camp, the sunrise starts, the Karoo, the camaraderie, the finish-line feeling. This is the desire phase: sell the adventure, not the logistics.
First early-bird deadline / price increase #1 — the first real urgency lever. Launch a refer-a-mate incentive to turn early entrants into promoters (referral programmes can lift registrations meaningfully).
- Rider-experience reels — camp life, sunrise starts, finish-line emotion
- 2025 participant testimonials & user-generated content
- "A day at Gravel Burn" first-person POV
- Founder / ambassador voice on why the event exists
- Price-increase countdown posts + stories
- Traffic → landing-page-views ads to the warm audience (video viewers + engagers from P1) pointing at the entry page
- Testimonial & experience creative as the workhorse ad set
- Promote the referral programme to existing entrants
03
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Answer the two questions standing between desire and entry: "Can I actually do this?" and "What do I get for my money?" Reveal the route stage by stage and lay out everything that de-risks the decision.
Each stage reveal is a conversion trigger in its own right. Price increase #2 adds urgency, and a clear "what's included" value frame (camp, meals, transfers, medical, content) justifies the spend.
- Stage-by-stage route reveals — using the animated fly-throughs
- Elevation & terrain breakdowns — the honest challenge
- "What's included" carousel — the full value picture
- Camp / accommodation tour
- Gear, prep & training tips; logistics FAQ
- Retargeting (Meta Pixel site visitors + video viewers) with route & "what's included" creative
- Lookalike audience off confirmed entrants to find more riders like them
- Geo + interest targeting to cycling / endurance segments
04
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Social proof and aspiration. Show that the event has momentum — who's already in, which ambassadors are riding, and the first pro confirmations. This is where the "who's coming" arc begins and the field starts to feel like something you want to be part of.
"Join them" social proof — entry-milestone posts ("X riders in, from Y countries"), price increase #3 / final tier approaching, and targeted pushes on the women's field and specific categories.
- Ambassador & first pro announcements — the start of the "who's coming" story
- Entrant spotlights — real riders, real reasons
- Field-milestone graphics — numbers in, countries represented
- Category content — women's field, age groups, teams
- Training-block content (Runna tie-in)
- Conversion-objective ads to warm + lookalike audiences
- Retarget started-but-not-completed entries
- Ambassador-led creative; dedicated women's-field campaign
05
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Convert the fence-sitters. The contenders are confirmed — so the start list becomes the final draw card. Cycling sees a heavy share of last-minute entries, so this is the phase that does the closing: hard urgency, the names on the line, then a clean hand-over into live event coverage.
Entries-closing deadline — the hardest urgency lever of the whole run. Final price, a "last chance to line up against [the contenders]" hook, and a daily countdown into the close.
- Contenders-confirmed reels — Matt Beers / Specialized, the women's contenders
- "The start list" hype — the field as the headline
- Last-chance / entries-closing countdown sequence
- Final logistics for confirmed entrants
- Tease into the Preview Show — bridge to event coverage
- Aggressive retargeting to all warm audiences — the final week is where retargeting delivers the best return
- Contender-led + countdown "entries closing" creative
- High frequency on high-intent segments (started entry, repeat site visitors)
What's scheduled.
Scheduled and in-progress social posts — Instagram, Facebook, YouTube. Live from ClickUp.
What's in production.
Video content workflow — shoot to published. Live from ClickUp.