Case Study: How Squawka Leveraged Stories to Drive Engagement and Conversions

Squawka, a trusted football betting and news platform in the UK, sought to enhance user engagement and conversions by adopting a new content format—SportsInnovation’s Stories tool. With football fans and betting enthusiasts being the primary target audience, Squawka needed an innovative way to engage their users as well as a means of getting more of their resources.

Objective:

Squawka aimed to introduce a fun, engaging, and interactive format that would appeal to their audience’s changing content consumption habits. In the fast-paced world of sports news, where attention spans are shrinking, especially among younger readers, Stories offered the ideal solution. The goal was clear: boost engagement and drive clicks while providing users with a modern, social-media-inspired content format.

Squawka - home page with Stories from SportsInnovation

Solution:

One of the key challenges was adapting the Stories tool to match Squawka’s distinct brand identity. The platform's website already had a strong design with specific fonts, colours, and branding elements, and they needed the Stories to seamlessly integrate with that design. This included adding custom background colours, CTA buttons, and embedding tracking links to their betting partners.

However, the process was smooth and highly collaborative. Regular two-way communication between Squawka’s team and Sports Innovation ensured that the tool was perfectly tailored to the client's requirements. The customization allowed Squawka to maintain its brand’s unique look while benefiting from the power of the Stories tool.

Implementation:

Once the customization was complete, Squawka started to leverage Stories to engage their audience in multiple ways:

• Featured Articles: Highlighting their best content with enticing visuals and hooks to drive traffic to the featured articles

• Partner Offers: Displaying the latest sign-up offers from trusted betting partners in a new way

• Expert Tips: Using real-time match data feed and generative AI, Squawka’s team has a way of providing their readers with simple match analysis and betting predictions in a snackable format

• Interactive Polls: Engaging users by asking them to predict match outcomes, fostering a sense of community and interaction

• Video Trailers: Promoting in-house football discussion videos produced in their studio, giving fans a preview of the content

The Stories tool’s ability to automate the display of live match data, odds, and predictions ensured that the content was timely and relevant.

Squawka Story design examples

Impact:

In just 30 days of using the Stories tool, Squawka saw impressive results. The tool generated 3,896 impressions and 309 clicks, demonstrating its potential to engage the audience and drive traffic. But beyond the raw numbers, the Stories format sets Squawka apart from its competitors. As users, particularly younger fans and bettors, increasingly prefer visually rich, short-form content, Stories proved to be an ideal way to meet their evolving preferences.

This new content format not only created more interactive opportunities for fans but also helped Squawka increase click-through rates to their partners, articles, and social media channels, including YouTube. As a result, the Stories tool has become an essential part of their content strategy, providing tangible benefits in user engagement, conversions, and long-term retention.

Google Analytics: Dec 12, 2024-Jan 12, 2025

Conclusion:

Squawka’s success with the Stories tool highlights the growing importance of interactive, engaging content formats in the sports and betting industries. The innovative approach not only improved engagement but also allowed Squawka to stay ahead of the curve in a competitive market. As content consumption continues to evolve, the Stories tool offers a powerful solution to meet the needs of today’s audiences.