The Memorial Tournament Puts 100,000+ Fans in Dublin. Two Venues Decided Not to Wait for Walk-Ins.

The Situation

The Memorial Tournament is a PGA Tour event with 50+ years of history at Muirfield Village Golf Club in Dublin, Ohio. Tournament week draws over 100,000 fans — a significant share of them staying in Dublin, eating and drinking locally, and making venue decisions on the fly.

Apothecary Bourbon & Cigar Lounge and Uncorked Wine Tastings sit next door to each other at 30 and 32 S. High Street, directly in the corridor where those decisions get made. But proximity to the tournament crowd isn’t the same as reaching it. Without active outreach, both venues would compete for organic walk-in traffic during the highest-stakes hospitality week of the local year.

My Pub Marketing built a structured four-phase campaign to reach that audience before they arrived — so the venues were already familiar by the time the crowds landed.

The Campaign Structure

Four ad set phases, each with a distinct objective and audience logic. One unified landing page serving both venues — running two campaigns against the same local audience in the same Meta auction would have driven up costs for both.

The Warm-Up phase ran first and longest — building awareness and, critically, an engager custom audience that fed the Retargeting phase. The Peak Conversion phase ran a separate Reach objective during tournament days to maximize brand saturation across the local area.

Campaign Performance

The $0.71 figure reflects only the three lead-generation phases. Blended across all spend including the Reach phase, it was $1.15 — the lead-gen phases are the more accurate measure of campaign efficiency.

The Creative

Two primary creatives ran across the campaign.

The Warm-Up scroll-stopper — the lifestyle shot. A photo outside the Apothecary sign. Copy: “Still in Dublin? One more evening…” CTA: “Visit one. Linger for both.” This was the campaign’s highest-volume creative — driving 723 landing page views and 56% of total lead volume in the Warm-Up phase. It worked because it caught the audience at the moment of decision: still in Dublin, still weighing where to go.

The tournament carousel. “Fifty years of The Memorial calls…” / “Your 19th Hole Starts Here.” Golf-themed, both venue logos, address. Strong as a brand awareness asset during peak tournament week; the lifestyle shot drove more direct lead volume.

Why the Retargeting Phase Returned $0.43

The Retargeting phase reached a custom audience built from everyone who engaged with the Warm-Up creative: clicks, profile visits, video views. By the time tournament week arrived, those 8,361 accounts already knew the venues. Retargeting didn’t need to introduce anything — it showed up at the right moment to the right people.

Despite competing in the same Meta auction as the Peak Conversion Reach phase (which carried a $170/day budget versus Retargeting’s $40/day), the Retargeting phase still held $0.43 per lead at 5.82% CTR. Separated from the Reach phase in future flights, that number improves further.

Results on the Ground

Apothecary Bourbon & Cigar Lounge was packed — full inside, full patio — through all four tournament days. The campaign had placed the brand in front of 120,000+ local accounts over four weeks. By tournament week, the awareness was already built. The foot traffic was the return on it.

Uncorked Wine Tastings saw a different profile: first-time, out-of-town guests who discovered the venue through the campaign during tournament week. Spend per customer was higher than a typical Saturday — a reflection of the visitor demographic the campaign reached: guests staying in Dublin, exploring locally, and spending more freely.

What to Fix Next Time

Introduce a creative refresh at frequency 1.5–1.75. The Warm-Up hit 2.04 frequency over 10 days, meaning the average viewer saw the same creative twice before Practice Week launched. The CTR drop from Warm-Up (2.47%) to Practice Week (2.12%) reflects a fatigued audience. For any flight longer than 7 days: swap a headline or image before frequency crosses 1.75.

Stagger the Reach and Retargeting phases. Running both in the same auction window let the heavier Reach budget suppress Retargeting delivery. End the Reach phase one day before Retargeting launches, or exclude the retargeting custom audience from the Reach ad set. Either change recovers meaningful Retargeting volume at no additional spend.

Disable Advantage+ audience expansion on Reach objectives. The Peak Conversion phase reached 177% of the estimated audience size — a strong signal that Meta expanded delivery well beyond the defined geographic and interest parameters. Explicit expansion disable keeps hyperlocal campaigns local.

What I Built

• Four-phase Meta campaign architecture
• Unified landing page for both venues
• Warm-Up engager custom audience
• Retargeting ad set sequenced to tournament week
• Peak Conversion Reach phase for brand saturation
• Post-campaign performance analysis and future-flight recommendations

Related: Uncorked Wine Tastings — Full Digital Operations Case Study

If your venue is adjacent to a recurring event and you’re running paid social around it, this is the kind of work I do. Run the free 5-minute Digital Leak Check to find out where your current setup has gaps — or learn about how the digital operations model works.