If you want to promote your tennis club in today’s competitive environment, you’ll need as many tactics and strategies as you can get your hands on. You’ll want to get your name out there, show off your facilities and make sure everyone in your community knows your tennis club’s name.
To do that, you’ll need to go back to basics. You’ll want to run some special offers. And you’ll need to embrace both online and offline marketing strategies to promote your tennis business.
We’ve put together 9 must-try strategies to help you market your tennis club, attracting more members (and keeping those existing ones).
Here’s what we’ll cover below:
- Understanding your audience
- Building your brand presence
- Updating your website
- Creating a marketing plan
- Using social media
- Doing community outreach
- Hosting an ‘open day’
- Running events and tournaments
- Using email marketing tools
Boost Tennis Club Membership with These Marketing Tips
From getting comfortable on social media to hosting open days, these 9 strategies will help you cultivate a thriving tennis community.
Let’s begin…
1. Understand your audience
The first step in promoting your tennis club is to identify your target audience. Are they young professionals, families, or retirees?
When you’ve identified your audience’s demographics and preferences, you’ll find it much easier to tailor your marketing efforts. If you want to attract more young people, then you’ll want a big presence on social media platforms (see step 5).
But if your tennis club is close to a retirement community, you’ll want to focus on more traditional offline marketing strategies – like community engagement or direct mail (see step 6).
Now, that’s not to say you should totally ignore social media for the older generations. Did you know 43% of adults 50+ report using social media daily, says AARP*.
2. Build a strong brand presence
If you haven’t done so already, now is the time to focus on building out the brand of your tennis club. You’ll need to make sure your club’s visual brand – your logo, colors, and typography – all appeal to your target audience.
And you should spend time on your verbal brand too – your tone of voice, your value proposition and your key messages. Think about what sets you apart, what makes you stand out, and why your members love coming to play tennis at your club.
3. Make sure your website is up to date
A professional website is indispensable for any business today. Yours should be user-friendly, mobile-responsive, and easy to navigate.
It should be super simple for potential new members to find out all about your club’s facilities and schedules, membership plans and contact details.
And, you should be giving those new prospects the chance to book a trial day directly, and even sign up online. That way, there are no barriers to joining (like waiting to speak to a member of your team).
A club management platform like CourtReserve can help you do just that.
4. Create a marketing schedule
Having a clear schedule in place will help make sure you and your team stick to the marketing plan.
Map out all the ways you could promote your tennis club, all the special offers you could run, and put them into a marketing calendar.
Each week, you’ll know what you should be posting online, and each month you’ll have a new focus for your marketing efforts.
5. Get social
Every social media platform is a powerful tool for engagement and promotion in its own right, so make sure you have a presence on them – particularly Facebook, Instagram and even TikTok. Be sure to set up a Google My Business page (which can often get overlooked) so you’re featured in local search results.
Post engaging content – including images and videos – as often as you can. You could share success stories of players, feature testimonials from members, and promote a different facility at your tennis club every week.
You might also want to look at paid social media advertising, with Facebook and Instagram ads, to help you reach an even wider audience. We share 5 tips for marketing tennis clubs with social media here.
6. Reach out to the community
Collaborating with businesses and organizations who share a similar target audience or operate in the same area is always a great strategy to try. Why not partner with local sports shops, fitness centers, schools, and healthcare providers to support each other and increase cross-promotion?
Or, look for events and opportunities in your local area that you could sponsor, perhaps a charity run or an annual fair?
And if you really want to boost community engagement, focus your marketing efforts on distributing flyers, opening pop-up stands at local events or any other way that gets you and your team interacting with those in your area who could be future members.
7. Host your own open day
An open day is a great tool for community engagement, and a great way to promote your tennis club. Offer free lessons, free taster sessions, and free court time to encourage prospects to come down and try out all your facilities for themselves.
You could also message all your existing members – using club management software like CourtReserve – to suggest they bring down their friends and family to your open day. Word-of-mouth marketing is a valuable marketing strategy for your tennis club.
Perhaps you could even implement a referral program?
8. Host special events and tournaments
If you want to attract new members and players to your tennis club, then organize special events like skills-based tournaments, themed matches or a new local league.
CourtReserve can help you with all the admin, and you’ll attract those already interested in the sport who’ll value the opportunity to play on new courts at a new club. It gives you a great chance to potentially convert guests into new members.
Find more tips to attract new members to your tennis club here.
9. Embrace email marketing
One final marketing strategy to try that could help promote your tennis club is email marketing. Get it right, and it’s a really effective way to keep your club front of mind, to keep members engaged, and to keep prospects intrigued by what you have to offer.
You should be capturing email addresses at every opportunity – through community engagement, open days, and guest tournaments – so that you can build a list of current and potential members.
Then you can send out regular newsletters, share exclusive offers and promotions, and much more.
Pro Tip: CourtReserve can help you capture and store member and prospect information, and make sure you use that data to full advantage to promote your tennis club.
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