Tennis Events: How to Promote Tournaments and Socials

As a marketing consultants and tennis professionals, we often get asked "How do I get more people to come to my tennis events."

Whether you plan on organizing tennis tournament, social, play day or festival, planning and promoting are two crucial steps to getting more attendees to your event. Here are few tips on how to maximize your exposure and build a good crowd for your tennis event.

1. Start promoting to your current clients during lessons and current events

It is a good idea to use your current lessons and events to promote your next events. You can use 2-3 minutes (no more, unless you want your students to get frustrated for taking their lesson time) of your lesson time to make an announcement to your current students about your new events coming up. Let them know about next sessions, registration deadlines, current promotions, and how to sign up.

2. Find out where your potential customers (attendees) hang out and where they look for information

If you are trying to get more new faces to your events, promoting only at your tennis facility would likely not work for you. Instead, think of community events such as school events, volunteer events and fairs, where you can promote your own gig. Choose those that are appropriate and that do not create conflicts with competitors. And make sure you bring flyers, business cards and registration forms with you!

3. Promote online

Social media is one easy way to promote your event online - you can do that on both your business page and personal profile. Twitter, Facebook and Instagram are great platforms to show people how much fun your event is by posting pictures and videos. You can also create events on websites such as Eventbrite or other industry- or community-relevant websites and public calendars.

4. Use email

Use your email marketing tools, such as MailChimp, Constant Contact, or Hubspot (affiliate link) to announce your events 6-8 weeks in advance, then send another email reminder 1-2 weeks in advance, as well as one on the day before the event. Make sure you only send mass emails to people who have given you a permission to do so (otherwise you would be sending spam). Encourage your email subscribers to share your newsletters with their friends and family.

5. Create an online registration on your website

Using an electronic registration for your event is the easiest way to sign up for most people these days. It also allows you to capture helpful information on any new or current participants that you can use to communicate with them before and after the event, and to create more targeted marketing campaigns in the future. If you do not have a website and you wish to create one, please check out this helpful blog post. If you need help with creating one, please do not hesitate to contact us.

6. Offer incentives for early registrations

Determine what is the minimum number of participants you would like to have at your event and offer an incentive (food, drink, discounts or other giveaways) for those who register first. This will give you an idea of the size of the crowd and how much help you might need, as well as give you an idea ahead of time if you might need to cancel or reschedule due to low participation.

Have other ideas? We would love to hear them, so please share them below!