6 Tips for an Effective Tennis Club Marketing on Social Media

It is a no-brainer that investing in social media marketing can help your tennis club to secure more clients, increase your sales, and help with brand awareness. However, many businesses are not sure whether it is needed or what the right channel for their tennis club marketing is.

It is true that if, for example,  you are targeting an older demographic of the market, posting on social media channels such as Instagram might be a waste of time. But for most tennis businesses, having a social media presence (if done right) can build brand awareness, increase exposure, and build credibility. 

Limited budget and resources are typically the main obstacles in reaching the full social media marketing potential. Therefore, we have created a list of tips that will help you build an influential social media audience, engagement and get new followers. Let’s start! 

#1 Try Facebook creative ads testing

With over 2,815 billion user’s platforms, your tennis club can grab the attention of many tennis players and users interested in tennis - you can generate leads and get more visitors to your website. You can also use Facebook as a precise testing platform by dividing your target audience into groups and creating almost identical ads in one ad set (except for the variable you want to test). This is called Facebook split testing. The variables you can test for can be anything – headline, copy, image used, or call-to-action (CTA). 

Comparing ads and ad sets gives an exact picture of successful ads. By testing multiple iterations of the same ad (e.g. different ad creative, targeting point) tennis clubs can improve results, learn more about your audience, and finalize the most performing ad creatives to invest money in. 

#2 Unlock Instagram power  

Instagram can be a powerful social media platform for many businesses, including tennis clubs. However, there are many people on Instagram, and many businesses, posting about million things. New profiles are growing like weeds. Because average content and pictures do not have a chance to get through the clutter you must find a way to stand out. 

So, how do you do that? 

• Raise the bar by having a unique point of view and tell a story – this is what will give a reason to your followers to keep coming back. 
• Post high-quality content regularly – inconsistent practice is not only bad for your tennis but also your marketing! 
• Define your goal – is it building brand awareness or increasing sales…those are all fine goals to have. But you must know your goal to create a strategy and see if it is working. For example, if you are looking to increase brand awareness, then what you monitor is whether your website visitors are increasing over a period of time.  
• Hashtags are a key to how your target audience will find you – find relevant hashtags that people in your industry use (e.g. your competitors, influencers) and use them in your posts.
• Collaborate with other tennis coaches, tennis clubs, relevant businesses, and pro players – for example, give your expert opinion on relevant threads (without trying to sell your products and services). Be sure to also comment on your own content when others engage with it.    

#3 Become a storyteller

Storytelling allows marketers like you to develop a deeper connection with your clients and followers because they stimulate people’s imagination and emotions. Storytelling is an art, and just like any other art, it requires creativity, practice, and trial-and-error. 

Sounds complicated and a lot of work? It is and it should be because it is what separates strong brands with a loyal following from one-time purchase type of businesses (where people never come back to ever again).    

Good stories can be entertaining, educational, or memorable. Whether it is through inspiration or humor, good storytelling sticks in people’s minds. 

For example, a story can be about a friend caring for another friend, or a parent caring for their son or daughter. Think about how your brand fits into that story and how to show that with your content. 

Here are a few tips for preparing your storytelling content:

Use candid photographs or edited visuals (avoid stock photography and useful tools like Canva to create custom images.

• Keep images consistent in terms of fonts, colors, and styles 
• Use short videos (attention spans are evolving and people have become more selective about what content to spend time on and keep watching) 
• Highlight customer success stories on your tennis club social media 
• Post tennis club news and events coverage 

#4 Create engagement strategies

People look for interactions on social media and have conversations with their friends online. Without engagement, social media would not be social – it would be just a one-way talk. They expect to engage in conversations and build relationships, which is why it is important to think about engagement strategies. 

What is an “engagement” when it comes to tennis club social media marketing?

Engagement on social media can be any of the following: likes, comments, replies, shares, saves, clicks or mentions. You want to measure engagement to see whether the content you are posting is resonating with your target audience.  

Here is how you can improve your social media engagement strategy: 

• Keep the conversation flowing by asking relevant questions and commenting on other stories 
• Share valuable tips and tricks
• Post relevant news from your industry 
• Adding value with your posts on your follower’s social media feed
• Create a content calendar with a fixed posting time.
• Cross-post the same content on multiple social media platforms - e.g. the same video on Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook (adjust caption and hashtags for each) 

#5 Discover all social media channels

Social media is more than Facebook, Instagram, Youtube, and Twitter. There are many more platforms with targeted audiences to discover. A few smaller ones include - discord, twitch, TikTok, Pinterest. 

Technically, you can develop and work on your tennis club profiles on any of these social media platforms. That does not mean you should have a profile on all of them (especially if you barely have time to keep posting on one). But it is important to evaluate all your options because the major chunk of your precisely targeted audience may be chatting on a platform you did not expect or know about.

#6 Have a consistent message across all your marketing channels

Tennis clubs can work on multiple marketing channels to promote their tennis lessons and events. Keeping your brand message clear and consistent will help people remember your business and avoid confusion among your customers and potential customers. These include – tone and voice, colors, logo, images, fonts, copy, and frequency. That’s correct - you must be consistent in terms of schedule too. For example, if you use YouTube videos to promote your brand, it is best if your audience can expect when the new one will come out. 

When you are communicating on different social media you must maintain your look, tone, and personality. Here is an example – if your tone is fun and friendly on Twitter, it should also be the same on LinkedIn or Facebook. Although LinkedIn is a professional network and is typically less casual, you should not sound like a totally different person. Think of it as being “at home” versus “ at work” – your personality is the same, you just adjust your manners. The same goes for your tennis business brand. 

Most large companies create detailed brand guides for their organizations to ensure all their messaging is consistent and on-point. For example, take a look at Zoom's brand guide - https://zoom.us/brandguidelines.  

Now, this may look overwhelming and elaborate, but you do not have to do this type of complicated brand guide. Even putting a page with several bullet points as a brand guide can be a start to build a consistent message. 

Creating content does not need to be a complicated difficult process but it does need to be consistent in terms of messaging and scheduling, so make it a habit or a daily task that is part of your tennis club marketing.      

Tennis clubs marketing on social media – remember the big picture 

Developing a social media marketing strategy, as part of your tennis club marketing, requires you to look at the big picture. Forget about scheduling posts and focus on high-level thinking – think about what your business goals are and how social media help you achieve those. 

From there on, tennis club marketing on social media is an ongoing task - finding the correct channels, planning, creating compelling content, listening, engaging, testing, and analyzing the results.   

Do you have any other social media marketing tips that you think should be added to this list? Let us know in the comments below!