Let’s begin this month’s column with an idea from USPTA and USPTR professional Barbara Maitland. Since she is based in Massachusetts and conducts much of her programming indoors due to less-than-ideal weather, she has to use available court time quite creatively at different times. During prime playing time, courts are just not always available. Her idea is that for players who do not require a full court for a private lesson, she simply splits the court in half. This effectively doubles both the court availability and court usage. For beginning or intermediate juniors or beginning and most intermediate adults, it actually works out perfectly.
The court fee charges can even be adjusted if desired for these situations.
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Now let’s move to several good ideas to bring new tennis lessons to a facility. It comes from a seminar on tennis programming by Larry Karageanes.
1. Work out an agreement with a local retail sporting goods store that for every racquet they sell, the customer gets a free tennis lesson. You might make an arrangement where the store compensates a facility $10 to you for each lesson that you give, but even at that low revenue level isn’t it worth it to bring in new players to a facility? And, from the retailers standpoint, what better way to sell more racquets? Especially in cities where there are many tennis pros not connected to a pro shop, retailers may want to adopt a pro and, in the process, everyone comes out a winner - the retailer, the pro, and the customer!
2. Everyone dealing with customers must evaluate how much a new client or customer is actually worth. This helps us to clearly understand how much service and energy this person warrants in terms of both a good first impression and on-going service. A new player, in their first six months as a customer, may take a lesson, buy an outfit, a racquet, shoes, strings, etc. After making this evaluation, it becomes easy to justify the little amount of effort it takes to go the extra mile to gain and keep a customer.
3. Larry also suggested that if you are located in an area where you have a year-round program and yet in the summer have competing camps, consider not competing with them but rather encouraging your players to go over to their one-week summer camp. It will be a change for your players and you can probably work out some sort of commission based on their participation. And, if you’re a retailer, how about making one of these camps your promotional partner? Again, with a little common-sense marketing, everyone can come out a winner.
4. The final point related to leveraging time and effort to benefit a club or public facility program is to capitalize on local events, even including golf tournaments. Try working with the organizers to promote tennis clinics or round-robin tournaments in conjunction with their non-tennis event. The overall organizers will be pleased to offer more entertainment opportunities for their participants, the participants themselves will obviously benefit, and it will bring more revenue and activity to your own facility.
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Now, on marketing tennis to juniors, here are some tips from one of the country’s most successful club owners, Lenny Schloss from Baltimore, Maryland.
1. Market tennis as the Ideal First Sport since tennis is the ideal sport for developing eye-hand-foot coordination for all other sports.
2. And, as far as marketing to both adults and juniors is concerned, Lenny breaks down his programs into five levels. Each level is identified with a certain number of balls which participants will presumably hit during the lesson program. As closely as I can calculate, the assumption is that each player will hit 3-400 balls per hour in their group lessons. Level One is called the 5,000 Ball Academy. In this level the program and hours are arranged so that participants will end up hitting at least 5,000 balls upon completion of the program. Level Two is the 10,000 Ball Academy. Level Three is the 15,000 Ball Academy. Level Four is the 20,000 Ball Academy. And, Level Five is the 25,000 Ball Academy. Lenny further guarantees participants at each level certain levels of competency, enjoyment, and fitness. For example, at Level Three, players can expect accuracy within 10-20 feet of their targets and the ability to control shots and make adjustments hitting up to 40 miles per hour. Additionally, his promotional material compares the fitness benefits of each level to familiar exercise programs. For example, at Level Three, the weekly exercise received is compared to jogging briskly 8 miles per week, a high impact 45-minute aerobics class three times per week, or a three times weekly 45-minute stationary bike workout. With so much emphasis on health and fitness, Lenny has intelligently tapped into the mindset of his audience and encourages them to see tennis as an enjoyable alternative to what many people perceive as the drudgery of jogging or aerobics classes.
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Now let’s cover some tips from Tennis Marketing Consultant Carlos Salum:
1. Increase the variety of your services. Carlos specifically recommends working the full range of 4 year olds through seniors. Customizing programs to these groups can often set your program apart from your competition.
2. He also suggested promoting tennis as a "progress pipeline," where students are clearly guided through a steady progression to higher and higher levels of play. This reinforces the ideas propounded by Lenny Schloss earlier in this article.
3. He also added that if you work with a group of teachers, have each of them develop a specialty and promote that individual according to that specialty. For example, historically-speaking, the pros with weaker games (and often less experience) have all-too-often been assigned to work with the beginning players. However, this is the opposite of what should take place. In an ideal world, the most experienced teacher should work with the players who are most critical to the growth of the individual facility and the sport as a whole - the beginners!
4. Carlos also recommends packaging programs to contain a certain amount of group instruction, a certain amount of private instruction and a certain amount of supervised play. An example could be a 30-minute private lesson, a 90-minute group lesson, and a 2-hour social tournament. With eight players charged a nominal fee, this can be a lucrative program to add for everyone involved. Great value for the players and incentives for the pros to work with groups. After all, when more group lessons are taught, the overall activity level of a facility can really soar.
5. Regarding how to generate more interest, he suggests printing business cards with a message on the back offering a free 30-minute lesson. He recommends giving each student five of these cards and asking them to hand them out to five of their friends. Now, that’s an example of aggressive marketing.
6. Provide a study room for juniors after practice to do their homework. What a great idea to win serious support from the parents of these juniors who are supporting your programming.
7. Regarding using empty court time at facilities which sell court time, his advice was simple: Don’t have any. Do what it takes to fill empty time even if it means giving it away for free. According to Carlos, the benefit of having extra traffic and activity at a facility totally outweighs the initial anxiety attached to giving away court time free of charge.