Growing your tennis programs not only means keeping existing clients happy, but it also means finding a source for new ones. If you are having trouble getting new students, especially the youngers ones, try demo days at schools. Demo days are great ways to get the kids to love tennis and an even a better way to get leads. Here’s how it works:
Pick a school, preferably a school that’s close to your tennis courts. Speak with the principal about either using the school’s gym or their tennis courts for your demo. Schedule a day where kids can have a free tennis workshop ( try to get the parents to come). Try to get a good estimate of numbers so you know how much staff you’ll need. Try to do demo days once every two weeks or once a month. It may take more than one time to get parents to sign up their kids for your programs.
Come to the demo day very prepared with your teaching plan, games, and prizes. Oh yes, you gotta have prizes such as stickers, toys, vibration dampeners, T-shirts, even a little racquet as a contest winning prize. The goal of the demo is to get kids to fall in love with tennis. So as you design your drills, make sure that they are easy, memorable, and fun. Give the drills fun and catchy names so the kids can remember.
At the end of the super fun demo, pass out flyers of your programs with some kind of discount for the students of that school. The flyer can say something like : the fun doesn’t stop here. Keep it going in our super fun after-school/summer tennis camps. Even if you get only 5 kids to come, that’s almost a full court for afterschool programs, making your demo day worth it. And activities like these generate good word of mouth for your programs.
Go ahead, try demo days and see how it works for you. If you need any help designing them, be sure to contact me at lille@trackmytennis.com