Any sports tournament is difficult to host, but promoting it is another ball game altogether. You need the right mix of strategies that ensure your tournament is packed with guests. This blog will outline some fundamental promotional strategies you must work on to promote a Lacrosse tournament.
Promoting a Lacrosse tournament, like any other tournament, isn’t a walk in the park. There’s always this looming fear — what if no one shows up to the tournament? In that case, you’ll incur a loss because you’re counting on people to buy the tickets to pay your dues for hosting the tournament. The main question is, how can you make your Lacrosse tournament the go-to place for sports fanatics and team fans? Here are some strategies to get you started.
Table of Contents
Come Up With A Catchy Event Name
First things first, before you start with any promotion, think of a catchy event name. If you choose something bland like “Lacrosse tournament 2022,” it’s not going to spark interest in your audience. Although it’s clear, direct, and conveys the message unambiguously, it’s not enticing enough to get people to buy tickets.
Remember, the first impression is the last one too. You’ve lost half the battle if you fail to captivate your audience with a catchy name, logo, or poster. We recommend crafting your own lacrosse posters with PosterMyWall, an online graphic design tool that eliminates the need to hire a graphic designer for all your graphic design needs. Select the right lacrosse poster template and edit it online with a few simple clicks!
Channel The Power Of Social Media
In this day and age, social media is perhaps the most potent marketing tool available. It’s much more affordable than traditional marketing ways and has a larger outreach too. However, the first step for social media marketing is to analyze which platforms you need to promote on. This depends on where your target audience is hanging out. We recommend Facebook and Instagram, as they’re the most widely used social media platforms today.
While Facebook is best for increasing your general outreach, Instagram marketing is more visually-driven, so you’ll have to tailor your marketing to each platform, respectively. The common denominator is you need to build organic traction on your Facebook and Instagram channels. The way you achieve that will be different.
On Instagram, you can post pictures of the venue where the tournament will take place. You can also post photos of each team or a chart illustrating which team is scheduled to play against which time on which day. Make sure you’re posting Instagram stories to increase engagement.
Another thing to keep in mind is to not write long walls of texts in your posts. That’ll only drive people away. Instead, include images, pictures, short captions, and brief videos. And if you really want to write, save the prose for your website blog and post the article’s link to your social media post.
Run Paid Ads
If you started your marketing late and fear that no one will show up to your lacrosse tournament, it’s time to dial up the speed and accelerate your promotion. Social media lets you run targeted ads to a highly specific target audience most likely to convert into customers. How? It keeps a record of its users’ search interests, so it knows which users are interested in lacrosse. With this key information, a social media platform shows ads to only those users because they’re most likely to convert.
Of course, running such highly targeted ads costs money, but it’s quite affordable when you compare it to conventional marketing channels like running an ad on TV or in a newspaper. When selecting your target audience for paid ads, make sure the people you target live relatively near the tournament venue. For instance, if the tournament takes place somewhere in Atlantic City, NJ, most of the audience who shows up will be near that place. Therefore, choose people who live in New Jersey or even in New York if your tournament is going to be something big.
Pair Up With Influencers
One of the best ways to promote your lacrosse tournament is to pair up with relevant social media influencers. Influencers are renowned people with a significant following. So, if you manage to make a good impression on an influencer and convince them to promote your tournament, the chances of your tournament turning into a grand success increase multiple folds.
However, choosing the right influencer can be tricky. You need to do plenty of research and pick one whom you know will be excited about the tournament and can get their fans stirred up about it too! This can take some time, but that’s okay — making the right decision is worth the extra time. However, make sure you’re planning well ahead of the tournament date so you don’t end up pairing up with the wrong influencer.
Ticket Discounts Are Sure To Increase Your Sales
Ticket discounts will surely increase your tournament ticket sales. Why? Because doing this helps you get the attention of people who would want to come to the tournament but don’t want to pay the extra $20 or $50. In other words, they would definitely show up if you slashed your ticket price by some amount!
Be careful when giving discounts, though. Don’t offer them right at the beginning. You want to maximize your profits, selling to people who don’t mind paying the original price of the ticket. Once the first round of sales comes to a close, only then should you impose a discount to target the next bracket of people.
Some Parting Thoughts
There’s no one-size-fits-all approach to promoting a lacrosse tournament. It largely depends on your budget and the size of the event. If it’s a big event of national importance, you’ll have sponsors to give you all the marketing budget you need to promote your event. But if it’s a small event, you’ll need to rely on social media and build organic traction to promote it.