4 Ways to Create a Great Offer for your Tennis Coaching Programme or Club
TRANSCRIPT
Welcome to the fourth episode of the podcast and today we’re discussing offers.
What they are, why they matter, and more importantly how to go about designing great offers or even just ONE great offer that will allow you to get more people on-court.
So let’s do this and let’s start by discussing what I mean by “offer”.
As you might imagine, if you look in the dictionary, the word “offer” has plenty of different definitions. But there’s one definition that fits like a glove to the context in which I’m discussing offers which is this: “to present or put forward something for someone to accept or reject as desired”
And that’s exactly how I think about an offer. It’s the idea that I’m creating something to present to people in the hope that they will decide to accept my offer and ultimately sign-up.
Or in other words, I’m talking about what you put in front of potential customers to persuade them to sign-up. To persuade them to spend their money (and their time) with us.
Whether that’s a club membership, a monthly direct debit, a coaching course, a trial of some sort, or anything else that we’d like them to sign-up for.
Now, the key thing here is that the quality of the offer you put forward will impact people’s desire to sign-up for it or not. In other words, if your offer is great then you’ll get more people signing-up. And conversely if your offer is not very good then you’ll get fewer people willing to sign-up.
This is obvious and makes sense.
And it’s why offers matter. If you just offer what everyone else is offering, if your offer is “normal” then you shouldn’t expect to be able to attract that many new players to your coaching programme or club.
And that might be fine if your programme or club is already full. But if you are trying to attract new players then having a great offer will help you achieve this for 2 reasons:
It helps you stand-out in a very competitive market. Make no mistake, our industry is in a very competitive market. We’re not just competing with other tennis coaches and clubs. We’re competing for people’s leisure time. People go to work or school and then have a certain amount of time during the week and the weekend where they can choose what they want to do. They could come to tennis. But they could also go to football, cricket, basketball or rugby to name a few sports. But they could also decide to go to piano or violin lessons. Or stay home and play videogames. The adults might also decide to try another sport or maybe they’ll go out for a meal or down the pub for a drink, go to the movies or decide to just stay home and watch TV. And these are just a few examples. There’s hundreds of other things that both children and adults might decide to do that isn’t tennis. Having a great offer might be the reason why someone decides to give tennis a try, instead of trying something else. And once we get them on-court we have a chance to show them how enjoyable tennis is and hopefully get them to sign-up to the sport for life, so to speak.
It knocks people off the fence. Sometimes people are considering trying tennis or your club/coaching programme, but for whatever reason are hesitating. They’re nearly ready to pull the trigger, but are delaying the decision. They’re sitting on the fence. A great offer will give them that last little nudge to knock them off the fence and encourage them to sign-up now instead of continuing to delay. This might make a big difference especially for people who don’t yet seem themselves as tennis players.
Ok, these are the 2 main reasons why offers are important. To help you stand out amongst the competition and to help knock people off the fence and get them to stop delaying and take the plunge and sign-up.
But before we move onto how we go about designing great offers I want to address one more thing. Which is the idea of timing.
If you design the perfect offer, and you show it to the perfect customer at the WRONG time then the customer will still not buy.
And this is important to bear in mind. People have a lot of reasons why it might not be the right time for them to take advantage of your offer, even if they would like to.
Things like they’re about to have a child, someone in their family is ill, they’ve just changed jobs and are focusing on that, they’re injured, they’re short on cash right now, etc.
The number of reasons why it might not be the right time for someone is virtually endless.
So, how do we address this?
And the answer is quite simple. We have to make sure to advertise our offer consistently. Because we understand that we don’t know when someone might be ready or not, we must keep advertising our offer consistently so that we can grab people when the timing is right for them.
Someone who wasn’t ready to buy in January, might be ready to buy in May. But only if they see your offer again around May, June, July time, let’s say. Or else they’re probably not even going to remember you exist when they’re ready to buy.
This is an important part of thinking about how we bring new people into our club or coaching programme. We need to design a great offer, yes, but we also need to consistently put the message out that the offer exists, so that people can take advantage of it when the timing is right for them.
Which brings us to the last question for this episode. How do we actually go about designing a great offer?
Well, there’s virtually an infinite number of ways in which you can design a great offer. But I’d like to cover the 4 main ways you can use to create great offers and give some examples of each. They aren’t complicated or extraordinary, but if used right they work. So let’s do this and let’s start with:
1) Pricing
The most obvious way to create an offer that stands out is to reduce the price of your membership or your lessons.
Now, let me be clear here. I’m not suggesting you reduce your price forever and just charge less than what you can afford to keep your club or coaching programme running.
Providing your products or services at such an inexpensive price that the organisation can’t financially survive is not good business!
What I’m suggesting is that you reduce the pricing (or even make it free) for new customers for a set period of time, so that people can try your services without much risk to them.
It’s different asking someone to pay £200 upfront for a 12 month’s club membership, for example, than it is to tell them that they can pay for a discounted rate for only one trial month before having to commit to the yearly membership.
So, again, this isn’t about reducing your price forever, it’s about reducing the price and the risk for the first interaction with a customer to encourage them to take the first step.
The idea being that if more people try it the more people that you have a chance to win over, so that they will then have no problem paying the normal price going forward.
This type of offer is quite prevalent in our world. Common examples include discounted first private lessons or courses, or discounted club memberships for a short period of time.
And then also, of course, the free trials for lessons or club memberships. Many coaches offer the first lesson for free and some clubs allow someone to be a part of the club for a few weeks as a trial before them having to commit to becoming a member.
Ok, so that’s one way of creating great offers that stand out. Let’s jump onto the second one:
2) Add-ons/bundles
The idea here is that you don’t necessarily need to reduce the price for the first interaction with a customer, but that instead you add extras to what you’re offering to the customer.
These could be extras of any kind, such as equipment like rackets, grips, cans of balls, tennis shoes, t-shirts or anything else that you think might be relevant.
Or it could be an add-on individual session when they book onto a course - this might be a particularly good add-on for a coach who wants to expand their private lessons schedule.
Or you could pair up a club membership with a free 6-week coaching course.
Or any other type of add-on that you think adds value to the offer and makes it more enticing for people to sign-up to.
The options are endless here.
Tennis for Kids is the perfect example of a bundle that includes a few different things for an affordable price, which makes it a great way for parents to get their kids to try tennis.
For those of you listening that have no idea what Tennis for Kids is, it’s a bundle that includes 6 lessons, a t-shirt, a racket and a set of balls for a very affordable price.
Ok, let’s move on to the third way to design a great offer.
3) Limited availability
The idea here is that the offer has an end date or that you’ll only accept a certain number of sign-ups for this offer.
Now, let me just say right off the bat that faking limited availability is NOT a good idea. Do not tell people that there is limited availability when it actually doesn’t exist.
People will notice that you were making it up sooner or later and it won’t do your brand any favours.
Having said this, if you really set a cutoff date for an offer, or you really only want to accept a certain number of sign-ups then you can use this limited availability in your offer to help you knock people off the fence.
A classic example of this would be when you’ve set up a new coaching course and there are only 10 spots available in that course, for example.
When advertising that course you should make sure that you explain that once those 10 spots are gone, they’re gone, and no one else will be allowed to sign-up.
Or as a different example, you could offer a discounted membership but people can only sign up to it until the end of the month.
Or you could have an open-day offer where people need to sign-up during the open-day to take advantage of the offer.
Or an offer for holiday camp attendees that will expire a week after the holiday camp ends, for example.
Again, there are plenty of ways to use limited availability in your offers. Just make sure that it’s a real limit and something that you will follow to the letter, or else people will stop trusting your brand.
Ok, we’re getting to the fourth and last main way in which you can create great offers, which is to use
4) Promises, money-back, or other guarantees
Or really anything that will take the fear out of making the purchase and pass some of the risk onto you.
The idea here is that when a customer has to pay upfront for something they’re taking on all the risk. If they don’t like what they’ve bought then they’ve already spent the money and that’s it. They can’t go back now.
By adding some sort of promise or guarantee to your offer, you’re shifting the risk from your customer onto your business or club.
And guess what, that will make it much more likely that the customer will be willing to take the plunge and sign-up, since now they feel more safe that if they don’t like it they can at least get something back.
A typical example is the 30-day money back guarantee, whereby companies promise to give the customer their money back within the first 30 days. That could definitely work for club memberships and coaching programmes who run on a monthly direct debit for example.
But if you run your coaching programme in a course model you can offer a 2 lesson money back guarantee, for example. Meaning that the customer can ask for their money back before their third lesson. But once they attend their third lesson in the course they waive that right.
There are plenty of different ways to set this type of promise/guarantee up, but the key idea is that you’re shifting the risk away from the customer, so that they feel more confident that they won’t waste their money and time completely.
Ok, let’s quickly recap the 4 main ways you can use to design a great offer:
Reduce pricing. Anything you do to make it cheaper for people to try your product or services will likely result in more people willing to try it out
Create add-ons/bundles. Instead of reducing the pricing just add value to your offer in any way that you think is relevant to the customer. Equipment is the most common way to do this.
Use limited availability. If your offer has an end date or a limited number of spots make sure to advertise that fact.
Promises or guarantees. You can offer guarantees to take the fear out of making the purchase for the customer. Money-back guarantees are the most common way to use these.
Now, it probably goes without saying that you don’t have to use just one of these strategies to create a great offer.
You can, and probably should, use some of these ideas together in the same offer to create something truly compelling and that will make people feel like it’s a no-brainer to give it a go.
As an example you could create a bundle that includes 6 lessons, a racket and a t-shirt, and is charged at a 50% discount from your normal lesson price and has a 2 lesson no questions asked money-back guarantee and where you only have 10 spots to sell.
I think it’s fairly obvious that if you do present that kind of offer to people, you’ll increase the chances that a lot of them will be persuaded to sign-up.
And once you’ve got them on-court then you can get to work to show them that tennis is great and hopefully win them over for your club and or coaching programme, which is really the end goal here.
Ok, that is it from me today.
Hopefully this episode was useful to get you thinking about your own offers and ways in which you could potentially improve them, if necessary.
I’ll be back soon with another instalment of the Tennis Business Academy podcast.
Until then and thanks for tuning in.