Selling the Benefits of Tennis Through Copywriting

TRANSCRIPT

Welcome to the seventh episode of the podcast and today we’ll be discussing copywriting and how it can help us sell our sport better.

Now, right now you’re probably thinking “what is this copywriting thing and why should I care”.

If you’re thinking that, trust me I get it!

You’re a coach, or a club manager or have another role that is primarily focused on tennis, so why would copywriting be something that you’d need to consider or care about?

Well, actually copywriting does matter, and if you give me a few minutes I’ll explain why and give you some examples.

So, let’s do it.

So, here’s the thing: whether we like it or not, all of us are selling all the time.

I’ll give you some examples.

If we want to get someone to try tennis for the first time, we’re selling.

If we want someone to play 2x week instead of 1x week, we’re selling.

If we want to get a kid to play his first tournament, we’re selling.

If we think that that same kid should buy a new racket, we’re selling.

Those are some examples tied to what we do professionally, but we also spend a lot of time selling in our personal lives. 

When we try to convince our child to brush their teeth or go to bed, we’re selling.

Or when we want to convince our other half to go on this holiday instead of that holiday, we’re selling.

Just to give you a few examples of how we spend a lot of our time selling.

Or if you prefer another definition, we spend a lot of time trying to persuade other people to do what we think they should do.

I guess that’s just part of being human and living in a society with other people.

Ok, so we spend a lot of time selling, but what does that have to do with copywriting?

Well, everything, actually!

Because copywriting is essentially selling through the written word.

In fact here’s the dictionary definition of copywriting, so you don’t think that I’m tricking you:

Copywriting is the act or occupation of writing text for the purpose of advertising or other forms of marketing.

And it goes even further by saying:

The product, called copy, is written content that aims to increase brand awareness and ultimately persuade a person or group to take a particular action.

So, yes, copywriting is about writing something with the purpose of persuading people to take a particular action.

Which in our context is to ultimately sign-up for coaching lessons, for a club membership, to a tournament, to purchase new equipment or anything else that is relevant to you and your business or club.

And the thing is this, you’re already writing copy. Whether you’re aware of it or not.

Everything that is written on your website is copy.

Everything that you’ve ever written on a flyer is copy.

Every time you write an email to try and sell something you write copy.

Everything you write on a FB or Instagram Ad is copy.

Even in WhatsApp and text messages I bet that you’ve written copy.

Because, remember, every time you write something with the purpose of persuading someone to take an action, you’re writing copy.

So, the first reason why you should care about copywriting is because you’re already doing it!

And if you’re doing it, you might as well try to do it right!

Have you ever heard the expression “if something is worth doing, it’s worth doing well”? Well, I think that expression applies here.

But there’s a second key reason why good copywriting is important to us and our sport.

And in order to explain it, I need to acknowledge that what we do matters!

What we do is good for the world.

We’re the good guys

We’re all working to sell tennis to people. To sell a physical activity, a sport.

Something that has been shown to have incredibly positive benefits for people’s lives. 

And not only that but it’s a sport that can be played by people of all ages. Literally from 3 years old all the way to 100 years old.

Not many sports can claim to be able to reach that wide of an audience.

But, and here comes the but, for the most part we’re not that good at selling what we do.

We tend to be a bit “shy” about the benefits of our sport and we very much let people come to us already sold on the sport, rather than proactively try to show them why our sport is so great.

As a comparison, take a minute to think about how the fitness industry has done a much better job than we have at selling the benefits of what they do.

They’re constantly telling us that we need to be exercising. That we need to be joining their new ABC HIIT workout or their XYZ class.

And some of it is obviously utter crap. Pardon my french.

But the reality is that they’ve done a great job of highlighting that physical exercise is good for you, and that’s a big part of the reason why the number of gym memberships has grown massively over the last decade or two.

Because they’ve gotten really good at selling what they do.

And we need to learn how to do the same.

Because Tennis has the same, if not more benefits than a fitness class.

In fact, personally, I would argue that it has more benefits than your average fitness class.

Not to mention that gyms don’t cater (at least nor for now) to children, right?

When it comes to bringing benefits to children, sports are WITHOUT ANY SHADOW OF A DOUBT, one of the best activities that kids could engage with.

But how often do we communicate this to parents?

In my experience, not nearly enough.

Do we write it on our websites? Or on our flyers? Or do we even mention it in our sales conversations with people? 

Sometimes, I’m sure. But not nearly enough.

And this brings me right back to copywriting.

Copywriting is just the vehicle by which we can convey these benefits to the people reading our websites, flyers, emails and any other marketing material you write.

And getting good at copywriting, basically means that we’ll get good at selling tennis through the written word.

And that to me is a great goal to have!

Imagine if every single tennis website, or flyer, or email ever written really did an amazing job of selling our sport. We’d surely, 100%, no doubt in my mind, get more people playing tennis!

And that’s the ultimate goal here, to get more people playing tennis.

Ok, hopefully by now, I’ve done a good job of explaining why copywriting matters to us.

So now, I’d like to use the second part of this episode to give you 3 pointers on how to write good copy.

1) Be clear on who you’re writing to and what action you’d like them to take

This is the equivalent of knowing what you want to do with each shot you hit in a match.

We know that if you want to win matches then you need to have some purpose to your shots. 

Just hitting the ball without any clear purpose or intent, isn’t going to get you very far.

With copy it’s the same.

You need to know who is going to be reading your copy. And you also need to know what you’re trying to get them to do.

Let’s take a website for example.

You probably have a page for juniors and one for adults on your website.

Those are 2 different audiences.

In the juniors page you should expect that parents are reading to learn whether tennis and your programme or club is right for their child, whereas in the adults section the people reading are obviously looking for tennis for themselves.

And when it comes to selling those 2 groups of people on tennis you will probably say and write different things. Because you know that what a parent is looking for their child, isn’t exactly the same thing that they’re looking for for themselves.

And this is true even if the objective of the copy on the website is the same for both groups of people. 

Let’s say in this example that the objective is to persuade them to sign-up to a trial lesson.

By being clear on who you’re writing to and what you’re trying to accomplish, you can then write to the right audience and with that sole objective in mind. 

This will give your text purpose and make it feel cohesive and solid, which is paramount, if you want the people reading to believe you. 

After all, uncertainty and doubt never persuaded anyone to do anything.

2) Keep your reader interested and engaged

There’s a copywriting expression that gets thrown around quite a lot which states that the #1 goal for a line of copy is to get the reader to continue reading the next line.

The idea being that if you can achieve that goal for every line, then the reader will read the whole text.

And I think this is an important concept to have in mind as it speaks to the idea that we must keep the reader interested and engaged.

Providing incredibly valuable information isn’t enough if it’s done in such a way that people switch off after a few seconds.

And often when we start thinking about writing to sell, most of us have a tendency to go too formal and stiff and write overly elaborate text.

And that’s exactly what will put people off reading!

People want something easy and fun to read.

So make sure to keep each paragraph short and to the point, and use only simple words and sentences.

Or another way to think about it, is that you should be writing like you would talk to a friend. 

When you speak to a friend you use simple, casual language and sentences.

If you can achieve that same feeling when writing, then you’ll have a much better chance of keeping people engaged throughout.

3) Sell them on the benefits of tennis

People, including you and me, care about themselves and their children first and foremost.

And the only reason why they’re even reading the copy on your website, or on your email, or on the flyer, is because they think that maybe what you have to offer might make their lives or their child’s life better.

They only care about your business and/or club within that context. Within the context of meeting their own needs and desires.

And this is important because what that means is that you shouldn’t focus on your business, or your brand, or on how awesome you are.

You should focus on your customer.

You should focus on what they’re looking for.

And the way to do that is to focus on the benefits your offerings bring to them and their lives.

Let me give you a couple of examples.

Let’s say I’m trying to sell a potential customer a car. And I say something like “our car comes with state of the art front and side airbags”.

Ok, that’s a good thing, no doubt, but it probably hasn’t really grabbed that customer.

But if instead I say “our car is one of the safest cars in the world, due to our state of the art front and side airbags” now I have a much better chance of grabbing that customer’s attention.

The second pitch is much more powerful because it speaks directly to the customers needs. 

They don’t NEED airbags.

They NEED to keep themselves and their family safe.

And the airbags just happen to help them do that.

You see how that works?

It’s a small, but very powerful distinction.

Let me give you an example related to our sport.

Let’s say that I’m trying to sell someone tennis lessons for their child.

I could say something like “all our mini-tennis sessions have a warm-up that focuses on a different physical skill”.

Not bad, but it could be better.

To make it better I could say, “By attending our sessions your child will improve their agility, balance, coordination and speed as we focus on these skills in all our sessions”.

Now I’m spelling out exactly what the benefit for the child will be.

And that’s of course not the only benefit.

You can and should expand the same thinking to every other benefit that you know you can provide. 

And there are many!

But the main idea here is that when we’re writing copy we need to be focusing on people’s needs and desires and the way we do that is by writing about the benefits of tennis for them. 

Focus on how their lives will improve by playing tennis and you’ll have a much better chance of grabbing people to your coaching programme and club and for the sport in general.

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Ok, let’s quickly recap the main ideas I covered in this episode

1. Copywriting matters because it helps us sell our sport and what we do. Putting the right text in front of the right person will increase the chances that that person will take the action you’d like them to take. You can choose to ignore copywriting, but know that you’ll still be using it whenever you write something with the purpose of selling, so in my view you should strive to at least learn the basics, so you can do a good job of it.

2. When writing copy, be clear on who you’re writing to and what action you’d like them to take. Having this clarity will give your text purpose and make it feel cohesive and solid, which is essential if you want the people reading to believe what you’re writing. 

3. Write copy like you would talk to a friend. Keep it casual, short, to the point and use simple words and sentences. This will give you a better chance of keeping the reader interested and engaged.

4. Write with a focus on the customer and their needs and desires. And the best way to do that is to focus on the benefits of playing tennis for them. Answer the question: how will their lives improve by playing tennis?

And as I mentioned earlier I really, really believe that what we do is great. So, the more of it we can sell the better, as far as I’m concerned.

And I know that better copy will help us do just that.

Ok, I hope this episode was useful to you and if you would like to learn more about copywriting I have just the thing for you.

Inside the Academy I have a full copywriting for tennis course that goes into detail on all of the ideas I discussed on this podcast and it also contains a tonne of copy examples that you can literally copy and paste and use for your business, including examples for website copy, flyers copy and much more.

If you’d like to check out the Academy and the copywriting course you can do so at www.tennisbusinessacademy.com/academy

Alright that’s all for today’s episode.

I’ll be back soon with another instalment of the Tennis Business Academy podcast.

Until then and thanks for tuning in.