A junior league soccer tournament is a big deal for the teams and organizers. It is also an excellent way for the whole town to get together. So, it is something that is of great value to your community. It even drives up local tourism, and also boosts revenue for the businesses in the area.
Therefore, if you are holding a junior league soccer tournament, you should do your best to promote it as widely as possible. This will help you increase ticket sales, and also get more encouragement and exposure for your junior league. Here are a few ideas to help you get the word out about your tournament.
Put up posters
You should put up posters around town to promote your soccer tournament. Highlight each junior league team participating and include all the relevant details. These include date, time, venue, and match schedules.
Pick an attractive design for your soccer posters
from the array of options on PosterMyWall, and then customize the colors and details. Print out a few copies and put them up in public town areas and also ask local businesses to put them outside their properties.
Create a website
Set up a website for your junior league. This should include team information, a tournament page, a contact page, as well as an attractive landing page. In addition, you should include a registration and ticketing portal to make things convenient for your audience.
Get people to buy their tickets from this website, and show their digital copies at the event itself. In addition, put up some good photos and videos of past tournaments and of your teams. You can even add an option where people can donate to the league or explore sponsorship opportunities.
Partner with local businesses
Speaking of sponsorship opportunities, you should really explore your options with local businesses. Offer different sponsorship tiers, depending on how much these businesses are giving you. For example, your biggest sponsors can get a title sponsorship, while the next biggest ones can have their names prominently displayed on the team jerseys. Offer these opportunities for the tournament as a whole, as well as for each team.
Another way you can involve local businesses is to get them to set up stalls at the tournament. Here, they can sell refreshments, souvenirs, and market their services. This way, you can promote your tournament, and get local businesses to bring their customers to your tournament as well.
Share flyers around town
Local marketing is the way to go when you’re promoting your junior league soccer tournament. So, create some flyers about your tournament and distribute them around town. Add in team details, tournament matchups and other such elements in these flyers.
You can print these out and go around giving them out by hand. You can also have local businesses place a stack of these at prominent places, so that people can grab them and take interest. Also promote these on your social media platforms.
Use social media marketing
Social media marketing is one of the easiest ways to spread the word about your tournament. You need to create an event page, and post regularly on it. Put up teasers, short videos, team highlights, and tournament schedules on these pages. Also interact with your audience in the comments and with polls etc.
This will help you reach out to a wide audience. Just make sure you post frequently, and have high-quality images and videos ready to go. Also get players and coaches to make short videos, and urge people to come to the tournament. This is also where you’ll announce your sponsors and vendors.
Set up a booth
Junior leagues are usually homegrown and are valuable parts of your community. So, you can really promote them well if you have them meet their audiences. So, set up booths around town on certain days and have your teams hand out flyers and ask people to buy tournament tickets.
This is also a great way to put a personal touch to your tournament and make people feel nostalgic about sports. After all, a bunch of junior league players asking people to come support their teams is hard to resist.
Utilize email marketing
While you must focus on local marketing, email marketing also has its merits. See what audiences interact with and show interest with your junior league matches. Then, target them in an email campaign.
Urge them to come attend the tournament and direct them to your ticketing page. This will make things very convenient and let you reach out to a larger audience. It will also help you gather data for future promotion campaigns.
To sum up, there are a number of ways you can promote your junior league soccer tournament. Most of these are quite simple, and work great on your intended local level.
