Hosting a school baseball tournament is a challenge of its own, but do you know what’s harder? Promoting it successfully so that the pavilion is swarmed on the big day. Here are some pro tips to make that happen.
If you’re tasked with hosting a school baseball tournament, you better start preparing now. The key to successfully managing it is one thing, but how would you promote it? Who would you promote it to? What are the chances people will come to see the tournament? What are some things you can do to increase those chances? These are some questions you’ll find the answers to in this blog.
Come up with a catchy name for the tournament
The first thing you need to do is come up with a catchy name for your baseball tournament. This is your first impression and should be great to lure people in. Something bland like “Baseball tournament 2022” won’t work; you’ve got to make things more exciting.
Something like “Baseball Battle.” Try to incorporate your school’s symbol into the name. For example, if it has a lion, the tournament could be named “The Lion’s Den: Baseball Wars.” Next, you’ve to make tons of baseball posters and put them up around the school and in high-traffic areas in your neighborhood. Crafting a poster isn’t difficult — just pick a baseball poster template on an online graphic design tool like PosterMyWall and customize it in a few clicks.
Promote the tournament on your website blog
The next thing to do as part of your promotional campaign is to get the word out there on your school’s website blog. This is a place where you post all the updates and upcoming events in prose form. Your blog’s most likely audience will be students and parents. Make sure you mention all the relevant details of the upcoming tournament, including the date, time, venue, and contact details.
Also, you should add a schedule of all the teams participating in a tabular form, highlighting which day/date each baseball match will happen. You can use an online schedule maker to do that in a couple of minutes. Some people find it hard to scroll through blocks of paragraphs, which is why it’s a good idea to throw in a dynamic poster in there to convey everything compactly.
Involve the community
Engaging the community is a fantastic additional strategy for marketing your tournament. This is a fantastic method to spark interest in and excitement for your event. There are various methods to accomplish this, but one of the best is to host a large-scale event prior to your tournament.
A “meet the team” event, for instance, would allow attendees to get to know the players and coaches. This is a fantastic approach to increase interest in your squad and tournament fervor. Additionally, you might make use of this occasion to highlight your sponsors. Another great idea would be to sell online merch for each team. These could be anything from t-shirts to mugs, allowing each team’s fans to show their support by buying merch. It’ll also raise some valuable money to get all the logistics of the tournament figured out.
Market the event on social media
Social media is one of the most powerful tools you can use to get the word out there. That’s because everyone hangs out on social media. We recommend posting every update about the tournament on all your social media accounts, including Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and more. Focus on the first two since they’re the most-used platforms across the globe.
On Facebook, you can join multiple groups and pages and post about the upcoming tournament so that other people, apart from the students’ families, attend too. On Instagram, you should use hashtags to increase your posts’ reach. Just make sure you put up posters instead of blocks of text, as they’ll likely go ignored.
You could also pair up with a local social media influencer who’s excited about your baseball tournament. Having an influencer on your side can likely bring lots of people to your pavilion since social media personalities have a loyal following and people treat their word like gospel.
A final piece of advice
Not every school tournament is the same, so you’ll have to tailor strategies to your specific requirement. For example, the venue may not be as big and can only accommodate students’ families and not outsiders. In that case, emailing parents is a good idea as they become the entire focus of your campaign.
Alternatively, you could host the tournament live on social media for anyone who can’t attend. This will not only expand your followers on social media but give a message to everyone not to miss out next time.
