Marketing Tips to Make Your Tournament A Bigger Success!

Marketing your Golf Tournament is the best way to ensure success.

How you decide to launch and market your event will essentially determine the attendance at your event, the funds you raise and, to a large extent, how much fun the players have.

Using Waypoint will essentially determine how much fun the organizing committee has - since they won't have to otherwise deal with the mundane tasks to run run the tournament.

With that said, we’ve gathered some information on the best ways to market your event to ensure it has a favourable outcome.

Lets start with the basics.

The majority of revenue your event will generate will come from Sponsors. Sponsors are companies, organizations, or individuals who are supporting your event to increase exposure for their business. It is important to offer your sponsors the ability to have their logo on your custom WayPoint registration webpage, and any printed materials such as the cart signs from Waypoint. You can allow major sponsors to have their logos displayed larger, or in a more prominent place on the webpage, in return for a more significant contribution.

As a majority of the revenue will come from sponsors, having a committee of volunteers who can help with finding sponsors will really drive your success.

Finding Sponsors:

1. Your committee can compile a list of potential sponsors

2. Look at some sponsorship generating websites.

3. Choose companies that align well with the core values of your tournament, and then ASK!

4. Restaurants, trade services, law firms, car dealerships, gyms, etc. are all great places to start.

Players, on the other hand, are individuals who want to participate in your event. Of course, you want your friends and family to play in your event—but typically they will only account for a small portion of the players at your tournament. You want to be able to reach out to the public to raise awareness for your event and charity and increase the number of participants.

Finding Players:

1. Promote your event to friends, family, employees, coworkers, etc.

2. Use email to distribute a link to your custom WayPoint tournament page - it'll really help by removing sign-up barriers (like having to pay by check or mail in a form)

3. Utilize social media by promoting your event through Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, etc. and including a link to the Waypoint registration page.

4. Referral incentives—Ask a golfer to bring a friend for a small gift in return (golf balls, t-shirt)

5. Referral effect—Ask your friends, or other participants, to pass the invite along to others

6. Try to list your event in local newspapers, other golf event publishers

7. Develop a press release to have published in local papers or relevant trade publications

Undoubtedly, marketing an event can be a daunting task. It requires a lot of work from a lot of different people to successfully promote an event. Here are some ways to market your event in general

Ways to Market and Promote your Event:

1. List your course on tournament service web sites

2. Register on search engines

3. Attend trade shows

4. Advertise in publications

5. Direct Mail

6. Have an event image to promote on different social medias

7. Send out a “pre-event” email

8. Social media posts

9. Use the email tools Waypoint provides and send links to your custom Waypoint registration website

Now that you know how to find sponsorships and how to market your event to the public, you’re ready to go! To ensure you have a successful tournament, contact WayPoint Golf, Inc. WayPoint makes organizing a tournament easier than it has ever been with our innovative software platform.

Sign up your tournament here: www.waypointgolf.com/signup