9 Tips For Promoting Your Sports Tours Online

November 18, 2019
Lucas Ennis (he/him)
4 min read

Whether you are a tour operator selling sports tours to amazing destinations, or fan tours to the latest sporting events, you need to know how to promote your trips online. It’s a competitive space; travelers have a lot of options to choose from, so you need to make sure that it is your tours catching their interest.

To help you get ahead of your competitors, here are 9 tips you can use to promote them.

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Ways To Promote Sports Tours Online and Sell More Spaces

1. Put Together A Tour Worth Selling

To be the best in the industry, you have to sell great tour packages to start with! The value you create in your sports tours will be the foundation you use to promote and sell them to clients.

Now, value could be adding in extras that your competitors don’t offer, such as optional additional activities while on tour. Or it could mean building relationships with your suppliers to get the best travel deals and discounts which you can pass onto your clients.

Whatever the case may be, consider how you can make your tours stand out from your competition.

Best tour offering

2. Keep Your Market In Mind

Making sure your sports tours appeal to your target audience will help you to sell more spaces. This is because different people have different ideas for travel. A couple joining other sports fans to watch a major tennis match will have distinct needs to golf club members touring prime golfing spots in a particular country. The former may opt for accommodation in a guest house, while the latter would prefer something more luxurious.

Knowing your audience will also determine the marketing channels you should use for tour promotion. After all, if you aren’t promoting them where your potential clients can be found, you could be missing out on securing their bookings.

3. Let Potential Clients Know The Value Of The Tour

Sometimes it is not about what you offer your clients in the literal sense, but what they can take away from going on one of your sports tours. Instead of listing or explaining the facts of what they can expect from the experience, try instead to highlight the benefit they will get from it.

Naturally, every traveler wants to know exactly what the itinerary holds when signing up for a trip. However, if you can invoke emotions and help them to visualize the benefits and realize the value of going on your trip, you will be in better stead for landing the bookings.

Don’t be afraid to use amazing images, compelling videos, or convincing copy to persuade them of the value of your tours.

Compelling sports tour images

4. Ensure That Tour Information Can Be Easily Found On Your Website

Your website is a great place to promote your sports tours. That said, it's only the case if visitors to it can easily navigate and find information related to the tours. Think about the layout of your website; ensure that there are prominent CTA's, compelling tour descriptions, and great imagery to keep visitors engaged and ready to make a reservation.

Also, any website landing pages coming from your social media platforms should make it easy to find what the unique selling point of the experience is. Spell out your marketing message for potential clients, and help them to find everything they need to make the booking decision.

5. Offer Online Payments and Bookings

Another way to make it easier to secure reservations for your sports tours is to offer functionality to receive payments online for the bookings you receive. Your promotional efforts to sell spots will be realized quicker, as potential clients can make a reservation as soon as they decide the tour is for them.

Other advantages of receiving online payments and bookings are that you can do so 24/7. You do not have to be by the telephone at all times, and reservations are not limited to office hours.

Pro Tip: Using the WeTravel platform, you don't have to have a website to offer online payments - you can simply email an online payment link directly to interested clients.

How to market tours

6. Personalize Email Messages

Personalization can go a long way in making clients feel valued. For those already on your email list, customize the messages and offers you send through to them. Based on their booking preferences in the past, tracking data from website cookies, or interactions with your previous emails, you can tailor promotional offers to better capture their interest.

7. Meet Sports Fans On Social Media

Social media is a great place to be, well, social. Your potential clients are likely active on platforms such as Facebook and Instagram, so that means you need to be there too.

Kick up conversations about the upcoming sports games, and offer opinions on the latest teams – the more you interact with and engage your followers, the more likely they are to see your business as a leader in the travel industry. It also means that they are more likely to trust you to lead them on a life-changing experience.

Meet sports fans

8. Have A Mobile Responsive Website

People are handy with mobile. Today they use it to research, plan, and book the travel experiences they are after. They also switch between devices (desktop and mobile) while on this journey, so you need to make sure that you give the right impression with a mobile responsive website that allows them to view your sports tours on their chosen piece of technology.

9. Partner With Local Businesses

As a sports tour operator, your focus is packages relating to specific sports. Now, these are often represented locally by clubs or sports shops, so why not partner with them to promote the experiences you sell?

Ask the local businesses to place a flyer within their shop or club, or send out details in the member’s newsletter. You know that the members or clients are interested in the sport, so there’s a possibility that you can drum up interest and support from the community.

Local community support for sports

Summary

Promoting your sports tours online doesn’t have to be difficult. Ultimately, your objectives should be to encourage engagement and make it easy for people to discover the experiences you offer.