Tournaments

Autoreply

I sent an email to Ritch Miller, one of the tournament directors for the adidas Thunder United Classic held this past weekend in Lebonan, Ohio. I immediately got this message back:

I am at a soccer tourney all weekend. I will get back to you on Tues. The better question is why aren’t you at a tourney?

Talk about knowing your audience, setting expectations and always marketing! We loved it so much, we had to blog about it.

What do YOUR guest teams get back from you when they email you during the tournament?

Getting to know QR Codes

You’ve probably seen those squiggly black square bar codes on magazine ads, coupons and restaurant tent cards and you may have found yourself wondering what they are. Or you already know what they are and you — like our staff here at TourneyCentral — giggle a little bit when we see one and have to shoot it with your iPhone just to see what is there.
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The National Association of Tournament Directors officially launches

Something pretty exciting happened on Monday this week. The National Association of Tournament Directors (NATD) launched. We’re pretty excited about this venture as it is beginning to validate what we here at TourneyCentral have been saying since we set up shop.
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Marketing your first-year soccer tournament

Whenever we sign a soccer tournament that is just launching, we get asked a lot about how to get a lot of traffic to the web site that converts into team applications. While each soccer tournament event is slightly different, here is some of the collective advice we usually give out.

Offline marketing
First year tournaments are really difficult. There is usually a lot of offline hustle with the club coaches, within the league and at the state association level. Your club name will probably be the best thing to help you. Can you send out an email from the club list list? Also, make sure everyone in your club knows the website for your tournament. Every coach, every volunteer, every parent. Nothing says “dead lead” like someone from the club who does not know the web address.

Complete website
Make sure your TourneyCentral website is as complete as possible. That means your about page, rules, hotel policies, front page news, frequently asked questions are all full. It is a lot of work, but considering you only have about three seconds before a team will decide to click off your page or explore more, it is worth the investment.
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Our TourneyCentral video

Grandma and grandpa want to see their grandson Billy play in his first away soccer tournament. How will they find the right field and times Billy plays?

Fortunately, Billy's coach applied to a TourneyCentral soccer tournament so finding all this information was easy.
Billy's grandma went to the website, clicked on Schedules, found Billy's team name and got his schedule in seconds.