Marketing Idea for Batting Cage Facilities: Retain Customers With Memberships
Since my own sports facility features batting cages and many of my company’s clients are batting cage facilities, I know that it can be tough to maintain revenue levels during the springtime.
Having a 12-month marketing plan for your sports facility is helpful in warding off the revenue dip that usually occurs in the batting cage low season, but you also need to get creative with that marketing plan’s promotions and programming in order to draw your customers indoors. Baseball facilities, in particular, have to address this problem, because all of their clients have similar schedules and interests.
At DNA Sports Center, part of our strategy to combat the draw of the outdoors in the springtime is to invest in upscale, advanced technology. This year, our staff and customers are excited about our new HomePlate pitching machine, which can vary pitch type and speed with unprecedented levels of customization – as a bonus incentive, we’re offering only real, leather baseballs on the machine to complete the authentic experience for our customers and provide a more upscale feel.
We introduced our new pitching machine with a new hitting membership (which we called the DNA Ultimate Hitting Membership). Members get priority access and discounted use on the machine, as well as discounts on baseball merchandise and baseball lessons. We also offered a promotional price on the membership for the first month that it was offered, offering clients a 6-month membership at the 12-month rate. (Of course, eSoft Planner scheduling software was used to implement and automate all of these benefits).
If your batting cage facility doesn’t have the capital to invest in fancy new equipment this year, you can still put compelling incentives together for your customers by giving them overall discounts and priority access to the best resources your facility has to offer. As I mentioned this in a previous post about creating sports facility memberships, member benefits inspire loyalty and customer retention. You might have to drop the prices more than usual to make up for the lack of demand, but those discounts are well worth it to avoid an empty facility.
Stay tuned for more programming ideas in following weeks.
If you have any questions about how you can make scheduling at your facility more efficient, I’d be happy to set up a consultation session with you. Give me a call at (513) 791-4940.
