Club Marketing

Knowing what your 'offer' is and effectively communicating it, is the key to successfully marketing and promoting your club.

Promoting your club is about telling people what you can offer them. It's really important to spend time planning your marketing, thinking about who you are targeting, choosing ways you can reach them and how you will measure the effectiveness of your communication.

A Marketing Strategy is a plan for how your club will promote itself. It will help you think about what makes your club different so you can get the right message out to the right people.

Market Research can help you understand the type of people who are involved in your sport and what influences them to take part.

There are many Marketing Options available to your club. It is worth spending time exploring the benefits and limitations of these to decide on the best ways to reach your target groups.

Do you recognise any of the following challenges that croquet clubs commonly face?

We struggle to attract new members, particularly from younger demographic groups
We would love to have an online presence (website and/or Facebook) for the benefit of our members and also to help with marketing, but nobody at our club knows how to do this
We do not produce a plan for our marketing, so never know if activities have been effective
We have never asked our members what they actually want from the club
We rarely make good use of the media locally to promote our club

If any or all of them do strike a chord with you then please either visit Sport England's Marketing and communications or, preferably, contact your Federation Development Officer, who would be delighted to support you by, for example, facilitating a focused workshop at your club to help you generate a set well defined and impactful actions.

Hosted Club Website Offering

Croquet Websites

Croquet England offers free club websites - an ideal solution for clubs without a current site or those needing a more modern, maintainable alternative.

These websites come with a user-friendly template that includes all the key features a club might need, such as:

Welcome page
About the Game
Learn to Play
Finding Us
Contact Info
News & Events
Calendar
Members Area

The websites are centrally hosted and supported at no cost to clubs, with guidance available to help each club customise their content. This makes the platform a powerful tool for outreach and marketing.

A successful pilot involving 12 clubs ran in summer 2018, and now over 35 clubs have adopted the system. Great examples can be seen at Colchester and Pendle & Craven.

To learn more or request a website for your club, please submit a ticket via our help desk: hesk.croquet-websites.org.uk

Get a Social Media Presence

Croquet England's Facebook Guide is aimed at 'social media novices' and features clear set-up instructions, supported by screenshots, along with ideas on how to best reach new target audiences such as 30- to 50-year-olds, a much sought-after demographic at many clubs. If you need further assistance, perhaps contact the author James Hawkins (james#liverpoolcroquet.co.uk):