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Lawn bowling has loyal, community-oriented fans that span around the globe, and has been played for thousands of years. However, it can be hard to attract new members with so many other exciting hobbies available. Here’s four ideas for how to grow your bowls club membership.
A lot of the trepidation of joining a new sport – especially one that doesn’t get a lot of attention on social media – comes from not understanding how to play it. That’s why people who’ve never played bowls before might not be ready to commit to an annual lawn bowls membership. However, you can easily entice new players to at least come and learn about the sport with a free trial at your sports club.
Discounts or deals like Bring a Friend, and events like family fun days are great ways to attract and retain members at your bowls club. You can also offer free snacks and tea or coffee at the club during promotional periods.
Another great way to gain awareness of lawn bowling is to connect with different groups within your local community. Consider sponsoring or joining community events, festivals, and rotaries. Ask to put up posters or give out stickers at locally-owned cafés, restaurants and stores.
It’s also a good idea to partner with other sports teams to arrange joint events and promote each other’s clubs. Work with schools and charities, and other bowls teams to pool resources and increase awareness.
You can reach even more people in online spaces with a solid strategy for bowls club marketing. If you don’t have a website yet, now’s a great time to set one up so that people can find you online, look up your opening hours, and sign up to play.
You should also create official accounts for your club on social media channels like Instagram, Facebook, and TikTok. These are great avenues for promoting upcoming events, and posting content from tournaments and casual lawn bowling. Tagging people (with their consent, of course) in social media posts gets more eyes on your account, and makes people really feel like a part of your sports club.
Another key way to increase awareness about lawn bowls is to help more people watch the game! Live streaming special events, matches, and tournaments helps expand your audience reach, and promote special events and club championships.
Streaming has the added benefit of not requiring video editing or expensive production software. Although you need to invest in good cameras, camera stands, and microphones to catch the action, streaming software like OBS Studio is completely free.
Here at overlays.uno, we have several free sports overlays that you can control and edit online – no ZIP files or downloads required! Plus, you can always drop us a message on Discord if you need help using any of our overlays.
Now that you’ve got some ideas on how to grow your bowls club membership, you should be ready to start implementing these tips and tricks in your day-to-day operations. And, if you’d like to explore more overlays – for example, something to add your sponsor logos – check out our library of professionally-designed overlays today!
