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Photos and Posters Can Help You Promote Your Business

By Joe Dinoffer

We all know the expression “a picture is worth a thousand words.” Well, it is … sort of.

While it is true that pictures are higher impact than the written or spoken word, it is also true that if you leave the same picture up in the same place for an extended period of time, it will soon have no impact at all. Therefore, along with the following tips on using images to enhance your business, there is one caveat: Your pictures must be fresh, interesting, and changed regularly.

Follow some of these tips, keeping that caveat in mind, and you’ll soon have a picture of a healthier bottom line for your facility.

Posters

Tennis manufacturing companies are only too happy to give you free posters. Our suggestion is to get “slip-in” poster frames that you can easily change on a regular basis. And, for example, when you put in a new poster like Andre Agassi and Head or Rafael Nadal and Babolat (above), consider offering a promotion for that month on those products. Also, see if your manufacturer reps can get you autographed posters. Hey, it doesn’t hurt to ask.

Photos of Players

The internet is full of player photos. But keep in mind, it is illegal to simply copy a photo off the internet and redistribute it without permission, unless it is a “royalty-free” photo (and the chances of finding specific tennis photos royalty-free are rather slim).

To get free photos of pros that you can use for your own promotions, check with tennis equipment manufacturers and see if they can e-mail photos to you. And make sure you tell them what you intend to do with the photos.

Or check the website of a pro tournament in your area to see if they have what you might need. Then, contact the tournament to get permission to use the photo, probably with a credit line that says something like: “Photo courtesy of …” The tournaments will most likely be amenable to your using their official photos, since they’ll get some publicity out of it, too. But please, be wary of simply copying and disseminating photos from the internet without permission.

Once you do get permission to use a photo, or if you can find royalty-free images, you can start going to town. One idea is to e-mail your members with a tennis instructional tip that is timely and is tied to a photo you selected. Attach the photo to your e-mail and just click “send.”

You can also make these e-mails and photo attachments product-driven at the same time by announcing a sale in your shop.

Photos on Your Website

As with using the photos in e-mails, you can use your website to keep an archive of instructional tips along with photos (again, though, make sure you have the proper permissions to use the photos on your website). Plus, with their permission of course, you can take digital photos of your club members who exemplify some of the positive techniques that you can point out in the well-known pros.

Photo Instructional Book

Most pro shops and clubs have lounge areas. Take advantage of the instructional tips you have created by printing them out and inserting them into plastic sheets in a binder. This adds a nice extra touch to your club, especially since the tips can feature club members themselves, alongside some of the best players in the world.

Bulletin Boards

Cycle these same photo tips on your bulletin boards as well. Although all of these different ideas appear to be a lot of work, the concept is actually quite simple. Come up with basic instructional tips and use photos of pros and club members to demonstrate your points. Then use the tips in five different ways to get people to read them: Through e-mails, your website, a photo instructional book, on your bulletin boards, and on fliers that you can even hang throughout your facility or shop, even in the locker rooms.

Fliers With Photos

Using each of your photo instructional tips in a number of different ways takes advantage of your work and maximizes your valuable time in preparing each tip. The main thing is to keep rotating your tips, creating at least one a month. Besides hanging them in locker rooms, you can also enclose them in club mailings.

Summary

Using photos and posters are great ways to deliver information to your players, and to keep them engaged. But you must keep them fresh and you need to rotate them. Then, your members and players will start looking forward to the next photo that you use.

And writing instruction tips to accompany your photos should be relatively easy, too, with the huge amount of information that is readily available on the internet on so many aspect of tennis.

So give your players and customers a great “picture” of tennis. It can help them develop more enthusiasm for the sport, help them improve on court, and help out your business, too.

See all articles by Joe Dinoffer

About the Author

Joe Dinoffer is a Master Professional for both the PTR and USPTA. He speaks frequently at national and international tennis teacher workshops as a member of both the HEAD/Penn and Reebok National Speaker's Bureaus. He is president of Oncourt Offcourt Inc. and has written 16 books and produced more than 30 instructional videos.

From the June 2005 issue
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