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~Originally appeared on our sister blog – blog.muzknow.com~

 I met by one of my friends who wanted some ideas to help market her fledgling tennis coaching company so that she could get more clients. In a monopolistic market where there are countless other firms providing the same offering as in tennis coaching at various rates how could she get noticed and position her company in the minds of her potential consumers as a better offering than other competitors out there.

Well I thought to list down all of the digital media that one should have a presence in, in order to get noticed in the digital world we live in. I believed that it is compulsory for any firm to have a website and a presence in Facebook and Twitter. Besides this I believe that being a company that provides a personalised service such as tennis coaching, the customers who would eventually experience her service have a right to know more about the coaches that they will meet. Thus I thought it would be great to have a blog for each coach who will be updating about their whole tennis career, their achievements and what their philosophy and pedagogy is in coaching tennis. Potential customers will get to already interact with their coach even before they meet up. Thus, this helps to prep the customers for their experience before they consume the service.

Then comes the issue of positioning. Usually tennis coaches position themselves either as fresh coaches charging relatively cheaper prices or experienced coaches who had produced a number of successful athletes under their tutelage. If you’re the latter your name is enough to market yourself. Since my friend happens to land in the prior group in this dichotomy, I believed that in order to compensate for her lack of experience in the industry what is needed is a paradigm shift for her potential customers to look at her in a different light. A unique selling point was in order and since she was ready to work her ass off to get noticed. I thought that instead of just being yet another tennis coaching company, couldn’t she market her company as a coaching company that is an all in one stop for tennis players to improve everything about the game and themselves. Tennis coaches usually focus on just teaching how to play tennis as in technique, but, in order to win matches in tennis there are two other main factors that come into the equation.

All the above factors work together to create a player who will be able to executes shots, create match plays and endure any situation during a match. As tennis is a game where it warrants being able to hit the ball in the right way with the right mind and right physique.

If the coaches just focus on improving technique and leave it to players to take care of improving the body and mind (including strategy), they are not in control of the desired results they would want to achieve for their players.

Instead a great coaching programme should provide options and packages which provides all three components or a mix of the three.

If the player is going to trust the coaching company to turn them into champions or at least make them into better players they need to know that every aspect of their tennis game and life would be coached and handled by the organisation.

In order to achieve this the coaching team should include a nutritionist, a personal trainer, a life coach/sport psychologist, physiotherapist, a tennis strategist and last but not least a tennis coach. But, being a fledgling company it would not be possible to employee a separate worker for all of the above abilities, instead these jobs could be outsourced or even an employee could obtain multiple skills from the above list.

Right now there is too much focus on obtaining as many clients as possible and increasing employees as clientele increases. However, if a low season comes or if some clients drop out, it would be problem to pay the wages of the extra employees. In order to combat this issue another alternative could be considered. Instead of focussing on quantity, it would be better to focus on quality. Having long serving relationships with your players would enable you to have a constant flow of revenue and players would be loyal to your organisation and your coaches. And by having a market segmentation by offering different packages, more focus could be given to the high tier paying customers who will be a low percentage of the whole customer base. But if the value of the clientele is compared the upper clientele would be way more important than the lower tiers but slowly through creating better players from the upper tier with focus on mind, body and technique, clients in the lower tiers could be attracted to try the upper tier experience and become better players in the process.

So this is a possible way to compete in a monopolistic market without consorting to red-ocean cut-throat strategies. A blue ocean strategy to find opportunities in the market that will allow even a fledgling start-up to create a niche in the market would be the way to go if one wants to get noticed in a world where consumers are spoilt for choice.