Creating your tennis brand

As Jeff Bezos, the founder of Amazon, once said, “Your brand is what people say about you when you are not in the room”.

So do tennis coaches have a brand? Of course. For the smaller operators this is a personal brand and for the Academies and Schools, this is a company brand.

The majority of people when they think of Brand will only think about the logo. This is part of a brand and considered to be the ‘brand mark’ but a brand goes much further.

In terms of tennis coaches/teachers, some questions to ask are:

• Why do your clients choose your services?
• What is your coaching philosophy?
• What has been your personal tennis story/academy story?
• What customers do you want to have and why?
• How does your service make your customers feel?
• What are your core values ?
• What is your brand personality?
• What makes you different than your competitors?

Great brands such as Nike, Apple and Virgin have very clear values, purpose and market position. Then importantly they remain consistent with who they are and what they stand for. In my tennis program at Scarborough Tennis Academy for example, we put a high value on the character development and personal growth that people can get on their tennis journey.

So where a business name, logo and slogan are a part of your brand, a lot of your brand is chosen by your customers. As the great marketer Seth Godin says, we create tribes. These tribes believe in our products and services. So perhaps the answer to what your brand is sits with your customers.

So who is your tribe and why do they keep coming back to you?