You don’t have to guess whether a new program will sell.

Village Pickle found out for about $1,100.

Village Pickle in Leesburg, VA, is a pickleball facility built around adult play. It had no junior program, no junior players and no real way of knowing whether Northern Virginia families wanted one. Building a junior program on a hunch means committing courts, coaches and prime weekend hours to something that might not fill, so in early 2026 Village Pickle set out to answer the question before betting on it.

Village Pickle’s coaches ran the sessions, and we built everything that brought families in: the ads, the targeting, the landing page and the registration, plus the promotion that kept each month’s sessions in front of parents.

So we set up a test.

Step 1: An Offer Built to Test Demand

The program, Learn Pickleball Quick, was designed to be an easy yes for a parent who had never thought about junior pickleball:

• Four one-hour sessions for beginners, grouped by age (under 9 and under 14)
• $59, with a friend included, so two kids could split the cost
• Small groups capped at 12 players
• Friday evening and weekend times that fit around school

A low price and a short commitment made it easy for families to give it a try, which is exactly what a test needs. If parents wouldn’t sign up for this, they certainly weren’t going to sign up for a full season.

Step 2: Video Ads Built From Scratch

With no junior audience to start from, we built the Meta campaign from the ground up and ran only short-form video ads on Facebook and Instagram, aimed at local parents. Video did much better than static display ads, and it’s easy to see why: a few seconds of real players on real courts shows a parent what the program is actually like faster than any photo can. We promoted each month’s sessions throughout the month before they started, so there was always a next session to sign up for.

The opening shot and end card from one of the video ads.

Step 3: Registration With No Friction

Every ad went to a mobile-friendly page about this one program, where parents could pick an age group and a time and pay right on their phones, with no PDFs to print and no phone calls to make. For a test, that matters more than you might think. If registration is clumsy and the sessions don’t fill, you’ve learned something about your form, not about demand.

The Results

• 75% of sessions sold out across January and February, the program’s first two months
• 62% of registrants brought a friend, so parents were doing part of the marketing for us
• Real junior demand showed up in a market where the club had no junior players at all two months earlier

We weren’t sure how strong junior interest would be, but the response exceeded expectations. The program filled quickly and gave us confidence that junior pickleball is a meaningful growth area for us.

Amy Lao O’Brien

General Manager, Village Pickle

What Happened Next

The test answered the question, so Village Pickle kept going. Junior Learn Pickleball Quick has run every month since, and the registration data shows it growing into a real program:

• 396 registrations from 229 families since launch
• 34 families have come back for another month, and nine for three or more
• Almost every family is local, led by Leesburg, Ashburn, Sterling and Broadlands, which tells us the campaign reached the neighborhoods that can actually get to the courts

Every New Program Starts With the Same Question

Whether it’s pickleball, juniors or anything else new, every club eventually asks what Village Pickle asked: will anyone actually come? The usual answer is to guess, commit courts and coaches for a season, and hope. A small, well-built test answers it with real registrations from real families, for about $1,100.

The test is only trustworthy if every piece works. When the offer is easy to say yes to, the ads reach the right parents and registration has no friction, empty sessions tell you something real about demand. And when the sessions fill, you know the program is worth building.

Want to Know What Your Ads and Pages Could Do?

Whether your ads aren’t producing registrations or you’ve never run them because you weren’t sure where to start, we’ll look at it with you. Book a free landing page audit, and we’ll walk through your page, your ads and your registration flow together on a 30-minute Google Meet, then tell you what we’d fix first.

Book Your Free Landing Page Audit