Player Recruitment in Youth Sports Clubs (the Ultimate Guide)
Here’s the ultimate guide to plan, prepare and carry out your player recruitment campaign this season. Browse through the 6 blog posts or download the e-book with everything in it.
Click on the links below to read the full chapters or download the full e-book at the end of this post.
1. Preparing the player recruitment campaign
Pulling in new recruits and welcoming back existing members is an exciting but stressful time of the year. With a well thought-out plan and proper preparation, your player recruitment campaign will exhibit a professional and passionate team image, engage athletes, families and get everyone excited about the upcoming season.
2. Creating and optimizing club website
A nice and structured club website offers much value to players, parents and volunteers. New potential team members will probably visit your website to see what you do, who are the coaches, and at what times will the practice take place. Make sure they will find everything they are looking for.
3. Kickstarting your recruitment campaign with effective ads
To get your player recruitment campaign really flying, you should give it a push with advertising. There are tons of ways to advertise your club: posting to local club listings, writing to media, paid ads, etc. Choose what suits you best and don’t be afraid to be creative.
4. Leveraging social networks
Set up social network pages (Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, etc.) to engage with your community. Your fans tend to share content they like, so post useful news, videos, etc. which you believe your followers would value. Use social media to tell your club story and carry on your vision.
5. Engaging your club community
Engage you club community in every way you can: reach out to last year’s squad, get people talking on social media, hand out promotional t-shirts to last year’s team and ask them to wear them during the registration period, etc. And the best thing, most of these activities can be done by players and volunteers, so coaches and club managers can focus on welcoming the new palyers.
6. Outreach + registration
As the final step in your player recruitment campaign, you should make an outreach to your local community and have in-person appearances. Make a list of local schools and make sure the teachers know that your club offers their kids a healthy and fun after school activity. Make sure you mention your registration event as much as possible during the last few weeks before the event.
Downloads
Get the full player recruitment e-book: