Marketing and promotion
Marketing your club
Marketing can be defined as the process by which individuals and groups obtain what they want through creating, offering and exchanging products of value to others. Marketing is also the ability to tell what aspects make your club unique and appealing to your target market. So, how does that apply to your club? There are two main forms of marketing a club – formal and informal.
- Formal marketing is an action your club takes with the intention of growing the club membership, or increasing its profile in the local area. Things like listing your club in the yellow pages telephone directory, placing information about membership registrations in the local newspaper, offering a discount on court hire prices to induce greater use of the courts or redecorating the club facilities are all examples of formal marketing activities. These formal marketing activities should be recorded and planned for in a club marketing plan.
- Informal marketing is the little things club management and members do everyday, like how your club members offer help and provide information to prospective customers over the phone, or when one of your club members encourages their friends to join up.
Both forms of marketing rely on members of your club talking positively about the club and their experiences with your club, both internally (for club members) and externally (for everyone who has contact with the club or its members), so it is important to try and make every experience or contact with your club a positive and rewarding one.
Who does marketing?
Everyone in your club should be involved in informal marketing for your club whenever they can. Encourage your members to tell their friends and family about what you do and what your club can offer.
For the formal marketing side of things, it’s particularly useful to appoint a marketing and promotions officer, or small team to oversee the development and implementation of your cub’s marketing strategies.
We have provided a sample marketing and promotions job description in the resources section of ClubKit.
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Developing a simple marketing plan
A simple marketing plan should form part of your overall planning process. It helps you find out more about customers needs, how you can develop new and existing services to keep up with their needs, and how to let your customers know this.
A marketing plan should not be complicated and they need not be difficult to develop. It is important to be realistic about what your club's objectives for marketing as some marketing strategies can be costly to implement and may not have the desired effect.
There are many different ways to develop a marketing plan, but before you start it may be useful to have a discussion with other members at one of your meetings about what sets your club apart from other clubs, what your club offers that other clubs don’t and what the benefits of joining your club are. These messages about your club should be included into any marketing plan and subsequent marketing activities, as these are the things that are likely to attract new members and make people feel good about joining.
It may also be helpful to look at how other clubs do their marketing and base your plan around similar activities as the chances are that if other clubs regularly do certain activities they are likely to be effective.
Many clubs make the mistake of spending a lot of time and money on conducting promotions to recruit new members and forget about retaining current members. Developing marketing strategies to improve the basic product or services the club or group provides, the attitudes of staff towards members or customers and the standard of facilities may be less expensive and more effective in the long-term.
A simple plan for a small club would contain some basic elements including:
- Objectives. These should be specific, measurable and achievable. An example might be recruiting an additional 20 junior members by the start of a particular competition.
- Situation analysis. What’s your club current situation? It could be helpful to do a SWOT analysis to establish your clubs strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats.
- Strategies. These are the tools and activities that you are going to do to address your particular club’s situation (e.g. not enough members). These tools and activities must be targeted towards the specific target markets. Target marketing is the practice of designing and directing specific services at specific individuals or groups of customers. Try to think about what the most effective way of communicating with your target market, what they like, what they read, where they go and how to attract their attention.
- Budget. Develop a realistic marketing budget within the club’s or group’s capabilities and focusing on low-cost or no-cost strategies is best to begin with.
- Evaluation. Make sure strategies are put in place to see if you have met your objectives. Some activities are easy to monitor, such as a membership drive, others will not be able to be evaluated until after the event. Collect copies of press clippings or media coverage, records of attendances at functions or competitions and any feedback your group receives whether it's positive or negative.
We have provided a sample of a more detailed marketing plan in the resources section that may be useful for bigger sports and recreational clubs. For more information on developing a more comprehensive marketing plan SPARC has also developed ‘Creating a Stakeholder Communications Plan which outlines how to construct a plan, who you need to communicate with, about what, how you can do it and how often.
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Marketing, communication and promotional techniques
There are lots of techniques that your club can use to market, communicate and promote itself. Here are some most clubs could consider:
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- Club logo to use on your club’s letterhead, signage and other promotional material.
- Websites are a simple and effective way to communicate to your members, supporters and the local community. Ask around your members for skills to design and write your club’s website. Basic websites should include:
- What your club offers.
- Calendar of events and meetings.
- Membership information
- Who to contact i.e. your club’s contact details.
- Try and get your website linked to related sites. You could also ask your local council, schools and recreation centres to provide a link to your site. If you have the resources, you could consider discussion forums and other functions to your site. Assign someone responsible for updating pages and adding new information.
- Newsletters provide information to members about club events, activities and news. Ask around your members for skills to design and write your club’s newsletter. It will be less expensive to email your newsletter to members rather than printing it. Don’t forget to publish it on your website too.
- Signage could be used at registration days, presentation days, competitions and promotional events.
- Flyers and brochures that outline your club’s services or competitions, membership fees and contact information. You could use your local community notice boards, library, recreation centres, primary schools or letter box drop in the local area to distribute these.
- T-shirts and uniforms can enhance a club’s image while promote a club at events and activities. You could use things like caps, socks and T-shirts for fundraising (insert link) and promote your club at the same time.
- Advertising is paid information that appears in different forms of media eg. newspapers, radio and television. You control what’s included in the advertisement, however, it can be costly so it’s wise to consider less costly forms of marketing first. If you wish to advertise then choosing the most appropriate advertising method for your target market or audience is very important.
Using the media to promote your club
This can be as simple as ringing your local newspaper if you’ve got an event on or your club has an interesting story to tell. Find out what they’re interested in covering and how you can give them the information. Check their deadlines and requirements. Developing a good relationship with your local media can be useful for raising your club’s public profile. The good thing is that once this relationship is established, future contact with them will be a lot easier.
The media is more likely to publish or broadcast news or human-interest stories that will appeal to their audiences so working out ways to make your information more interesting and finding an angle that will attract attention is more likely to get your club in the news.
We have provided a resource you can use to increase your chances when dealing with the media.
Here are a few ideas on how to access your local media and what you can do to get your sport and club in the news. If you have an event or an interesting story to tell, you could contact the following people:
- Your local or community newspapers - your local paper is most likely to be interested in covering your event but sometimes they don’t have the staff to do it. So if the paper cannot send someone to cover your club’s event it may be happy for you to send them a story. Media releases are the standard way of providing information to the media. If you have enough resources you could consider writing one. Take some photos and offer to send those too.
- Radio - your regional radio station is a vital link to its community and so is sport and recreation. Make contact with your regional radio station to let them know who you are, what your club is doing, and the types of events you have coming up. Your local radio may have a regular community events notice that they can include your club’s event in.
We have provided a sample media release in the resources section of Club Kit.
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Communication within your club
Each club is different and each club will have efficient ways of communicating information to their members. These communication activities may be shared between everyone in the club or you may have a person dedicated to it. The important thing is that communication is kept up. A few simple systems will ensure everything runs smoothly.
Correspondence
All sorts of information will arrive in the post and email inboxes of a club. Someone will need top sift through the information received by the club and distribute it to the relevant people in the most effective manner.
Official circulars/bulletins
Sports and recreational clubs may receive regular newsletters or bulletins from their national sports or recreational organisation. It will need to be someone’s responsibility to ensure that the club officials and members are made aware of the relevant news, deadlines, opportunities etc.
Records and databases
Ideally, the database should also be categorised to allow for specific targeted communication. Club database categories could include:
- Committee.
- Premier Grade Squad & Management.
- All Players.
- Social members.
- Under 18’s/Juniors.
- Seniors and veterans.
- All members.
- Lapsed members.
- External contacts.
- Sponsors and VIP’s.
The database should be attached to the clubs email system to allow for targeted emails. Some clubs will assign their club secretary to manage their membership database. The information technology section of Club Kit has more information on databases and how to set one up.
How is everything communicated?
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- Newsletters are the most common and direct form of information distribution to members, especially if it is via email. There is a big difference between a newsletter that is simple black and white text in basic paragraphs with all relevant information set-out clearly, and a newsletter which could win a design award but is either too difficult to read, full of irrelevant information (or worse, lacking relevant information), or too big in memory to email. A good newsletter simply needs to get all relevant information to the right people in a timely and easily accessible fashion.
- General emails make communication between organisations and their stakeholders incredibly easy. This can be a huge benefit to a time and resource strapped club. Be thoughtful about what you are sending out to your members or correspondents. It is also more effective to send a single notice out with five or six key points than five or six separate emails especially if this follows a committee meeting. When sending out mass emails you should list all the email addresses in the “bcc” box not the “to” box or the “cc” box. This prevents everyone on the list seeing every email address and can help avoid privacy and spam problems.
- Websites and the internet have become the single most powerful communication device. It is a cheap and effective tool to get information out to existing and prospective members alike. Whilst more about the internet will be handled below, it is great if your club can maintain a vibrant, informative and up-to-date website for the club.
Resources and more information
SPARC’s Supporting Sport: Creating a Stakeholder Communications Plan provides in-depth advice on how to communicate with a wide range of stakeholders.
CommunityNet Aotearoa an internet resource developed for communities in New Zealand has a good section on communication and information relevant for your club.
Department of Sport, New South Wales, Australia provides more useful information on marketing and promoting your club.
Other resources you can use to plan your club’s marketing, communication and promotion include:
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