If your background is in sports and athletic coaching, you may find yourself struggling to understand “the whole marketing thing”—let alone, which strategies and tactics you can use to effectively promote your youth soccer program, increase registrations and enrollments, and build stronger relationships with your team, players’ parents and the community-at-large.
But that’s why we’re here to help!
Read on to learn why building a strong, seamless online experience is more important now than ever, and three things you’ll want to keep in mind when developing a digital strategy for your youth soccer program.
The Impact of COVID-19 on Youth Soccer
The COVID-19 pandemic completely disrupted youth soccer participation when local governments began imposing business closures, stay-at-home orders and social distancing policies. On top of that, online usage and mobile rates skyrocketed as more people flocked to their phones than ever before.
And now that many children and families are ready to re-engage with youth sports, it’s important to understand how the landscape has changed so you can figure out how to assist and improve future registrations and participation.
Three Ways to Build Your Youth Soccer’ Leagues Online Presence
Here’s a rundown of three things to keep in mind as you build your online presence:
1. Keep your website up-to-date
It’s not enough to just have a website—you need to make sure your website stays up-to-date, and that it’s mobile responsive. When players’ parents are looking for youth sports programs in their area, their first stop is likely an online search engine or social media platform. To appear in searches, make sure your club is updated regularly with recent and relevant content.
Make sure you create noticeable links or buttons on your site so that players’ parents can find them easily and be able to follow them. This will also help minimize the amount of time your staff has to track down various practice schedules, tournament dates, and so forth.
2. Use your social media accounts
Social media is an easy and free way to help parents looking for local activities to enrich their kids’ weekends and summers. Having a strong social media and online presence for your youth soccer program is important as it can extend your reach and spread information quickly.
Another easy way to build up interest in your youth soccer program is to regularly post photos of players, their parents, and any related events you may have. People, especially youth soccer players and their parents, love seeing themselves being featured in Facebook posts.
3. Keep in touch with the community
Stay in touch with both past and present players and their parents. Use your email database to easily send reminders on the new programs, check up on the ones who have missed registrations, and let them know why they should not miss the next.
Offering incentives, referrals, or discounts for early registrations or referring new players is another effective way to give your registration numbers a boost.
The complete solution for your youth soccer league
Your youth soccer league’s path to success involves everything from facility scheduling to online registration and more.
Here are three ways our comprehensive software solution can help:
- Registration: Provide clients the flexibility to register as a team or as individuals. Utilize online waivers and simplify fee collection with the use of registration deposits and a variety of processing options.
- Scheduling: Generate schedules for your leagues and tournaments reflecting team preferences, venue availability, bye-weeks and tournament seeds using our automated scheduler.
- Public Website: Provide clients real-time access to view standings, stay up to date on current league leaders, check scores and even browse through classified ads from teams looking for players.
Want to learn more? Schedule a free demo and personalized product tour today.