It’s the goal of every coach out there to get continued exposure for their youth soccer team, and it is the joy of every coach to see that their soccer team is highly sought after.

Unfortunately, not every soccer coach has a solid marketing plan set in place to make them stand out among competitors. Some coaches may have great ideas, but they are not well informed about how to properly manage these ideas to get them into the limelight. Getting the right exposure for your team is a long process, you are essentially marketing a business, having parents and players know your teams vision, ideas and history puts you in their minds, but that marketing process can be hard to define and harder still to implement.  

With the correct information and the necessary tips, you’ll be surprised to see the best young athletes seeking to join your soccer team because your team stands out amongst all your other team competitors.

Leverage social media

According to a 2018 journal of strategic marketing, titled “social media and sport“: “Given the new possibilities, provided for customers empowerment, social media has become one of the main channels through which consumers engage and interact with the brand” (Dolan, Conduit, Fahy and Goodman, 2016).

No doubt that you know this already, you need a social media account. Ideally two accounts, one for you as a coach and one for your team. But the real question is “do I use social media in the right way to maximize my soccer teams exposure?”. To leverage social media in the best way for your soccer team, you should:

• Create two instagram accounts, one that showcases you as a coach. This makes it easy for parents to find out more about you and gives them an insight into your coaching career, seeing information about you as a coach puts parents minds at ease considering how much their time children spend with their coaches. And a second account for your team, this gives parents and players a window into what it’s like to be on your team, here you can post fun happy moments from practice and games, shots that only you as a coach could get.
• Create high-quality graphics that will attract your potential audience. Nobody wants to stop scrolling for your posts if all the pictures are blurry, unattractive, and graphics full of text. A newish smartphone can easily do the job for you. If you can afford to get a piece of complete photography equipment, you can get a leg up on the competition and what player doesn’t want high quality content of them shared on social?
• Upload videos and pictures with a catchy caption (longer the better – it keeps people reading and keeps them on your post which is something Instagram uses to determine how interested users are in your post, and in turn shows that post to more people). Proper use of hashtags, here are some high-performing youth soccer hashtags you can hop on: #youthsoccer #youthsoccerteam #soccerteamnearme #soccerteam #soccerteams #soccerteam🏐, #soccerteammates, #soccerlife, #soccergame, #soccerball
• Show your players’ highlights and fun moments as a team. Capturing beautiful moments goes a long way to make your audience target want to join such a fun team.

Check out this social media example here and try these great tips for your social media pages as well.

Website Directories

According to a 2010 information technology journal titled the use of web directories, a web directory was defined as “categorized topics of  collections of information  organized  into  a  tree-like  structure  where  categories  are  used  to  define  each  association”

Most soccer clubs have websites and directories for their teams and coaches. These directories help parents find your team from that individual club and can easily see your contact info and reach out. If you’re a new team at a club make sure your team and your contact info is listed on the clubs directory, and if your club doesn’t have one then make sure they create one!

Club websites focus on the club as a whole but not the respective teams and the individual coaches. While it’s useful for a parent to see the teams of that club at a glance separated by age and gender, this list of virtually no information doesn’t go very far in marketing your team. Directories are an important step so make sure you’re on your clubs but don’t expect too much attention there.

Knowledge

A sports journal titled “A Coach’s Responsibility: Learning How to Prepare Athletes for Peak Performance” has it that “Proper management only comes from being prepared and trained on how to respond prudently to a situation” (Miller, M.G., & Berry, D. C. (2011)). A coach should be knowledgeable enough to handle a team properly with respect and authority. With the proper knowledge, players learn correctly, giving them more opportunities to be successful in their soccer careers.

Once other parents and players notice your dedication to continued coaching education, this naturally garners attention. Sharing your knowledge on social is a quick and easy way to showcase this, a new license that you’ve completed, a new webinar you joined, a conference you attended. All of these show that you as a coach are fully vested in upgrading your own knowledge of the game, which gives parents the confidence that they can expect their children to continually learn with you.

Reputation

Coaches of any soccer team must build a good reputation for their team and for themselves. Parents leave their children in the care of their coaches because there is an element of trust. A soccer team built on a ladder of bad reputation does not offer parents any confidence. An example is the case of sexual misconduct among young athletes and their coaches. Trust comes from reputation and once tarnished is all but irreversible.

A coaches reputation is as important as the clubs reputation. No coach wants to be affiliated with a bad club name, likewise no parent wants their child to be associated with a bad coach name.

Some simple tips for keeping your reputation positive, don’t engage in player or other coach gossip with parents. Keep interactions positive and professional with other coaches and parents, we all know that people talk and conversations get pulled apart while you can never stop the whispers, you can always approach parent and coach conversations in a professional manner, as you want the appearance of your team to be professional in itself.

You want a reputation as a coach that cares for and motivates their players, one that continues to improve themselves as a coach, one that shares their journey publicly to give parents confidence about them as a coach and that there can be no misconduct around the team.

A Sports Bridge Profile

A Sports Bridge profile allows coaches to showcase their team with an attractive webpage. It also helps to provide catchy team details and personal coach details, more so than what is available on club directories, and even more than any other platform that’s out there. You can highlight yourself as a coach, showcase your team all while providing parents with more information than they’ve ever seen on a single team. What other top-notch way to get exposure for your team?

The profile links can be shared in social media handles or sent directly to parents, allowing parents to get a detailed insight of your team. Once they’re on your profile, they can directly reach out to you from your profile, all communication is then tracked in your Sports Bridge dashboard.

Here’s an example of a Sports Bridge profile.

One great advantage of this profile is that you don’t need to deal with developers, designers, or any other complicated web builders. Coaches only need to enter their coaching details and their teams details in an easy to use form, once finished profiles are live look professional, branded and attractive on both desktop and mobile.

On top of that, profiles are listed in the search database, which means parents can find your teams profile by searching their zip code and seeing all the teams in their area, if you’re in their search area your team shows up. They then filter down those results and see the teams that fit their unique criteria for a team, when a parent reaches out to you from Sports Bridge you know they are serious, as they have already done their research and found you using the filters they chose.

Conclusion

With the mindset that your team is a business and that you’re the one who needs to market it, you can start thinking in marketing and promotional terms. By doing this you’ll attract more superstars to join your youth soccer team. Getting exposure for your youth soccer team can be a hard venture to delve in, but hopefully by using some of the details above, the process can be made just a little easier for you.