6 tips to grow your school sports team
School sports are more than just a way to get exercise. They help students learn how to work as a team, make new friendships, and develop important skills. But perhaps most of all, they’re just fun! According to studies, 54.1% of school-aged children participate in some school sports program. If you want to grow your program, here are six tips to get more signups for your school sports team.
Hang flyers around school
If you want to recruit other students to your school sports team, you need to advertise where students spend their time. Where do students spend their time? At school! And the best way to tell students about your sports team is with some eye-catching posters.
As students walk the halls to their classes, they’ll see your poster hanging on the wall, think about how fun your sports team looks, and take down your information to sign up later.
It’s not easy to find time to design amazing posters from scratch. But luckily, there are thousands of free sports team flyer templates available from websites like PosterMyWall. Just find the template that best fits your team’s style, customize the information, and you’re ready to hang around school. It’s the best way to get your team in front of more students!
Provide easy access to signup forms with QR codes
Nobody carries around a pen and paper anymore. So when someone sees your flyer and wants to sign up for your team, make sure they can easily find your information or signup sheet with a well-placed QR code.
With a QR code, anyone walking past your flyers can easily pull out their cell phone, open the camera, scan the code, and go directly to either your team’s website or straight to your signup sheet. It’s like a hyperlink in real life!
Put QR codes on any physical marketing materials you create, like your sports team flyer, brochures, handouts, or even business cards.
Reach out to other sports teams and organizations
You need great athletes to join your team. And typically, great athletes are interested in more than one sport. One of the best ways to get more signups for your school sports team is to advertise to other teams either in your school or in the local area.
For example, if you want to encourage students to sign up for the basketball team, it might be a good idea to reach out to the track team to see if anyone’s interested. Basketball is usually a winter sport, while track is typically in the spring, so anyone you recruit wouldn’t have to worry about conflicting schedules. Plus, you already know they can run and jump, which would just be an added bonus to your team!
Offer early registration discounts
Money is often a barrier that prevents many students from participating in school sports. By providing incentives to lower the cost of signing up for your team, you can encourage more students to join. And one of the best ways to lower costs is to offer an early registration discount.
Early registration discounts are great for two reasons. First, you can help students who might have budgetary restraints have fun on a school sports team. Second, even students who don’t have budgetary restrictions will be incentivized to sign up early. And the sooner you know how many people are on your team, the better you can plan for the upcoming season!
Build a website or landing page
Before anyone commits to a school sports team, they want to make sure they understand the requirements. Since you don’t want to be on the phone all day answering the same questions time and time again, it’s a good idea to build a website or at least a landing page dedicated to your school sports team.
Your team’s website should address all the most important information students will need to know before they sign up for your team, including:
- Cost
- Practice times
- Game schedule
- Coaches names and contact information
- Required equipment
The easier it is to find information about your team, the more likely students will be to sign up. And once you have your website ready, make sure you include a link or QR code on all your other marketing materials!
Get social on social media
Nearly everyone is online these days, especially students. According to surveys, 97% of student-aged kids regularly use at least one social media platform! Essentially, by posting content to social media promoting your school sports team, you can potentially reach almost every student in your school.
The best way to promote your school sports team on social media is to create a dedicated profile for your team. That way, you can post only sports-related content and engage with other users as your team to encourage more people to sign up.
Once you have your team’s profiles on a few of the most popular platforms, be sure to post content regularly. Photos and videos from your practices and games are always a good idea, and you can even go behind-the-scenes to show the fun you have with your teammates to make engaging content.
Other users can interact directly with your team’s social media pages to ask questions and learn more about your sports program. And don’t forget to link back to your website or landing page!
Build your school sports team with effective promotional strategies
Teamwork makes the dream work. But in order for that cliché to be true, you first need to build a team! When you’re ready to get more signups for your school sports team, start by hanging eye-catching flyers around the school grounds, use QR codes to make it easy for students to find information about your team, reach out to other teams at school, offer early registration discounts, build a website or landing page, and post plenty of quality content to social media.
By making your team look like a ton of fun to join — which it definitely is — you’ll be able to get more students to sign up, build a better team, and no doubt take your school to this season’s championship game!