Marketers talk about defining your “target” or your “target market”. This helps us determine the means through which we will communicate with them. If it is 18-26 year olds living in California who have no plans to attend college then we will design a strategy much differently than if the target market were 50-62 year olds living in Pennsylvania who plan to retire. Pretty basic stuff… not splitting the atom here. As a coach, to reach your goals, you must identify your target market. First, you must determine what you are trying to achieve. Are you trying to grow your attendance, raise money, get more volunteers, increase student-body awareness or get more participants? Each is a different target market for which a different strategy must be defined.
Let’s use an example. You are trying to increase attendance at your home events by getting more of your student-body involved. You’re not going to run an ad in the local paper announcing your event. But you might create a mobile marketing campaign where students can text the word “wrestling” to a number given to you by the mobile marketing service. This subscribes them to announcements that you make about upcoming events, fun promotions or where the in-crowd will be next Thursday night.
Step 1: What do you want to achieve? (ex: stronger parent support of your program since most care only about football)
Step 2: Who are the people that are going to help you achieve it? (ex: parents but also athletes and football coaches)
Step 3: How do they act? What do they read? Where do they hang out? What motivates them? (ex: parents are concerned with the welfare and success of their child, football coaches care about the success of their players )
Step 4: Create a win-win and talk to them about it. (ex: Demonstrate how you can improve the well-being of a parents child and a football coaches players through their support of your program with consistent and impactful communication like this or this through email, getting media coverage (pick up the phone!) and support of the football program.
