Recruiting Material Made Easy
and easily….
I know most coaches are always looking for materials to share with recruits and promte their teams and schools. They complain that a media guide, a few cards, and an admissions brochure are not enough.
I agree that those are certainly not enough but the truth is that colleges are producing tons of recruiting information daily. Most have a staff of marketing, public relations, and graphic design pros. These guys are constantly turning out materials for admissions, advancement, fundraising, student life, athletics and other departments. You as a coach have to know what is happening on your campus and you need to have a relationship with these people. Talk to them, invite them to meets, let them know you are interested in their work, and you would be interested in seeing anything that you could easily adapt to help you promote the school and team.
Why? Because the materials they are producing can easily be tailored to fit your needs in recruiting.. Sometimes they are fillers, in magazines and sometimes they are full pamphlets but they all contain little pieces of information that you can use.
I am going to share some examples of what we have used this year.
I first want to say that as I wrote in the post on recruiting letters (link here) at the start of the recruiting relationship you have to always have a reason or purpose for a communication. These materials can be a reason.
At Central we have a large exercise science program, because of this we have a great deal of alumni working in sports. Exercise science is also a popular major among athletes! I think this is a huge competitive advantage for the team as we look at recruiting. There are other schools in the state with lower tuition, better wrestling teams (we will get that changed), and more students. None of those schools have 100% placement into graduate programs. CENTRAL DOES! I’m not going to put down other schools but Central has a faculty in exercise science that has dedicated itself to being. Because of this we have an amazing alumni base that is involved in athletics at all levels.
We have an alum that has become a trainer for the Green Bay Packers. He got that job because of an internship arranged through the faculty at Central. Our alumni publications featured him in an article and it generated a lot of interest from the student athletes who saw it. The problem is that not as many saw that article as we would have liked. I got in touch with our publications department and asked them if they could make a PDF of the two page spread. (See it here)
With some minor adaptations such as changing the font and changing some graphics to a smaller resolution we got a great piece of material. Now, if I talk to a recruit that expresses an interest in athletic training I can either print the article or e-mail it to him with a note in the margin or email as a follow up. If I email it I try to make sure I include some bullet points to reinforce the articles ideas.
This also gives me a reason to call them later on and see if they have any questions for me about the program or the college. I was not sure if kids would actually read it but as it turns out, they usually skim it, and almost always read the bullet points. I have called kids and had them ask me to wait for a minute as they find the article because they have written questions on the paper.
- Speaking of bullet points!
I don’t know how your all campus e-mail system works but I am constantly bombarded with e-mail congratulating people on retiring, announcing events, and promoting on campus events. We also have a web site that highlights these events and other things going on. You can always pull from these sights and publications. I would suggest that you start a running document on your computer that you cut and paste facts into. This will give you taking points and in time you can create your own fact sheets. Using some information from admissions we created this facts sheet that we can show recruits on their visits to highlight our strengths.
If you are sending out hand written notes you can drop some of these in there as reinforcing points or make sure to reference them in phone conversations. I have found these to be valuable with recruits but even more so with parents.
You can check out our latest edition here.
The point is that colleges are always producing promotional material. Coaches need to have a relationship with the department doing the work and keep an eye open. With a little computer work you can tailor it to your needs and use it to promote your team.
As J. Robinson would say, “If you are not responsible for the promotion of your team, who is”?
The points
· Keep an eye on the publications your school is producing. Athletes have a life outside of competition and if you miss the good things they are doing off the mat, you are missing a chance to reward them for great achievements and to promote your program and school.
o If you have an athlete get a DUI you are going to hear about it from the press on the other side of that the world should hear about it when one of your student athletes does something positive. For every DUI arrest happening in college athletics there are at least one hundred great things. Check out this article on Central Baseball player Adam Durfield. We made 2 versions. The first is just a copy from an alumni magazine and we put on wrestling letterhead. ( 1 )( 2) He may not be a wrestler but, any student at Central has the opportunity to do what he has. Every college has similar events occurring. Keep an eye out for them.
· Faculty, student, and alumni spotlight sections can allow you to illustrate how people from your school are achieving great things and a prospect could follow in their footsteps.
· Use bullet points and facts and figures. People almost always scan something first and then turn around and read the article in full if they are interested.
· Make sure you are patient and friendly with promotional and marketing staff. A lot of times they work behind the scenes so if you show up making demands and don’t say thank you they may resist helping you more than they have to. You may have to start out with just a photo copy but I have never had anyone say no to a request to help with this stuff.
· Learn some basic computer skills so you can quickly adapt these to your needs. For some projects you may need the help of a pro but anyone that can use Microsoft word can easily create documents to highlight their programs.
See also
· Making a PDF with PDF creator
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