Spring sports are finally winding down. The students are gone. The weather is getting nice.
It’s time to relax get to work!
Now don't get me wrong. It's important to take some time to recharge after a busy year. But this is also a great time of year to get ready for the fall. Why? No time limits on creativity and plenty of time to plan ahead. I’m sure many of you are already knee deep in football, but for those of us without football, our attention turns to our Olympic sports and basketball.
I want to share a few of my thoughts on planning for Olympic sports because this is something we are working on right now at Xavier. Marketing those sports is easily one of the hardest things we do as marketers in college athletics. Resources are few, priorities are elsewhere and coaches seemingly only care about their own program. So how do you have success despite those realities?
For me, it’s planning and understanding.
What do I mean by that?
First, let’s attack the understanding part. It’s important that you understand that you have limitations with your Olympic sports because they are non-revenue producing (in most cases), but that isn’t an excuse. My strategy is this: don’t try to win every game. Pick the one, three or five games that you do have the resources for and time to execute. Make those games the best they can be. I explain it to my coaches like this: Winning is great, but I don’t expect them to win every game. Please don’t expect me to win every game. This is admittedly blunt, yet honest and has been successful for us.
Second is planning. Planning ahead is huge. In my experience, I’ve been guilty of waiting until July to start planning for August soccer games. That’s just too late. If you plan now, build the outline of your promotions schedule and create a communications calendar, you are bound to be more successful than if you don’t plan this early. Work with your coaches now to identify the most important games, determine what resources you have and brainstorm creative ideas you want to execute.
So grab those schedules, highlight the important games and plan for the ones you will win!