Marketing Your Club

What is Marketing?

Marketing is not just for big businesses. It’s a vital aspect of your Club too and requires the same amount of time, commitment and energy that goes into all the other aspects of running your Club.

Marketing is about effectively promoting your Club, its activities, and the benefits it provides. It’s about getting your message across to the right people at the right time so they can act. It could be as simple as placing a post of your local community Facebook page, holding a ‘Come and Try’ session or offering an early bird special for registrations.

In fact, Committee members and other volunteers including coaches, managers and trainers also indirectly contribute to the marketing of your Club in their day-to-day roles.

Benefits of Marketing

Effective and well-planned marketing of your Club can have several benefits. These include:

• increased registrations
• enhanced brand, image and reputation
• perceived value for money
• new partnership opportunities or development of long-term alliances or in-kind support
• increased awareness and credibility in the community.

Developing a Marketing Plan

A good marketing plan will ensure that your Club can market and position itself correctly within the community and continue to grow. It links with your Club’s strategic plan which sets the overall direction for your organisation.

It does not need to be particularly difficult to develop or the strategies costly to implement.

Download this template to develop your own marketing plan for your Club.

Strategies to Consider as Part of your Marketing Plan

Click here to find out more about using:

• Social media
• Media
• Website
• Paid advertising
• Electronic direct mail (EDMs)
• Printed materials
• Branding
• Partnerships
• Events

Some Tips on Getting Started

• Before you start developing your marketing plan, it may be useful to raise it with members at a Committee meeting:
  • Discuss what sets you apart from other Clubs, what your Club offers that other Clubs don’t, and what the benefits of joining your Club are.
  • These messages about the Club should be included in the marketing plan and subsequent marketing activities. These are the things that attract new members and make people feel good about joining.
• It may be helpful to look at how other Clubs market themselves. This may give you some ideas to adapt for your own plan.
• Many Clubs make the mistake of spending a lot of time and money on promotion to recruit new members/players but forget existing current members.
• For crisis media management, refer directly to NSWRL’s Media Team ([email protected]).

Resources Developed by NSWRL to Support your Club

• Marketing plan template
• Basic social media calendar
• Detailed social media calendar
• A list of key events and dates of significance
• Selection of sample media releases
• Guide to capturing photos and videos
• Tips for creating engaging artwork
• NSWRL Social Media Policy

Other Useful Resources

• Social Media Toolkit by Good Sports to help you get started with social media
• Canva – a free-to-use online graphic design tool
• Marketing by Office of Sport