How to Market yourself to College Coaches

One of the quickest ways you can raise your recruiting stock and stand out to prospective coaches is by knowing how to market yourself. This type of marketing isn't very different than the work that would be done by a marketer trying to advertise to potential customers to buy their product. The same concepts still apply you have to market your skills (both athletic and academic) to coaches which are basically your customers. This is one of the best ways to seal the deal with a coach. Being in college athletics I've gotten to hear countless stories of how a great marketing approach has gotten an athlete a spot or scholarship and how a poor marketing approach has cost some athletes the same. In this article I'm going to cover some of the most important aspects of marketing yourself to college coaches like what to look for on a highlight reel, how to send an email to a college coach, and how to stand out academically and personally.

Creating an Effective Highlight Reel

The highlight reel is one of the best ways to get a coach's attention, think of it like an advertisement you'd see on tv. Everyone has seen a bad advertisement on tv and the same goes with highlight reels here I'm going to cover how to make sure your highlight reel has the best possible effect on coaches that see it. Highlight reels are extremely important and they can be reused and sent to a huge amount of people either by email or social media so this is something that you want to have perfect. It helps to think about all the time you've put into getting to this point, you don't want to put years into perfecting your craft and then spend minutes on the ad that showcases your work. Now to break down what you can do to make your highlight reel ready to send out. First and foremost, Do Not add music to your highlight reel when you're sending it to a coach. It sounds like a professional touch, but it takes away attention from your highlights which is what we want attention to in the first place. Also, odds are you and the coach don't like the same music, so its best left out. Next, make it your best and keep it reasonable. The coach you're trying to convince is sorting through hundreds of highlights reels a year and still coaching they don't have the time to watch a 20-minute highlight reel. The ideal range for a highlight reel is from 3 to 5 minutes. They also judge the quality of your reel which means you need to keep it your best, don't dig and find alright clips to increase the length of your highlight reel, this does more harm than good. A medicine marketer would never increase the amount of time spent on side effects to increase the length of their commercial. This brings me to my next point while finding your best clips is important positioning of them is even more. Most coaches only watch the first few clips to see if the rest of the highlight reel is worth watching. This means you don't save your best for last because they'll never see it. Put your best clips up front to grab their attention.

Crafting a Professional Email for Coach Recruitment

If the highlight reel is like your ad on tv your email is your marketing pitch. You only get one chance to make a first impression and usually your email is that shot. So, you want to put your best foot forwards when emailing a prospective coach. Most importantly keep it professional refer to your coach as coach [insert name here] and any other faculty by their titles [like doctor]. Secondly use proper English. You think it would go without saying but it happens make sure to speak clearly and elaborately and if you're worried about grammar plug it into one of the hundred websites that are designed to fix grammar. Another good option is to bring it to your English teacher. As a student you have access to at least a few English majors right in your school and they would have no problem helping out a student structure an email. Lastly, make sure you have a professional email address. I would actually recommend making an email address just for recruiting. This way all of your emails are in one place and easy to track.

The Importance of Academic and Personal Branding in Standing Out to Coaches

Finally, how you market yourself academically and personally is one of the most important things you can do to help yourself stand out in a sea of recruits. Academics are huge and a great leg up on competition of similar skill level. This isn't saying you need a 4.0 or a 1600 SAT but you shouldn't sandbag academics during high school. Coaches see your grades when they look up your school's honor roll or dean's list and they notice that. It shows work ethic and that's something they look for. Personality is a huge concern for coaches. Marketing yourself personally means being humble and professional. The last thing a coach wants to do is recruit locker room trouble and they try their best to avoid doing that. This means you want to put your best foot forwards and make it clear that you won't be trouble to them. The coach wants to recruit someone they can be around for 3/4 of the school year so being professional and showing that you won't be trouble goes a long way.

Putting this all together is a surefire way to get a coach's attention, put your best foot forwards, and get a leg up on your competition.