Web Marketing Tips for Sports Teams and Sports Leagues

Get the highest online visibility for your Sports Teams & Leagues using  FoundLocally.com free listings.

Vaughan baseball game, at night
Vaughan baseball game, at night

Why should only “major league” sports teams and leagues get the public attention? FoundLocaly provides the opportunity for all amateur sports to promote themselves,their news, and their events (sign-ups, games, end-of-season awards, and fund-raising events), using a self-serve toolkit.

Teams and leagues very rarely exist in isolation, and are sometimes in competition in a community, or often are part of a larger regional, provincial, or national sports body or association. FoundLocally wishes to help all teams and leagues at all levels to be able to promote themselves and their activities effectively.

While traditional media (ie print, TV, radio) only covers the local and national “pro” teams with both rabid–and often vacuous–coverage of these teams, their players, coaches and owners, they generally overlook the amateur athletes (except maybe right before the Olympics) and minor leagues and children’s and teen level leagues and competitions. This is because their business needs require them to focus only on the few teams that have enough paying fans to attract a solid base of advertisers (mostly, it seems, the beer companies).

Since FoundLocally has no such operating constraints, we welcome all teams and leagues, in all sports. To ad themselves to our site, and post their news, events & games, job s & volunteer opportunities, and otherwise raise their sports and their team/league’s visibility in the community.

Make the Most of Your PROFILE

  1. Use the Description field on their PROFILE page to showcase the league’s/team’s sports, scope, size, and ages/genders of players.
  2. Use the Product/Brands field to showcase the areas your players come from and the league names. This field is permitted to be a comma-separated “keyword dump” Enter the most common search phrases like “Cambridge bantam hockey”, “Cambridge coed hockey league”, but keep in mind the tight 250 character limit on what you say. Be very selective
  3. Link to your website and use the Contact field to post your e-mail address or link to your Contact Us form, where you can pre-qualify the buyer or seller in your own way.
  4. All listings MUST have a local phone number (can be home or cell phone, but keep this updated when details change)
  5. In the Logo field, you can either post a logo of the firm you are with, the logo of the office, or your own photo. Logos & Images must fit inside a 250 pixel square. Any larger images will be resized by FoundLocally.
  6. Choose Areas in the pop-down list to designate the areas where most of your players come from specialize in. Pick the TWO closest, so people can choose you based on how close you are to them. There is no value in choosing opposite ends of town.
  7. We have a number of Category template options for that apply to “Sports team” and “Sports league”. You MUST SELECT the sport from the Shopping-Sports categories that applies to your league and the appropriate demographic in the Shopping-Attributes (at the bottom of theShopping Categories form)
  8. If you are a sports school (for any sport), then you should choose the “Martial Arts school” from the templates list, and just change the Shopping-Sports category to reflect your sport.
  9. If you are a ‘one-on-one fitness instructor’ or a ‘bootcamp’ just choose the ‘Fitness instructor/Bootcamp’ option from the templates list.

Maximize Visibility in the CATEGORIES

  1. We provide some Templates at the bottom of the PROFILE page, but then  review the SHOPPING-Sports categories and check the appropriate sport(s)
  2. If you provide lessons (for a fee, in addition to team or league membership) appropriate options are in the SHOPPING-Learning & Education section, typically “School – Other” and “Sports & Recreation”
  3. If you sell Sporting Equipment, then check the SHOPPING-Goods & Services and select “Sporting Goods”. If you sell uniforms (again, only if priced extra, and not included in the team/league fee) then select “Sportswear” from the SHOPPING-Clothing categories.
    TIP: if you do all of thes, the  you can save time by selecting the”Martial Arts School”  template on the PROFILE page and just changing the sport played/taught in the SHOPPING-Sports section
  4. If you are a not-for-profit team/league we  use the ASSOCIATIONS/PUBLIC SERVICE categories and select sports-appropriate categories. If you are a for-profit school, team or league, then de-select these categories to avoid misleading the public.

Post NEWS  & Announcements

  1. Post news about accomplishments and awards to the NEWS tab. These are live right away (once your listing has been activated), and stay there as long as you want (the default is about 900 years!) … try getting that response and visibility from the local newspaper, unless you are a “Golden Child”.
  2. Announcements stay posted until you take them down. On FoundLocally.com, news has a long shelf life. FoundLocally news is not thrown out or recycled the next day, like with a newspaper!
  3. Improve your findability by increasing the association of keywords in the news story with your web site and your name. In addition they can improve your credibility as an industry resource

Post your EVENTS

  1. You post sign-ups, open houses, fundraisers, workshops, playoffs, tournaments, even games to the EVENTS tab
  2. Events on a consistent day of the week have a special event form: fill one form to post multiple weeks’ events
    PERFECT for “Sunday church services”, “Monday night football”, “Thursday Ladies’ Nights”, etc

TIP: If you are a farmers market, or are a competitive major league or “A” level team, contact us about getting all your home games into your EVENTS using an Excel spreadsheet which clones your events (and you only have to enter details for a single game the first season you list with FoundLocally.com!)

Post JOBS to fill openings

  1. You can use the JOBS tab (and “Add New”) to post openings for either paid or volunteer staff. Volunteer positions are noted by choosing “Volunteer” from the “Type” pop-down list.
  2. Any postings you are currently recruiting for should have the “Active” radio button checked. After positions are filled and/or after the festival is over, all positions should have the “Inactive” radio button selected. 
  3. DO NOT DELETE positions at the end of the posting, because you can re-used the postings next time, simply by checking the “Active” checkbox, and updating the Posting Information dates & details.

Invite Ratings & Reviews

  1. Invite your happy clients and fans to post Ratings & Reviews, to help others learn why they should patronize you
  2. We do not permit you  to enter your own reviews, but we provide a simple form to e-mail an invitation to your members.
  3. Facebook login is required, to reduce review fraud, abuse, and spam (no anonymous reviews)

Add your LOCAL Free Listing to FoundLocally.com

Don’t forget to also post any News, Events, Jobs, and Savings to promote all aspects of your business and operations, (using the respective tabs in your listing). FoundLocally can load an entire season’s game schedule from an Excel spreadhseet… contact us for more information.

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