Looking to Target HS Athletes and Their Families?

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As a property sales rep or corporate sponsor, you may be targeting high school consumers and their families for a number of different reasons:

PROPERTIES

  • Group Sales (targeting teams, local area athletes, etc.)
  • Low-Cost Single Game Ticket Sales
  • Driving Younger Fanbase
  • Drafting/Recruiting (NHL, etc.) 

CORPORATE SPONSORS

  • Platforms/programs designed to target high school consumers
  • Product Trial / Awareness

hs1.jpgIt really is no suprise that this demographic is targeted by a number of different parties... Why? Because they are so elusive - teen consumers use a variety of different mediums for entertainment/information purposes (Internet, Television, iPod/iPhone, Radio, Print, mp3, YouTube, etc.) and they are very conscious of which companies are selling to them versus who ARE them.

So, what is a new platform that you can use to target these individuals?

beRecruited.com

Founded in 2000, beRecruited.com is an online community that features 175,000 HS athlete profiles (representing 14,000 high schools) registered on the site promoting themselves. beRecruited.com claims to have at least one person registered on the site from approximately 70% of the 20,000 high schools across the United States. 

beRecruited.com and its partner website, http://teams.berecruited.com offer virtual networking environments for HS players and coaches to promote themselves. The site breaks down athletes by state and enables users to set up profiles where they can share stats, photos, and videos - the site currently supports 18 different HS sports.

States with the most users include:

  • California (6,207 profiles), Texas, New York, Florida, Pennsylvania, Ohio (St. Ignatius Boys High School is the #1 school represented on beRecruited Teams), Illinois, Michigan, Georgia, New Jersey

The site does account for advertising, yet it's corporate partners page is not too extensive. However, this platform can easily expand with the growth of social media and technology use amongst consumers. If Facebook or Myspace were to develop a similar application to this, beRecruited.com would be in trouble (since those two social networking platforms already have an extensive user base) but for the time being, this is a great concept. This online communuty could turn into a very powerful platform for properties looking to target this segment. While the site is still in the early stages of development, sports property representatives and corporate partners may want to consider this while the iron is hot.

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NOTE: This article does not support beRecruited.com in any nature. The objective of the article is to simply to inform readers that this web community exists, among a number of opportunities, to target HS consumers.