Marketing is one of the most important yet most underappreciated aspects of running a booster club. As you organize activities and events throughout the year, you need a leader who can help you get attention and raise the funds you need. That’s why having a booster club marketing leadership role is key to achieving your booster club’s goals.
With a dedicated Marketing Director or Vice President of Marketing to promoting your booster club, you can reach a wider audience, build relationships, and raise more money for your team.
So, what is a typical booster club marketing leadership role and what do they do?
What Is A Booster Club Marketing Leadership Role?
Generally, the marketing director is responsible for all of the marketing activities that an organization undertakes. They create marketing plans, oversee social media and email campaigns, and manage their subordinates in the marketing department. Working closely with the management team, the marketing director is responsible for developing a strategy to promote the organization within a given budget.
Most booster clubs aren’t created with a marketing director in place. The typical structure of booster club management consists of a president, vice president, treasurer, and secretary. But other positions can and should be created as the need arises.
Marketing activities are often left up to the president or volunteers in smaller booster clubs, but if the need for more strategic, powerful marketing efforts is apparent, the role of marketing director can be created. The process for creation of new roles may be defined in your bylaws, but if not, the marketing director can simply be appointed by the president or through a special election by club members.
What Does a Booster Club Marketing Director Do?
You may be wondering about the role of marketing director of a booster club or the role of marketing VP of a booster club. A booster club marketing director is primarily responsible for promoting your organization. They get your name out there and help persuade people to give you their financial support.
The responsibilities of a booster club marketing leadership role include:
- Attracting volunteers. Booster clubs are always in need of new members and properly advertising for volunteer opportunities can help ensure your club has the help it needs.
- Promoting activities and events. You can spend all year organizing the perfect fundraising gala, but it doesn’t mean much if nobody attends! A good marketing director helps promote your activities and events.
- Building awareness. Does your community know that their school football team has a booster club? A marketing director helps your booster club build a following, both online and in real life.
- Driving donations. All good marketers help drive funds to their organization. Consistently appealing for donations through emails, letters, and social media is something all booster club marketing directors should do.
Like any good marketer, a booster club marketing director must know their audience. So, research and communication are crucial tasks to more effective marketing. Working with volunteers and the community, the marketing director can learn about what motivates your audience to act and how they can target marketing efforts to appeal to the right demographics.
What to Look for in a Marketing Director
Those in a booster club marketing leadership role must also be able to measure and analyze data, and then make decisions based on that information. There are a variety of tools available to measure the performance of various digital marketing campaigns which can be used to determine which tactics are effective. This means that marketers can quantify their success more easily than in the past,
Relationship management is also important for marketing directors. While the president of your booster club is responsible for maintaining relationships with school administration, coaching staff, and parents, the marketing director can help build relationships with important donors and local businesses.
As you can see, this is a lot of responsibility for one person to take on.
In a larger nonprofit organization or booster club, there may be several other roles functioning under the marketing director. But if you’re a small booster club, it’s likely that your marketing director will be solely responsible for the majority of marketing efforts.
Marketing Leadership Role Responsibilities Over Time
Booster club leadership can vary greatly in size and structure. Some organizations have only two or three booster club leadership positions while others can have over a dozen. Depending on the structure of your booster club, leadership roles can differ. And so, the responsibilities of a VP of marketing can change significantly over the course of a booster club’s growth.
Initially, a booster club marketing leadership role may have substantial responsibilities. Creating marketing materials like press releases, flyers, newsletters, and social media posts are all tasks that a marketing director will deal with in addition to developing and implementing a marketing plan for the club.
This is perfectly fine to begin with, but eventually, your booster club will want to find more specialized team members to complete these tasks, especially as your organization grows.
As a booster club grows over the years and new team members and volunteers join the organization, responsibilities can be delegated, and the scope of the marketing director’s role can become more focused on the comprehensive management of marketing activities rather than the time consuming creation of marketing materials.
There is no one right or wrong way to approach marketing. And accordingly, the approach to marketing that your booster club takes may change with turnover or transitions in leadership and as leadership style and goals change.
Your booster club president may want to focus efforts on building awareness online by refining your website, creating social media campaigns, and growing your email list. Or perhaps your president wants to focus on raising donations. Marketing efforts are flexible and adaptable and can be retooled to suit the needs of your booster club.
The booster club marketing leadership role is indispensable in the growth of your booster club and its ability to operate successfully. Whether creating awareness, building relationships, or raising funds, a good marketing director helps to promote the organization and persuade donors to support your efforts.
