The Simple Visual Recruiting Communication Rule That's Working for Coaches
When it comes to telling your story to recruits, shorter and straight-to-the-point wins
Because college coaches have a lot to say to the recruits they begin communicating with, the temptation is natural:
Get as much information to them as soon as possible. Because if you don’t give them everything right away, they might not be interested in you and your program, right?
Actually, the research proves the opposite.
By a 4 to 1 margin, in research Tudor Collegiate Strategies has conducted over the last five year, recruited student-athletes tell us that shorter messages actually are easier to understand, lets them focus on one or two key ideas that get remembered, and make it more likely that they’ll reply back to the coach who sent it.
Another way to look at the feedback is by understanding the importance of how the message appears visually to the recruit you’re sending it to. I’m not talking about the pictures and cool graphics, I’m talking about the way the text appears to your reader when they first see the letter, email or text message that you’re sending to them.
We first judge things through our senses - our sight, hearing, smell, touch or taste. When I was a kid, I hated the way broccoli felt as I was chewing it. As an adult, I hate junk mail…I’ve learned to look at the upper righthand corner of the envelope as I grab it from the mailbox and look for the ‘PRSRT STD’ mark, which stands for ‘Presorted Standard’ mail (which is what bulk mailers use instead of sending more expensive First Class mail).
Your recruits are doing the same thing. They’ll judge your messages based on the way they appear when you send them. Proportionally, the longer your message is, the less likely it will be read or responded to.
Visually, for letters you’re sending, you shouldn’t be using the entire sheet of 8 1/2” x 11” piece of paper to write your message to recruits. According to them, only a portion of it should be used to make it more visually appealing. The same rule applies to emails, too, as indicated by the green area in each example below…this is what you want to aim for as you create your message:
The goal of recruiting messaging is to tell your recruits about you, your program and your campus, that’s true. But it should also be your goal to get a response from the message you create, and it can’t look and sound the same as every other coach’s message - especially when it comes to communicating with the different tiers of prospects you’re dealing with in each recruiting class.
If your goal is greater results from your recruiting messaging, you need to pay attention to how it is constructed visually.
There’s an easy way to achieve maximum results in starting new communication with a new class of recruits.
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