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Race officials

Use our club planning tool and research to help shape your clubs future

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Futures webinars

The Futures Project was a joint initiative between British Marine and the RYA. Take a look at the webinar to see how we can take best advantage of the future challenges of our sport

Understanding your customer

Knowing your customer is vital in order for your centre to grow. Market Segmentation is a process that builds a profile of potential customers, allowing you to better understand who your different customer types are, and where they are located.
 
Sport England commissioned the market research company Experian to investigate why adults participate in sport, and what the barriers are to participating in sport.

The segmentation process groups the adult population (18 years plus) into nineteen distinct sporting ‘segments’ and provides an insight into their sporting behaviours and preferences for each of these segments, as well as the motivations and barriers to playing sport, satisfaction with the sporting experiences, and the best ways to communicate with and market to these people.

Some of the communication methods that Sport England put forward are unrealistic for the average club or centre, such as TV advertising. However others could be extremely appropriate such as developing opportunities through social media (e.g. Facebook and Twitter) as well as using younger members/customers as opinion leaders who will tell their friends about the sport.

To help your club / centre we have broken down the Sport England Research into the following bite-size chunks:

  1. Find out how to use the "Sport England Market Segementation guide"
  2. Identify who your dominant customers are, by visiting the Sport England.
  3. Here you can find about more about segments, explore a particular sport, or investigate further characteristics within your area, right down to a particular postcode.
  4. Understand more about your potential customer, using the fact sheets. Look at how you can adapt your courses to suit the customers' needs and wants.
  5. Communicate with and retain customers/club members using some of the suggested routes. 
fleet of dinghies sailing on a lake

Sailability research

Discover exceptional insights into how we are developing our Sailability programmes

A guide to development planning

Give your club clear direction and focus. We are keen to support your club to help ensure an active future. Our goal is to help you manage the development process.  The development process need not be onerous. You may wish to work on a small project or have greater plans. Either way our step by step guide will support you on your journey, help you determine which aspects of your club to develop, where you are now and where you want to be and of course how you will get there.

Whatever your current position, or aspirations, we hope this guide is a useful starting point:

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