Budget CUTS! Big news right now but ‘GB Sports Coaches’ may just have an answer to help with that!

‘Have you heard about GB Sports Coaches? It’s developing into a fantastic resource for the sport, fitness and leisure industry, you should take a look’

Of course this would be what we say about ourselves! It’s only natural to say these sorts of things when you believe in your cause and passionately believe in what you are trying to achieve but increasingly over the later part of 2010 and early 2011 some larger organisations from the world of sport in Great Britain have been saying similar things to us about our developments. Encouraging!

If you haven’t heard of us before that’s not really a surprise! Should we perhaps be saying that? Well yes really. We’ve put very little into marketing the site and services to date but have still managed to attract a number of key organisations around the UK and gain meetings to present our intentions. Not bad without much marketing!

We launched a basic recruitment, advertising and membership site back in mid 2010 and quickly caught the eye of a number of large County Sports Partnerships across the south of England that are linked to sports panels within Government.

The initial attraction was great but in all honesty we hadn’t quite managed to deliver a product that was being looked for at that time. What we did gain was invaluable inside information about the need to develop our services and business plan further which is why GB Sports Coaches hasn’t been promoted in a way that extends past Twitter, Facebook and other social media networking sites to date.

Re-development, and so soon we wondered whether it was a good idea or not! The conclusion was that it was silly not to dive straight into moving the website and services towards what had been described to us by what could be our future clients.

After being live for barely 3 months we set about redevelopment, specifically looking at the requirements and comments made during our early meetings. We also learnt of a competitor that had been given government funding and essentially ‘backed’ to deliver a product to do the job we’d already been trying to develop over the year prior to where we found ourselves.

As time has passed it’s almost been a journey of ‘Light Bulb’ moments!

A friend once told us that any good business develops and reworks things, networks and markets itself differently in changing ways and never stops acting in such a manner across the first 3 years or so before it all starts to make sense. We honestly would have to agree with him on that. 

Year 3 for us now and our ‘light bulb’ has certainly been switched on and our business plan has changed so much since the beginnings of later 2008. The best thing is, the ‘light’ has stayed on! Focus, drive and determination are all wonderful things.

So ‘who’ are ‘GB Sports Coaches’ and why are we doing what we’re doing?

Essentially there’s James and I although we do have a website code & functionality designer and a graphics designer working with us too.

James is a Sports Development graduate who’s experience extends across local council sports development to extended schools and sports partnerships. 

‘Me’ (Adam) I started off life in the Health & Fitness industry working as an instructor before working my way through class instruction and personal training before residing in operations and centre management.

‘Why’ look at something such as GB Sports Coaches? is an easy question to answer! Within our work in sport over the last 12+ years we’ve both found that there’s a number of common and regularly faced issues for managers of budgets in a lot of sporting sectors,

• staffing turnover is high,
• The cost involved with recruiting staff is often high, whether £100’s to £1000’s for local press adverts that only go live for often just a week or so for this cost to agency fee’s running into the £1000’s!
• Training costs & the need to keep up with best practice alongside a continual need for individual coaches and staff to have a plan of personal & professional development
• Sport is social, more often than not coaches and instructors like to discuss, share in best practice, network, provide their opinion and share suggestions with others. A coach does just that, they coach or instruct to help someone else by passing on their wisdom and knowledge

What is GB Sports Coaches

A website essentially! One that offers a multitude of useful services that don’t cost the earth to make use of and that certainly, by comparison, blow the costs of the competition out of the water! A site that we believe already goes a long way to addressing the 4 points listed above but with more development can be made to deliver everything we speak of and provide the UK with a ‘one stop shop’

So what are these services?!

The main and essential services are listed below but with many other ideas in the pipeline these are our core services that are available and working in practice right now.

• Membership databases for coaches/individuals and organisations.

Any sports coach or fitness coach at any level of qualification or career point can register completely free, showcase what they have to offer prospective employers and get noticed.

The coaches profile has a large amount of information that can be inputted to really show off the individuals skills but also links into Sport England reporting criteria and aids with analysis for coaching development managers and sporting partnerships.

Organisations are simply ‘everyone else’ private operators, sports partnerships, councils, colleges, schools and clubs.

• A full analysis and reporting tool for those that have the need to report to Sport England about their coaching workforce. Such a tool could have endless possibilities to aid organisations, especially those with many coaches across a geographical area to ascertain, for example, what training might be required in any given area at any specific point in time
• Highly targeted recruitment advertising with a dedicated audience for a fraction of the cost of the more traditional methods.

For example: Press adverts can go from a service charge per week that run into the £100’s if not £1000’s! Its expensive and it targets a generalised population so the results become watered down! Ours? A full 90 days for £30!

These adverts go into our searchable database where members can actively search for them and they also go onto the public view pages too so everyone see’s your vacancy.

• Training course advertising, put simply, this works the same way as above and for the same cost. The advert can link direct to your website where prospects can purchase a space on your course and pay up front for example! Linking to your site provides traffic for you & possibly business. You may also decide to offer a download facility for application forms and packs from your site.
• On site banner advertising by page that link to whatever you link on the web, pick your page you wish to advertise upon
• On site small banner ads that link to your website. These rotate on pages throughout the site and upon all pages generally. Always be in front of our members and potentially I higher percentage of your target audience
• Purchase an entire page and we’ll update that page for you once per month
• Add news to the main pages or send out a specific email to all members or to either the coaches or the organisations. This is being developed further to allow for sending out news emails to specific groups that will include by sport, town or postcode, employers or training providers. Low cost targeted email marketing!
• Links to discounted sporting goods and other related products via the GB Nutrition website that can be found at http://www.gbnutrition.co.uk

The above list forms the basis of the site, the services are the ‘bread & butter’ of what we do and offer. For the future, of course there’s more that we have planned. Ideas in the pipeline will allow for event management/posting and a much higher interaction between members on the site. We’ll leave these elements to your imagination!

So what’s the cost?

Lets break it down by service and keep things simple.

• Coaches register annually for FREE. Completely 100% FREE
• Organisations such as Employers, Training Providers, Gym Operators, County Sports Partnerships and Sports Clubs are charged an annual admin fee of £50
• Reporting and analysis of coach and workforce information is £150 per report run
• Job Adverts are £30 per advert, any job listed for 90 days
• Training courses and Adverts are £30 per course, any course listed for 90 days
• Banner adverts – Pricing is upon application and depends on the duration you wish to advertise for. The pricing will depend on the membership numbers and traffic the site is experiencing at the time you wish to advertise with us. You pay more the busier we get, at present we feel that’s the best and fairest way to offer such advertising to those that are interested.
• Small banner adverts – Pricing is upon application. These adverts are for fixed term lengths and purchased in 3 month blocks. The pricing will depend on the membership numbers and traffic the site is experiencing at the time you are looking to advertise with us. You pay more the busier we get.

Other services as they develop will be added to the site and pricing structure.

With cuts occurring all over the place we aim to provide an accessible, easy to use, informative, cost effective, useful and enjoyable networking facility that gives business and individuals benefits all from the one place, quick & easy, SIMPLE!

With the new site nearly here, the user experience and functionality will be highly optimised. We’re honest and to be honest, our current site isn’t working as we had hoped before we went live in mid 2010. Some of the more ‘wooden’ aspects and dis-functional aspects will simply disappear. We really believe in evolving and we really believe that we must evolve in a way that helps you, our clients, members, users, customers as without you there is no ‘GB Sports Coaches’

(If you’re reading this before mid February) Take a look at what we offer right now before it all changes, register if you’re a coach/individual for FREE, see what the profile and members account looks like now, transfer to the new site without anything further to do yourself and for absolutely no charge and then experience the difference!

If you would like further information about ‘GB Sports Coaches’ or our services, to book a presentation on what we could offer your business, help with anything on the current site or to suggest new services and ways of us working please feel totally free to contact us by visiting the site at http://www.gbsportscoaches.co.uk/contact-us.php

We’d like to thank ‘RunFunStarz’ Group for permitting this blog to their site and to thank them for giving us this opportunity and to say that another relevant ‘sports’ blog will be coming soon.

Best wishes, Team GBSC