Learning how to start a soccer academy is all about doing the right research. From field availability to competitor names and reviews, the keys to your success are all around you. The important part is knowing where to look.
In this blog, we’ll sift through the important information to help kick-start your academy.
Here are our 11 tips to start a soccer academy!
1) Start with market research
The first step in your journey is to do comprehensive research on your competitors. Find out what makes them successful. Do your competitors have Google My Business reviews or Facebook reviews about their services? If so, are there any complaints that your soccer academy could solve?
Can you see your competitors strengths repeated in their reviews?
If so, ask yourself if your academy can match those strengths. If not, highlight those strengths as competitive advantages for your competition and spend time strategizing how you can eventually match those strengths as your soccer academy grows.
2) Get honest feedback about your own strengths and weaknesses
It’s always prudent to fully understand your own toolset when going into a new business venture. That’s why we recommend asking for an assessment of your strengths and weaknesses from people you trust to provide honest feedback.
Once you have this information, you can create some strategies to maximize your strengths and address your weaknesses. For example, if you’re an exceptional trainer who’s dedicated to your craft, you may excel at creating drills but lack the time to master book keeping.
In that case, using soccer academy software can help you accept payments, automate invoicing and easily pull reports on member payments and activity.
But of course, you have to know about weaknesses before you can address them. So, find your honest friends and get their feedback!
3) How to start a soccer academy that stands out
How do you start a soccer academy if your local area is filled with high-quality competition?
Seeing a lot of successful competitors in your area can be intimidating, but it’s also a good sign. If competitors are thriving, it means there’s a healthy market for soccer academy training services in your area.
That said, going head-to-head with well established soccer academies can be difficult.
If competition is high in your area, consider specializing in one aspect of the game.
For example, consider launching a specialized academy for strikers. This strategy means that you won’t be attracting any defenders or mid-fielders on day one, but you will be sending a clear signal to any young athlete who wants to improve as a striker.
For those aspiring young strikers, your academy will look like an authority in training their most cherished position.
Remember, you can always expand into defender and mid-fielder training down the road. Specialization can just be a strategy to get you started and established.
4) Assess field rentals and make contingency plans
As we said off the top, learning how to start a soccer academy is all about research, and that includes understanding how many fields or training spaces are available to you.
Create an exhaustive list to understand exactly how many training spaces are available, and inquire with the recreation authority in your city or county to find out how busy these spaces are.
Be sure to ask if there are any teams or groups that get preferential treatment that may impact your field time. For example, are there semi-professional or elite competitive teams that could bump your field time if they needed to reschedule their own practices or games?
If you’re fields and training spaces are often busy, or if you have the chance of getting bumped throughout the season, you’ll need to pre-plan creative training away from the field.
Spend time looking for spaces where you can engage in some creative training like running hills, or practicing footwork at a nearby beach. You may not end up using these spaces, but it’s important to understand everything available as part of your contingency plan.
5) Soccer academy name ideas
How your academy appears in search engines today can drastically impact your business. If your academy ranks highly in search engines, you’ll be much more likely to passively attract new customers and grow.
However, if your business fails to rank well in search engines, your academy will have to rely solely on paid advertising and word-of-mouth.
There are several things you can do to improve your ranking in search engines. And one of the easiest is to choose a strategic name.
When coming up with your soccer academy name ideas, be sure to include your local city or county name.
When you include your local city or county name, you’ll set yourself up for search engine success.
For example, if you name your academy “Striker’s Townsville Soccer Academy” or “Townsville Soccer Academy for Strikers”, your website and anyone who links to it using your business name, will automatically include the keywords “Townsville Soccer Academy.”
These keywords tell search engines that anyone searching for a soccer academy in Townsville may find your website and services helpful. As a result, search engines like Google will be more likely to prioritize your site.
For more information on local search engine optimization, checkout our 7 helpful local SEO tips.
6) Futureproof your soccer academy name
If you’re a one-on-one trainer but you have aspirations of starting a soccer academy in the future, brainstorm your name ideas as if you were an academy.
Why?
In the digital world, it’s much easier to grow into your name than to change it.
Website domain authority and social media accounts take time to grow. If you’ve established your website address and social media handles but then change them to reflect a new business name it could confuse your customers, prospects and search engines.
For this reason, you should choose a soccer academy name that reflects your aspirations.
In the long-run, when you do grow into your name, you’ll have a website and social media handles with history and credibility built into them. These established web assets will help you carry your business momentum into the future.
7) Get your soccer academy insured and licensed
Once you have your soccer academy name it’s time to get insured and licensed (or certified). These two steps will bring your academy under a governing association’s umbrella and cover your soccer academy in case of an accident.
First, it’s good to understand which licenses or certifications your competitors have. Once you understand what they have, research which of those licenses would be a good fit for your academy.
In some sports, governing bodies will handle club insurance as part of their membership fees, so be sure to inquire about any complementary or pre-negotiated liability insurance that may come with licensing or certification.
If your competitors aren’t certified or licensed, here are a few soccer organizations that you’ll want to look into:
In the United States:
In Canada:
For elite level athletes in Canada, you’ll want to ensure your academy licensing will allow the MLS to add players from your academy directly to MLS rosters. This is something Soccer Ontario explains in their benefits video.
Lastly, any additional certification related to training, health or safety should all be clearly listed on your club’s website and programming in order to communicate your standards of quality and safety.
8) Protect your programming with non-compete clauses
As you build your soccer academy, your programming and training methods become valuable business assets. And the coaches and trainers that deliver your programming become extra valuable too.
Ideally, your trainers and coaches will want to stay with your academy for the long haul. But some may have dreams of opening their own academy. In these cases, it’s extremely helpful to have some version of a non-compete clause in place.
Of course, the details of a non-complete clause are up to you and your legal advisor. However, the main goal of such a clause is to ensure that none of your coaches can leave your academy and take your athletes with them.
Ensuring that each coach you hire signs a non-compete clause is a prudent step in protecting the long-term value of your business.
9) Make happiness integral to your academy experience
If you’re passionate about opening a soccer academy, chances are you’re already brimming with training ideas which is why we’ve kept training methodologies out of this blog. However, there is one training theme we want to emphasize: happiness.
The happiness of athletes that attend your academy should be one of the main focuses of your business. Why? Because the experiences athletes have at your soccer academy will shape their outlook on the sport as a whole.
We’ve written about how to create a fun and positive sports environment in the past. At its core, the secret to creating this environment is to communicate clearly and allow kids to express themselves.
Ultimately, the athletes that attend your academy aren’t just there to hone their skills, they’re there to have fun too.
When athletes enjoy their time at your academy, they’ll want to stick around and train more often. Furthermore, when they have fun at your academy, they’ll want to stay involved in the sport they love. Some of them may even coach at your academy one day!
So, make sure you incorporate elements of fun into your training, even for the most intense athletes at your academy.
10) Happiness starts with smooth and secure registration
The first experience that your prospective customer has with your academy will very likely happen away from the field. They may hear about you from a friend or they may simply visit your website. One thing is for sure, before this new customer can begin training with you, they have to register and submit payment.
Registration is an important experience for you and your customers. It’s the moment a prospective customer commits to trusting in the quality of your work and your product. How this trust is received is vital.
If your registration and payment process is cumbersome and difficult, it’s going to frustrate your new client before they even hit the field. If your registration and payment process is too simple (like cash-in-hand) it may raise questions about the security or long-term nature of your academy.
It’s easy to see the value that a smooth and secure registration process can bring.
As a soccer academy owner, you want to ensure that client satisfaction starts the moment a prospective customer first interacts with your club. With a smooth and secure soccer registration system you not only save time thanks to automation, you also gain credibility and customer satisfaction.
11) How to start a soccer academy with social media visibility
It doesn’t take much to create a basic social media strategy for your soccer academy today. The most important thing to understand is that participating in social media is not about going viral. Instead, it’s about creating relevant connections, and building a library of content for your target audience.
With this in mind, you should aim to consistently create basic video and photo content that your target audience wants to see. Your content should display your skills and communicate legitimacy when parents and kids are assessing your club.
You can also spend time commenting on and complimenting the soccer skills of young athletes whenever relevant. And, as we talked about in our Sports Club Tik Tok article, be sure to make time for your athletes to create content.
Whether it’s at the end of training or during a break between drills, allow kids to create content that they want to share. When young athletes share the skills they’ve learned on social media, you’re allowing them to take pride in their accomplishments while also promoting your academy to friends. It’s a win-win.
Success starts away from the field
Lionel Messi said it best, “I start early and I stay late, day after day, year after year. It took me 17 years and 114 days to become an overnight success.” Like Messi suggests, it’s what happens away from the field that determines your success when it’s time to perform. And the same thing is true for a successful soccer academy.
Learning how to start a soccer academy is a process that requires a lot of research and time spent away from the field. But once you have a good foundation and strong systems in place, your work on the field can takeover.
Still have questions about how to start a soccer academy? At Uplifter our team members have experience helping launch successful soccer academies and even starting their own. So, don’t hesitate to contact us! We’re always happy to help.
