Big 12 College Basketball Marketing: #2 Baylor

Let's continue our analysis of the Big 12 Conference. We review how programs are communicating to young athletes from a digital point of view.

We dive into this because websites and digital marketing create an opportunity for coaches and programs to share what they stand for. The internet is always there, and always on. And, as they do on the court, the best programs take advantage of opportunities.

Thus far our Big 12 journey has shown us #12 Texas Tech, #11 Colorado, #10 Texas, #9 Kansas, #8 Oklahoma State, #7 Missouri, #6 Iowa State, #5 Kansas State, and #4 Oklahoma, and #3 Nebraska.

And days like today are why I love this project. This is a team I wouldn't have predicted to be amazing and might never have visited were it not for this project. Yet I came away inspired.

#2: Baylor

The Digital Scouting Report

Strengths: They call it the Baylor Athletics Experience. And you get it. Big Time.

Weaknesses: I'd love to see more ability to follow the program infused into the site.

Full Scouting Report:

Diving right into the Baylor home page, here, and you are hit with a message to Enter the Baylor Athletics Experience. We'll get there.



First, though, let's take a look at the Multimedia Menu. As you can see below, Baylor is going to serve us up a whole menu of ways to follow the program. Let's check them out.

The Baylor YouTube experience is one of the more active channels I've seen. While they don't offer a way to subscribe by sport, I am a fan of the level of activity. And it's pretty good stuff, including highlight packages of games posted within a day of the game.

Baylor leverages Facebook as a means of sharing content well to a community of roughly 5100 fans. As you can see below (or here), new videos, pictures, and updates are posted into Facebook. Solid.

Clicking into Baylor Athletics on Twitter serves you a fairly robust directory of people and teams to follow. Let's check out a couple of them.



The main athletics Twitter site, here, is kind of all over the place. They post often, but it is across all sports and has a mix of score updates and game previews, with a couple in-game updates mixed in.



By contrast, Coach Scott Drew has a Twitter site that isn't as frequently updated, but is incredibly consistent and authentic. He's got around 1100 followers waiting, and this is worth a click.



OK. Going back to the Baylor home page, I wanted to zoom in on this little image beneath the main story. As you can see, you have quick access to all sorts of Baylor Bears Blogs - nice. Included in this is the Full Court Press blog maintained by Assistant Media Relations Director Chris Yandle.

The blog is located here. It's updated just about every day and does a nice job of hitting you with a combination of updates on the current team, updates on former players, and video content and interviews with current players. I like this blog a lot - both because it is frequently updated and because it gives you a super intimate look into the program.

OK. You're ready now. Let's go into the Baylor Athletics Experience (Click here if you want to go in together). As you can see below, Baylor wants you to feel what it's like to both be a part of the university and your sport program. I love this -- they don't just send you to the school site for that info. They see the school as a piece of the puzzle that is important to recruits, and thus integrate that side into this experience.

Clicking into the photographs in the middle of the page takes you to the image below. It's a cool combination of the University (with a campus video tour) and Baylor at a Glance - a collection of quick facts about the University.

Another area they give you access to before you hit the basketball experience is shown below: Athletic Performance. This is another area where Baylor excels. Many programs treat this area as a wall of text. And while text is critical, it isn't impactful. Baylor is portraying your strength coaches as a piece of how you develop as a player.

And you can see below the combination of text and videos.



Oh, and (see the image below) you can get a video from Athletics Performance Director Kaz Kazadi on his philosophy. Wow. (side note, see the extra icons for Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube in the upper right hand corner...)



OK, clicking into the Men's Basketball Experience (here) unleashes a collection of powerful brand statements. I wanted to hug the image below. At a glance you get a sense for what the program is about. And you want to dive into each.

Diving into highlights takes you to a nice compilation of the team - what they accomplished last season in images, words, and video. Well done Baylor!



I also was a huge fan of this - "All-Big 12 Under Drew." This is great. And as a prospective player, it is pretty easy to get this: if I work hard and play for Coach Drew, I have a good shot at becoming an All-Big 12 player. And you know where that can take you!



Yes, to the NBA. See the image below - the NBA Bears is another solid take on how to put unite pieces together. Simple and solid.


OK. The Coach Drew section is great - same formula: Powerful visual statement + A story in words + video = a great experience.


OK. In a good way, as you'll see here and in the images below, the Baylor Athletics basketball page does a nice job of driving people to the amazing content we've seen thus far.

You'll notice the hype of the Full Court Press basketball blog in the lower left. Check. Now let me zoom in on the Links section in the lower right. As you can see, we get quick access to the Baylor Athletics Experience and Coach Drew on Twitter.

Alright, that's it.

Come back tomorrow I'll wrap this up with the best in the Big 12 Conference!

Andy