West Coast Conference Basketball Marketing: #3 Pepperdine

We'll keep moving through the West Coast Conference, looking at how programs are communicating to young athletes (or fans) from a digital point of view. Websites and digital marketing are the great equalizer -- a place where every program can share what they stand for. And I'd argue all of this is even more critical for the Mid Majors out there. Smart marketing can help build that connection that gets you the athlete you need.

Thus far our journey has shown us #8 St Mary's, #7 San Diego, #6 Gonzaga, #5 San Francisco, and #4 Loyola Marymount.

Let's keep moving.

#3 Pepperdine

The Digital Scouting Report

Strengths: Nice insider blog that's easy to digest and authentic. Great social media page drives you here, to Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, and iTunes.

Weaknesses: There's a good amount of hoops tradition at Pepperdine, but you wouldn't know it from a visit here.

Full Scouting Report:
Hitting the Pepperdine athletics page, you'll see there's a LOT going on. It took me a minute to get my bearings.



Then I noticed in the right hand side of the site is a rotating banner for the Waves on Twitter, Facebook, iTunes, YouTube, and Blogs. (side note, they have to have one of the most entertaining looking mascots, ever)...






I decided to resist clicking in and first noticed the Recruiting & Compliance tab on the left. I clicked in...



... and out very quickly. Back to the banner on the right. I click in and see this page giving you a nice overview of all things Pepperdine social media.



The Waves Blog, link here, is maintained by Roger Horne, Pepperdine's SID. I always get pumped when I see athletics blogs as they tend to be great signals of inside access in easy to digest pieces. And this doesn't let you down. It's well-written, with good updates on all the big teams plus links to coverage that's out there in the media on the Waves programs. What's missing is an easy way to sign up for updates based on the team of your choice... (and maybe a Twitter page to go with it!)



The Twitter callout I saw, took me here, to the Pepperdine Athletics Twitter page. With 294 followers, this covers all sports. They do have some fun with Twitter, offering a spirit poster contest for fans to win tickets to the WCC tourney in Vegas.





The Pepperdine Athletics Facebook page has roughly 1800 fans, and its one of the more active Facebook pages I've seen. They post updates on all teams, and do a nice job of engaging fans to make it out to games and check out the latest updates on the squads that have posted online...





Pepperdine's YouTube channel, here, is pretty solid. They only have 17 subscribers, but it's not for a lack of posting. There's a good amount of inside features and access to coaches here. I think one thing that would help them is to develop a schedule of programming and then allow for sign ups based on those programs or based on sports. (It feels a little random here). That said, nice foundation here.



Finally, Pepperdine's iTunes U takes you to the Pepperdine University iTunes page. It's nice, as it shows you that the university makes a good investment in technology. But there isn't any athletics pieces here, making this feel like a little bit of a miss to me.




So, in search of sports content, I went straight into the basketball home page (here).



Here we have access to the Waves Media Guide, which you can download as a PDF or thumb through online. Check.



They offer up a link to Waves in the Pros, including a legend (Dennis Johnson of the Celtics)... Unfortunately it's simply a list of players, with an image and the years/teams they played for. This is an opportunity for Pepperdine to offer up personality. Help kids imagine themselves following in those footsteps. What kind of player were they before they arrived, and after they left? What made that player special, and what kind of impact did they have at Pepperdine?



Clicking on the Video link takes us here, to an embedded video of Coach Tom Asbury at a media day event. I love this plan -- post videos to YouTube and embed them here... I just wish there were more and a way to sign up to get them!



Head Coach Tom Asbury also makes it easy to connect with him, shown in his bio below.



There's really not much on Twitter here. Just starting to tweet are Basketball Operations' Scott Coopman and Assistant Coach Will Kimble. Pumping that energy into the site would help a bunch.

And it's energy that's missing. Check the letterhead at the top of this site (pasted below). Pepperdine has 13 NCAA appearances and 26 postseason bids, plus 3 WCC Tourney titles. There's some basketball going on here and that needs to infiltrate everything they share online. It's all over the letterhead but not found on the site... and that to me is a big opportunity.



That's it. Come back tomorrow as we keep rolling.

Andy