Advertising Ideas ?

[TICK4D-TAS]

Hey Guys,

The committee and i are trying to come up with some ideas on how to advertise the club and get our name out there a little more so that we can grow the club. i.e more members and become a little more known to the average joe in the public.

so if you have any ideas or suggestions no matter how silly u think they might sound, just post them up in here.

Tim

[DOC]

What do you in place currently ? web site ?, news letters ? membership forms in club cars ?, hard to throw some ideas without an overview of what you have.

With what you have, have the commitee analysed this to see what is working, what is not working and why for both questions, sometimes it's not re inventing the wheel but tweaking the one you have to run smoother

[TICK4D-TAS]

I should have elaborated on what we have in place so far in my original post.

We have the following:

Web site www.tastickfordclub.asn.au
We also have a quarterly newsletter, which is sent to our sponsors as well as members
We have club business cards that the majority of members hand out to prospective new members. Success rate on this is about 1 new member for every 15 handed out.
90% of club cars have club stickers on rear quarter windows, and about 30% of cars have big front windscreen sticker advertising website.
Obviously we are on this forum and a few others.
We have managed to get a club feature in a couple of local magazines.
Currently we are reaffirming our ties with the local Ford dealers statewide
We are also supported by Shannon’s insurance and participate in all there car shows.

So I guess with a list like that you would like that we would have plenty of members. But the truth is that not many people really know about us.
The aim is to try and get out there a little more so we can attract some of the Tickford models back into the club along with getting into the dealers to attract the new XR / FPV models

[DOC]

OK, in the general view of any ideas welcome.

I cant see anywhere on your site to download the current / past news letters ? but may have missed it

secondly i would look at a very simple rregister here and get our news letter option. this will do 2 things one it will allow current members to get the news letter ( which they probably are getting electronicly now ? but second open up a new line of potential members.

second, working in sales and similar sums as 1 / 15 join, we know if we present we get a 1/ 10 hit rate for sales, from there the sums are easy its just more bums on seats, for examle in sales we may do a big month ( fancy name for crap ), but what we get the team to do is double their output for the month ( or part there of, results are simply double sales, this is of course coupled with a prize , rewards etc

So in your case if all members had a double drop for the month you would or should see twice as many new members

this alone though needs to work better with your web as above, you currently are catching 1/ 15 but if i made those few adjustments to the web where i could catch the undecided with a free mail out of a news letter i may be able to turn 1/15 to 2/15 which is a 100% increase on membership.

Just a few stupid ideas but in all every componet of what your doing needs to gel and work together, these need to then be studied and improved upon.

There are 2 main things to keep an eye on, 1 what works really well and study that and see if this can be improved upon or take these findings and apply to other areas, and second what is not working at all, do the same with this why is it not working are these causes in other sections and should be dropped, all the stuff in the middle leave it alone.

Always put your main energy into what works well.

some starters anyway
Pete

[TICK4D-TAS]

thanks for that pete. i might look into the website / register to get email idea. main reason for not doing it before was to cut back on spam. but im sure that could be overcome nowdays.
another idea we had was a member point system. where current members would gain points for every new member they signed up. this would go towards a prize or trophy or something similar and be presented to the member that gains the most at the end of the year dinner.

[RACE38]

Hi Ya Tick,
I've had a lot to do with starting clubs, running nationals and Bathurst Parade Laps at both 24hr races and one word of advice I do have for you is.............

It's better to have a small number of good, genuine people in your club than to have a large number of d-i-c-kheads.....

You get talkers, and you get doers. The doers are thin on the ground, and the others will do bugger all to help but will be up ya for the rent if whatever your doing isn't quite what it should be.

If you still wanna bolster numbers, head to club pages in Unique Cars, Just World Cars, Just Parts and of course a gig in your local trading post.

Good Luck.

[DOC]

Originally Posted by TICK4D-TAS

thanks for that pete. i might look into the website / register to get email idea. main reason for not doing it before was to cut back on spam. but im sure that could be overcome nowdays.
.

Rather than have them email you try and put in a register option as per the (very) quick sample i made up, this will keep all people on your data base and also allow you to send out emails / newsletter of upcoming events to these people.

The points system from many years in similar stuff i would not bother with, there will always be a winner so to speak, just share as a club regardless of helping to bring on one or twenty, make every one feel good regardless. Just a thought.

[75van]

I've found that with the two websites that I run for some sporting clubs for athletes with disabilities ( New Horizons Club - www.newhorizonsclub.org.au - this one needs a do-over!, and Special Olympics Tasmania - www.sotas.org.au), the best thing to get hits is leave links to the past newsletters on the site, because search engines such as Google trawl through them as well as the main site pages. People then search for their own names, types of sports, recent events, people who have been in the news etc. This would have to be the biggest way we have secured our audience as well as keep people coming back. New Horizons Club is only relatively small but the hits they get to their website far exceed the membership.

This club would replace the hits mentioned above with simple searches such as people out there searching for their type of car - I know I search Google for an AUIII XR6 to see what's out there!

[fiery]

Another really good idea is basically be out in the public eye. Whilst you are using club business cards, you could also try using flyers. They are fairly quick to do and that way when you see a car you can pop a flyer onto their window or hand to them personally.
The flyer will have far greater information than a business card.

Also going to where people 'hang out', if you have an area in particular that has lots of that, then go there as an 'outing'.

The more you are 'seen', the more you will be noticed.

[75van]

Originally Posted by fiery

Another really good idea is basically be out in the public eye. Whilst you are using club business cards, you could also try using flyers. They are fairly quick to do and that way when you see a car you can pop a flyer onto their window or hand to them personally.
The flyer will have far greater information than a business card.

Also going to where people 'hang out', if you have an area in particular that has lots of that, then go there as an 'outing'.

The more you are 'seen', the more you will be noticed.

I was just thinking something along the same lines. I was thinking if it was worth doing something in the malls around the state - get a few cars polished up really well, use the signboards Tim is organising for the Van Diemen's show (with all the members cars and lots of info on them) and have them in the Launceston Brisbane Street Mall (for example) for a Saturday, with a few members handing out flyers and answering questions. You could even tee up the local paper in the area to run a story the day of or day before you do it.

I'd be happy to spend the day handing out flyers in town......

[DayTE]

Originally Posted by monkeysxr6

I was just thinking something along the same lines. I was thinking if it was worth doing something in the malls around the state - get a few cars polished up really well, use the signboards Tim is organising for the Van Diemen's show (with all the members cars and lots of info on them) and have them in the Launceston Brisbane Street Mall (for example) for a Saturday, with a few members handing out flyers and answering questions. You could even tee up the local paper in the area to run a story the day of or day before you do it.

I'd be happy to spend the day handing out flyers in town......

Not a bad idea. I don't know about the logistics about having to organise it all though, but it would certainly get us in front of a different crowd.

[75van]

Originally Posted by T6Ute

Not a bad idea. I don't know about the logistics about having to organise it all though, but it would certainly get us in front of a different crowd.

My wife has a few contacts at the Launceston City Council - I'll ask some vague questions and see if such a thing is possible.

[fiery]

If you haven't got a base for a flyer I would be happy to email you then one I did for our club.
(of course that is only if you don't already have one, if you do, just disregard this post)

[TICK4D-TAS]

This is a copy of the business cards I was talking about. Most members have a stack of these to hand out to prospective members with either their own number on it or one of the committee members number.
Front

Back


We have tried flyers in the past, even to the point where every car show, motor racing event I have been to I have walked the car parks and slipped one under the wipers.

The club is financial and stable enough to continue along as is. We have been going for 7 years now and have support out of FPV and Ford and currently have 50 members on the database. These are spread out all over the state. Out of these 50 members we are averaging a minimum of 15 to 20 cars per event. So I guess in terms of participation rate we are doing really well. It’s just something that I would like to see some of the older Tickford models return back to the club. As current members are upgrading we are not seeing the cars come back into the club with there new owners. This is something as part of the committee I would like to try and fix.

We have a big indoor car show coming up in September which has attracted mainland entries. with our display that we have planned I’m sure that it will get the clubs name out in the public a bit more and in turn we should see some new members follow on from it, considering the usually get around 10,000 people to the event over the 3 days which come from all areas of the state, I’m positive that we should attract some new members from it.

I like the idea of a static display in the malls, or even just to try and get a feature in the local papers would be nice. I think the newspaper side of things would be a lot easier than a public display. I would hate to think what the councils would charge for space in such a prime location. Not to mention insurances for it as well.

I think it might be time for a webiste update, or even a server change. We have all the search names listed in out website, but it seems that the search engines dont seem to find us. We have also got links in a few Ford magazines, ford websites and the like.

I have pulled some stats on the website, it seems it is getting used. So maybe a more user friendly setup with some more information might help.

[75van]

Originally Posted by TICK4D-TAS

I like the idea of a static display in the malls, or even just to try and get a feature in the local papers would be nice. I think the newspaper side of things would be a lot easier than a public display. I would hate to think what the councils would charge for space in such a prime location. Not to mention insurances for it as well.

I asked a contact at the Launceston council, and he is suggesting that the space is actually free to hire, provided that the space is not being used by someone else. He wasn't sure about the insurance side of things, but he is getting the guy who has the final say to give me a call so I can ask specific details regarding insurance, size of space etc.

If the committee is happy I can get more details, put a few ideas and info together and present the idea in full before deciding whether it's worth the club's time.

[TICK4D-TAS]

Originally Posted by monkeysxr6

I asked a contact at the Launceston council, and he is suggesting that the space is actually free to hire, provided that the space is not being used by someone else. He wasn't sure about the insurance side of things, but he is getting the guy who has the final say to give me a call so I can ask specific details regarding insurance, size of space etc.

If the committee is happy I can get more details, put a few ideas and info together and present the idea in full before deciding whether it's worth the club's time.

good news adam, keep me informed on how u go. we have a committee meeting first weekend in august. so i can bring it to everyones attention.

[TS50]

Originally Posted by TICK4D-TAS

This is a copy of the business cards I was talking about. Most members have a stack of these to hand out to prospective members with either their own number on it or one of the committee members number.
Front

Back

Remind me to get some more off you next time i see you

[TICK4D-TAS]

Originally Posted by TS50

Remind me to get some more off you next time i see you

no prob. i usually have a stack of them in my box of stuff