Promoting TUFC

[Behind-the-Gulls]

New poster promoting "The Live Experience"-pretty good imo. Will put one up on my office noticeboard for starters.
http://www.torquayunited.com/documents/ ... 856868.pdf

[royalgull]

can't do any harm but I don't think it'll have a massive difference to anything but fair play to TUFC for being a bit more pro active

Still think it's about ticket prices and people getting what they think are bargains, Kids for a Quid, Buy 2 games get 1 free, Half price midweek matches that sort of stuff...Oh and having a team people want to watch helps enormously as well!!!

[sam]

This is more like it and agree wholeheartedly with royalgull that this is a far more positive approach. Good on the club for this idea and rather than be sedentary they are having a go. Let's face it we are a small club and do well to maintain a league side but we should be immensely proud of what we achieve. That's why I bang on about the identity of this team, whether it is the design of the programme which everyone should recognise as Torquay Uniteds or the playing kit being the same home or away. It is all part of the corporate identity of the team and the area and initiatives such as this give an indication that the club is proud to promote itself and confident with the product that is on offer. Roll on the new season.

[AustrianAndyGull]

A small part of me praises the club for producing something rather than nothing but it is hardly 'having a go' is it? Lets be honest. Like the OP says, he will put one in his office and no doubt a few more of you who live in the area will put one in your place of work but after that? Do the club have an army of volunteers blitzing the bay and beyond with these posters for all to see? Of course not.

Royal is 100% spot on and the club should really be getting their heads together with regular viable ideas related to ticket prices and offers both for new prospective fans and for the current fans also.

At the end of the day it's a poster and if it was one advertising an animal shelter summer fair for a quid entry when there you could peruse car boot items, have a go on stalls, let the kids go on a bouncy castle, see dog agility and enjoy a few hours for a minimal outlay then a few random people might read the poster with interest and attend. If it was a poster of a local Scouts Bonfire Evening inviting you and yours to come down for a blazing time with firework displays, barbecues, toffee apples, stalls and stuff for a few quid then you might make plans to go. See this TUFC poster and if it says get in to the game for a few quid , fiver or whatever then a few people might think yeah why not. Simply saying come and watch live football because it's great but it will cost you full price isn't really cutting the mustard i'm afraid.

Offer something or get nothing, it's harsh but true.

[A Candy]

Perhaps I can remind you of the early bird season ticket deal,the new membership opportunities and the Family ticket. Also as the season progresses there will probably be various "special offers" to make attendance easier on the pocket.
Thank you.
Andrew

[AustrianAndyGull]

I don't doubt that Andrew and they are the kind of things that maybe can help. I didn't wish to be down on anyone for presenting ideas but if I don't think it will have any effect then i'd rather say so than lie. I know that you are one of the few people behind the scenes this last year or so that I have had faith in.

[A Candy]

Hi Andy, I do not have a problem with your opinions and as you know I welcome the thoughts and views of the fan base. Posters are of course only a part of a wider marketing strategy and I am not suggesting that posters alone will bring the crowds flocking back to Plainmoor. There has been many comments in the past about the lack of posters around the area and this is one initiative to try and address this issue. We have other plans in the pipeline that we hope to publicise soon.
Thank you for your words of faith, much appreciated.
Regards,
Andrew

[royalgull]

Perhaps I can remind you of the early bird season ticket deal,the new membership opportunities and the Family ticket. Also as the season progresses there will probably be various "special offers" to make attendance easier on the pocket.
Thank you.
Andrew

Good options but it's the casual fans you need to attract not the stalwarts that buy season tickets every year regardless. Ultimately a succesfull team playing good football is the only 100% foolproof way of increasing attendances. Easier said than done, alternatively it's getting peopel thinking they are getting a bargain that needs to happen. Bradford's fan base has gone up since being in this league, mainly down to cheap tickets. Thing is those new fans that rock up in cheaply give the club the money back in things like food and drink, programmes, replica kits, scarves etc throughout the season anyway.

You have to target the yongsters, get the players out and about in local schools, around our way Wycombe players and staff were knocking on people's doors like an election campaign trying to get people coming to their games. It's a days 'work' for them but increased their profile in the lcoal community, this is an area I see (looking in from the outside) where Torquay struggle. it could be down to the pure logistics of the Torbay area, a lot of people have moved there later in life so aren't going to have a love for the local football club but the kids that are there is untapped long term revenue. Soccer schools, day visits, promotions for local schools get the kids going. They go with their friends or if their parents go then even better. When there are big matches, Plainmoor is sold out or we take 10,000+ to Wembley, it's impossible to get all of those wanting to come every week but it shows there are enough people around that are interested in the football club for us to aim for 4-5,000.

There is no easy short term solution to consistently improve a clubs fanbase but it's these steps that tend to have most success.

[royalgull]

Have you thought about doing a survey in the Torbay area of people in whether they would come and watch Torquay and what puts them off doing so?

[A Candy]

Thanks Royalgull.
As always you make some very good points and I agree that the best way to fill the terraces is to have a winning team and of course we will start the season with great optimism and hope. I also agree about the youngsters and getting the players more involved and the Wycombe experience is certainly an interesting initiative. Any survey will need to be planned so that results can be collated easily. I don't imagine an on-line survey will be possible as you are already contacting the people who support the Club. Maybe some random questioning of shoppers with good old fashioned clip boards outside Sainsburys ?
Anyway, food for thought.
Thanks again.
Andrew

[bobby93]

It's a start and I certainly welcome the idea, but the poster itself might have been better.

For a start it takes all of two seconds to find a better font than that, and the words down the side remind me of when I used to do sixth form design projects and had space to fill.

I think also the wording, if we are going to go for the 'passionate/local team/live experience' angle, could have been a short story from someone who is recalling their first game, or a memorable moment in their history of supporting Torquay United. We all have those moments, something relatable and subjective would be far more meaningful than saying we are the biggest show in town. What does that even mean?

Furthermore... "an afternoon at Plainmoor" is pretty vague. If we're going for casual fans who've never been to a football game, might it be wise to assume they need spelling out to them when we play, where Plainmoor is, postcode/bus routes/etc?

Like I said, it's a start and that's something so I'm not trying to cause a scene, but I'm not exactly wowed by the end product myself.

[royalgull]

Thanks Royalgull.
As always you make some very good points and I agree that the best way to fill the terraces is to have a winning team and of course we will start the season with great optimism and hope. I also agree about the youngsters and getting the players more involved and the Wycombe experience is certainly an interesting initiative. Any survey will need to be planned so that results can be collated easily. I don't imagine an on-line survey will be possible as you are already contacting the people who support the Club. Maybe some random questioning of shoppers with good old fashioned clip boards outside Sainsburys ?
Anyway, food for thought.
Thanks again.
Andrew

That is what I was thinking, could even ask for fans or volunteers just to be in the town centre one saturday afternoon this summer, have a little stall somewhere and try and chat to people. Encourage them to come along or at least find out why they won't go. If it's a recurring theme then at least you'll know what you need to do to bring some of these people in.

[ROADRUNNER]

i know the club gets involved with the schools to point but what about giving away say 500 tickets for one or two games for the family stand to some of the schools, that may get people intrested in coming to watch it again, there are a lot of kids out there that have never been to a live match as most of the parents are premier leagur armchair fans.

[AustrianAndyGull]

Agree, the only floating adult fans who would come to games IMO are the ones who maybe used to go but now don't and the 'outsiders' who move into the area from elsewhere and are maybe looking to get involved in watching their 'local' team. Of course some of these newcomers may already be fans of teams like Man U or Arsenal or whatever but in the absence of going to watch them they may choose to go to Plainmoor instead. These are the only two sections of society likely to respond to a poster campaign or anything like that. A random bloke who had never been to a football match before and had lived in Torquay for 20 years say would not look at the posters and think to himself that an afternoon at Plainmoor would be a good idea. He would have already have been by now if he was interested in the club.

That leaves the kids.

Schools in Torbay need to absolutely blitzed with posters, players and club reps going in and doing talks, school trips even to games, free tickets, matchday games and competitions, meetings with Gilbert and other stuff for the younger ones, opportunites for them to play matches on the pitch, tours around Plainmoor etc. The possibilities are endless and I know it seems a little Phoenix Nights-esque but the upshot could be that some of these kids love it so much they pester their parents to take them along to football and they get hooked. I know I did when I was a lot younger and pestered my dad to take me to Hull to watch the Tigers. This is the area we need to concentrating on IMO, forget the adults. The adults will come with a free ticket or if we are doing well and then they will p*ss off again until such events occur again. The kids are the future and with the competition so fierce now from plastic Premier League clubs then it is vital for TUFC to get in there first, they are in situ and have no excuses. I'm sure Andrew will point out that there already a lot of initiatives underway in getting kids involved and I respect that but I just feel that we should f*ck off the adult floaters, if they come because we are doing well then fine but they cannot be relied upon to sustain a club who experience so many ups and downs at a low level and so we need to build from the bottom and we need to really be pretty aggressive about our campaigns with schoolkids if TUFC is to have any future going forward IMO.

Hey, what I've written might be a load of cack but it's what I think we need to do as well as rewarding the CURRENT fanbase who go regularly with incentives like free tickets for attending so many games or free programmes if you collect tokens or something. Forget the freeloaders looking for one off match deals never to be seen again and forget the 'go when we're winning' mob. Yes they bring in a few extra quid but to me they are a waste of space.

[ROADRUNNER]

you have hit the nail on the head andy, we need to get at the kids, they are the future of any club, when i was a kid at school in the early seventies don mills use to run organise coaching schools around the bay and teignbridge and bring a couple of players along to help. i suppose a bit like frank prince does .
we need the kids to pester the parent.