Club Advertising

[Robin128]

Blackstuff,

With respect, your assertion that TV is the best form of advertising is not true. 30 years ago it was the cheapest way to advertise to all, as a function of cost per person...not any more. If more than half don't watch them, it floors your argument. This is well received by professional marketeers, like myself. It's our target market's attention we need to attract, not blanket advertising. It's only their buying habits we are attempting to change in the context of this one aspect of the marketing mix...Promotion :)

Does your club have £100k to spend on TV advertising? Adverts that will be skipped by everyone with Sky+, Tivo, Freeview+ PVR, BT Vision, and Virgin Media's V+...most if not all have multiple tuners and hard drives?

Drive thru an up market housing estate and the nearest sink-hole estate and look at the dishes with 3 wire quod LNB dishes. That means PVRs in situ. Then factor in all those with PVRs recoding digital terrestial TV.

You are right about using the internet...just the place to attract the attention of the young would be shooter.

The news is the most important place to change our public's perception of shooting and also magazines...not just gun mags.

And representation by organisations like BASC is very important...hence their new Duke of Edin media building/dept.

Not having a go Mark.

[Mike2]

I wonder what the response would be if organisations like the NRA, BASC, CPSA and others, set up a campaign among their members to raise enough money to actually make a TV advert.

I've thought about and discussed the possibility of a TV advert over the past few years, but when it comes down to it, what would we advertise? Remember you've only got a couple of minutes. The other problem is that we are barred from mainstream advertising despite have shown the Advertising authorities that we were being discriminated against. This means that any advert would be on a minority channel which would not have the reach we need.

I came to the conclusion that the web was the way to go. It's cheap (free in many cases) and it semi-permanent, so it's not over in a flash while you're making the tea.

More and more people are using the web as a way of gaining all forms of information - (Thanks Actionclear for the point about the Australian yellow pages - I think we're in a similar situation in the UK) and whilst very few websites will get the size of audience a TV advert will attract, it may be that more people who see it will actually take notice - or even watch the ad.

I have been surprised at the attention out own little -mostly text - website gets. ( http://psa.bizhosting.com ) For example in 2010 we averaged 1,352 unique visitors every month, and whilst a large proportion of those will be shooters, we also know that many are not as we have had several contacts from the local newspapers asking for interviews, etc. We have also had schools and local scout groups contact us, and I'd suggest that a permanent website has a far longer-term effect than a 1 minute TV advert on a minority channel.

I'm sure all the other shooting club websites get this sort of traffic - so you can see that the culmulative effect has to be to the good; particularly if there are many shooting websites, and their content is open friendly and encouraging!


I think what I'm trying to say is that whilst the professionals can do a part of the job, the majority of it is down to us.


.

[Robin128]

Agree with Mike.

:)

[Christel]

Sometimes we have 30 odd guests visiting at the same time.
I am sure some of them will come back and sign up eventually.

The web has my vote for presence. Frankly there are many of us who do not even watch TV anymore.

My dogwalker and her family has just been to Florida on holiday.
Her husband and her have two boys around 10-12 years old. Lovely kids they are. The oldest has taken an interest in shooting.
So while they were stateside they decided to do this:

http://www.topguntours.co.uk/ORLANDO_SH ... lando.html
and this
http://www.topguntours.co.uk/ORLANDO_SH ... _mini.html

She came back from holiday saying it was awesome and they would definitely do it again. The people teaching them were ever so patient and informative.
Good with the kids.
They basically had a great time and all the mysticism about firearms was just gone!

Why can't the UK have that approach?
Accessible, nothing to be afraid of, kid friendly. A great sport. Teaches you patience, team work, to pay attention.

[bobbob]

How about setting up some kind of experiment. I spend too much time on the internet but I am not really knowledgeable about things like "viral" videos. Would it be possible for someone on Full Bore UK to get a viral out among the members and see how far it gets and if it generates any interest?

How about starting a Facebook page just to publicise shooting or would it get banned? If anybody has a YouTube channel it could be spread on there as well. I have a video on YouTube that had over 10,000 hits so they asked me if I wanted to make money on it by having advertising on it, could shooting organisations place adverts on things like that?

Maybe I am just being too simple.

[ovenpaa]

Mike, the problem is as much finding a suitable conduit for the digital 'Advertising' Youtube is a prime example of a less than ideal media source, Everything from sensible reloading and club shooting to way out on the edge montages of indiscriminate dismemberment, plus Presidents and Prime Ministers so not an ideal mix.

Shooting web sites should be friendly approachable easy to navigate places with a mix of something for all the family to serious competitions (Actionclears new site is a perfect example of what good looks like in many respects) Sadly this approach is being adopted by far too few shooting sites in the UK and even the figure heads such as BASC and the NRA can be quite intimidating to navigate by virtue of the massive content that has to be covered.

The good news is many smaller club shooting club sites are developed by ordinary members as opposed to a corporate or professional tool and can be very informative but seldom visited by people other than serious shooters or those wishing to become serious shooters. Personally I found coming back into shooting quite difficult and off putting in some respects and I wonder how many prospective shooters fall by the wayside as a direct result of bureaucracy or closed door policies.

So yes yes the cumulative effect of many club sites has to be good but until the closed minds of many clubs are opened again the sport will struggle. What this means is we as shooters need to both attract new people to the sport and then make the introduction as easy as possible, mentoring, coaching and advice are good, forums are equally useful in this respect. As an example we had a new forum member join a while back who never posted, just PM'd me a few times about the best way to join a shooting club and then fell off the radar again. Hopefully he has found a club now, it does however make me wonder why he felt he could not ask such questions in an open arena and we are a very small forum.

Anyway, how do we make shooting as a sport more socially acceptable and get new members into the ranks. Something has to be going wrong right now.

[Robin128]

Good post Ovenpaa...and you hit the nail on the head...what about a forum section...Shooting for Dummies?...with an appropriate intro...There is no such thing as a stupid question etc etc

:)

[Mike2]

how do we make shooting as a sport more socially acceptable and get new members into the ranks. Something has to be going wrong right now.

I'd have to say that (for our area) things have been improving steadily for clubs.
For a number of reasons I did a straw poll of some 12 clubs in North West Engalnd / Wales and with only one exception, (same number of members as then) every club reported a considerable increase in their membership since 1999, with three reporting that they had to close their books as they couldn't cope.

The latest Home Office figures for firearm certificates on issue in England and Wales are at their highest level since 1997 - the year before the notorious ban - so it looks like things are recovering.

I absolutely agree that some clubs are still in the dark ages, perhaps wanting to keep their club as a small, exclusive membership, (well, that's their priviledge) but some are also frightened of letting people know they exist, and I have to assume that's from a fear that perhaps the police might not like them advertising, and they don't want to rock the boat.

This last bit isn't a theory - I know three club secretaries who feel just this way.

I'm very sorry to say I don't know enough about using facebook or youtube, although I know BASC (for one) have put videos on youtube - http://atlas/safevideos/Video.aspx?id=wp37kIbQl1U for example. (I can't access the proper YouTube at work, I have to go through this "safe video" system - sorry.)

There are a number of other shooting videos on the "safe videos" link to YouTube at http://atlas/safevideos which have been oput there by the shooting sports organisations and their friends.

[Robin128]

Maybe Mike you are not asking all the right questions. :)

Ask what the average ages of gun clubs' memberships are and you might be able to forecast a downturn in the next 10 years as old members fall off their perches...not to be replaced by new YOUNG members who must be attracted now, save the downturn of our sport.

[Sandgroper]

My use of the Yellow Pages as an example, I admit was dated, but when I was looking for a club that was the only central source of information I could think of. It was also coupled with past experiance in Australia.

The internet is a great resource, but it is also limiting by the shear amount of websites available. Unless a club includes a lot of key words, they are going to be difficult to find during a general search. What we need is a single website listing all the clubs in the UK to make them easy to find and contact.