Now is the time

A lot of supporters are waiting to see if I buy my S.T. for upper Findus and when I do they buy their's for the Main Stand

Quoted from Cloudy

In reaponse toSka; No norhing.

Even a deaf and blind guy could feel a wave of positivity but there is no attempt to capitalise on it.

Really dissapointing and yes, I renewed my season tkt weeks ago

Drives me absolutely spare seeing this. I said it weeks ago that Jolley’s breaking his balderdash at the minute and nobody else is pulling their weight to the same level. If Fenty thinks Jolley’s gonna want to hang about and be the club’s cheerleader while others sit on their ringpiece he’s in for a rude awakening.

How about using some of that 6-figure football fortune form Dembele to get in some marketing consultants, do some basic market research? It’s infuriating.

Do you know, I don't think we need consultants in or even market research.  You could get Saatchi and Saatchi in and the same blocker would still be in place.

The problem is that there's too much of an old school mentality in the offices at Blundell Park by people who have sat there too long and not had anything of a challenge to them.  I'm not naming names or titles because I don't know who the exact blockers are but in more or less every department we're miles behind the curve.

In recent years I've seen a few initiatives from the club that have gone against the grain and actually proved successful.  

Operation Promotion - nothing to do with the club, fresh eyes from the outside.
Sticker album - Fresh eyes within the club, basic business logic - tap into an emerging market.
Social Media teasers - No financial benefit but good PR - as above, nothing new or groundbreaking but it's proved a hit.

Someone will no doubt add more to that list but it's pretty bloody bare on the bones.

Every year I have a massive whinge about how little we do to promote our season ticket sales and this year is no different.  There's an absolutely massive feel good factor around the club at the minute.  How, I'm not quite sure.  It really shouldn't be there.  We survived relegation by the skin of our teeth.  We relied on penalties and last minute goals to stay up and yet still there's this almighty buzz around the place.  

I feel like a broken record referring to it but look down the A46 at how Lincoln capitalised on a feel good factor - they more or less sold out their ground with season ticket sales last summer and will do the same again this summer.  How have we capitalised?  We put the tickets on sale early, that's it.  As skaface quite rightly points out we've got one man trying to bang the drum, recruit the players, set up the side, probably washing the kit too.  He's soon going to get bored and regardless of how much he's invested in the project, you couldn't blame him for taking the first opportunity and going somewhere that is actually run in a professional manner.

I got my season ticket pack through when they posted them out and I noticed that within the 'benefits' it listed something along the lines of free entry to non-first team competitive games.  I presume this meant reserve team games and asked for confirmation. I got no response.    I genuinely know of someone who would be more tempted to get a season ticket if that was the incentive.  It's really not a lot and financially it's a minimal gesture, this person will go to the reserve games anyway and will more than likely get a season ticket or pay on the gate each game.  But to put it in the pack and then not know what it means or be bothered to confirm it just smacks of everything that's wrong with this club - lazy and unprofessional.

We could quite easily break 3,500 tickets this summer.  No doubt about it.  Jolley has given enough belief to people that they are engaged with the club.  It's the job of the club to get of their backside and make the sale.  Instead they'll quite happily boast that they've sold an extra 40 season tickets compared to last season, which isn't an achievement at all it's a missed opportunity which in my eyes is a failure.

Yes something like a sticker album with a space below for the players autograph.

The players should be told to look out for kids during the warm up waving sticker books and go over to them to give them the autograph.

Once the book is complete, there should be some sort of prize, even if it's a photo with Michael Jolley, or a guest at training for a day.

A guy I once worked with was a season ticket holder with Hull FC (Rugby) and one season he won a day training with the team. Not to watch but to actually take part, took him weeks to get his breath back.

these are the type of things that get the club into the community.

What did Lincoln do? How did they manage to capitalise on their feel good factor?

Quoted from psgmariner

What did Lincoln do? How did they manage to capitalise on their feel good factor?

In their promotion season I know they put an offer together where you could pay for 6 games in advance at a discount which was very popular. Would probably work well here with shift workers.

Quoted from promotion plaice

Agree with this post but there are people that will never go while JF is in charge (not me) and we have to also respect their choice.

Then they are biting their nose off to spite their face PP,

To miss out on a great season or two ( hopefully more if Jolley stays ) because they dont like Fenty is plain daft,

I am no lover of the man but at least he is doing the right thing,

He is keeping himself quite and letting Micheal do all the PR,

We go to support our team not to see who is sat in the directors box,

I for one can not wait for the season to start so I can see our new exciting team play,

I just wish I could get to more games but I will watch every one of them on i follow.

I had an idea a few years ago where the pitch was drawn on a board and gridlines overlaid representing one square yard. Assuming BP is 108 yards by 54 yards, that gives 5832 squares.

The purpose was to select a square similar to a namecard. If the first goal or last goal or any goal was scored from that square, the owner won a prize.

The cost depends on the location, like real estate, so a penalty spot would cost more than the corner flag for example. I also thought as well as allowing pay on the day entries, the board could be displayed in the club shop for passing trade to enter throughout the week and even have an electronic version on the website so people could enter online.

A further idea was to buy the real estate for the whole season, so I may pay for the Pontoon penalty spot for all home games. Obviously this would be high value real estate so would cost me but the gamble is I get more than my money back throughout the season.

I may even buy the corner flag for very little outlay with an outside chance of a return on my investment.

The 5832 squares would quite obviously not all be sold, perhaps it could be a 2 square yard patch, giving 2916 squares. Without working this out in any detail, we can assume that only one third of the pitch will be attractive to "buyers", that still leaves 972 squares at varying cost.

You can probably see that this needs a little more thought to make it workable but I for one would be happy to buy some real estate on the edge of the Pontoon box and watch as Hessenthaler blasts home his 20th goal of the season.

As I said at the outset, I had this idea a few years ago and emailed the club at that time but never received a reply.

*shakes head in agreement*

I think things are going on in the background but the lack of urgency to resolve anything boils my pish the marketing is shocking and clearly holding back the Club.Trust me when I say this has been brought up and put to the board they are fully aware of our gripes whether or not they decide to take action remains to be seen? At least the Manager appears to know what he is doing and thankfully the board are backing him so at least something is better.UTM

Quoted from psgmariner

What did Lincoln do? How did they manage to capitalise on their feel good factor?

Honestly.  I don't know.  I don't know the specific projects they ran with that made their fans feel part of the journey.  Yeah, they got the quarter finals of the FA Cupand had some national attention.  But we took 10000 people to Wembley twice in a week!  Then however more many thousand went to the one game.

Doing some really basic workings:

Season Tickets sold at the start of the promotion season.  3000.
Pay on the day customers throughout the season - 2000

That's 5000 people that took in the absolute euphoria of that FGR game (Halifax game was pants but I don't think anyone cared) and we let them slip away.  After promotion the club had an open tour parade and nothing else.  Nothing else throughout the summer to remind those 5000 people how good it was and how they can carry on supporting the team, nothing.  I don't recall any real sales pitch for season tickets other than the usual stuff through the post for renewals and the bits on the official site/twitter feed.  

If you're going after new customers you've got to take your product to them.  God knows how many people would have gone to Wembley and didn't know who half the players were.  They probably don't log onto the official website for the hell of it, nor follow the club on Twitter.  Few months down the line, they've forgot they went to Wembley and any chance of us tapping into them is gone.  I'm pretty sure we ended up selling less season tickets on the back of promotion than we did the summer before.

As said in the opening sentence, I don't know what Lincoln did to tap into their feel-good factor.  What I'm absolutely certain they didn't do though is sit back, rub their hands at a job well done and just presume that new fans will be kicking the door down to get season tickets.