Ideas to boost attendances and income - post yours

Quoted from diehardmariner

Short and long term approach.

Sell family tickets.  £40 for two adults tickets, and up to three children tickets.   Comes with free matchday programme, vouchers for kids to get drinks at the game and sweets.   Childs tickets also come with a coupon scheme, if they collect so many (let's say 5) they get to have their photo taken with their favourite player before a game on the pitch.  You can add other incentives for 10, 15 vouchers etc. as you see fit.   23 - you can be chairman for the day  

if the club are worried about them taking up seats we might sell put them in the corner of the Main or the corner next to the away end, hell even use the away end itself as it rarely even comes close to selling out.  I did notice towards the end of the season away fans were put in the corner.  Fact is we're not selling tickets, not even coming close to selling out other than the odd game.  It's one, maybe two games a season where we might not be able to give someone the full allocation of the away end and the corner - tough!  They're not the future lifeblood of the club.

Rough costing for a family of four to go to the game is probably in excess of £60 by the time you've bought tickets and all the associated guff.   It's simply pricing a lot of people out. Long term, the kids of today are our future.  We need to get them early and get them hooked.  I grew up on Buckley Ball MKI but it wasn't the football that gripped me, it was collecting autographs after the game of Mark Lever, Shaun Cunnington, Neil Woods... Get that connection established now and we've a better chance of keeping those kids connected with the club for decades to come.  

Some nice ideas there with the kids. I have no idea if there is anything like this already as I don't have any kids but send the kids a birthday card signed by all the players and the management. Get them to tell you who their favourite player is and get that player to send them a signed picture at Xmas or something. Have monthly competitions out of all the kids who have season tickets, randomly pick a player to go to a training session or meet the players in the changing room before a game or sit in the dugout during the game. Little things like that that would make a kid's day/week/month/year and will get them hooked. Most of those suggestions would cost pennies but you'd be getting yourself a fan for life.

The other thing I've always thought we should be doing is cheap tickets for the under 25's in the Ponny. And I mean cheap. Currently the club considers a "young adult" to be anyone of the age 15-18. Currently tickets for this age group are £13 early bird or £15 on the day. That's still a lot for these kids in an area that isn't very affluent. If you're over the age of 18 and not a student, the cheapest ticket you'll get is £20 in the Ponny, that's a hell of a lot and I'm certain we're losing fans because of it. They also consider a student to be anyone under the age of 21. As a student myself for 7 years, this used to wind me up because although I was older than 21, it would have still helped me to save £7 on a ticket because I wasn't getting any more income than students younger than me.

We often complain of a lack of atmosphere at BP in games that aren't particularly important and I would argue that the pricing for younger fans is part of the problem. Usually (not always) the people who sing at games are young lads who have gone to the game with their mates. If we're pricing youngsters out there are less of them in the first place and they might be less inclined to sing if they're on their own or only one or two others. I would change the criteria for what a "young adult" is. Up to 16 you're considered a kid. 17-25 you're a young adult. If you've got proof of being a student, you can get a student ticket regardless of your age. I would slash prices for young adults and students in the Ponny to £7 for early bird, £9 matchday. This way you won't lose as many fans during that crucial period when they've stopped going with their parents but don't have much disposable income. It's bad enough trying to keep them going when we're so shite on the pitch but when you're making it too expensive for them as well, there's no wonder the fan base is aging. You might lose a bit of money initially but long term you'd retain more fans and hopefully you'd get an immediate upturn in atmosphere at home games.

The sides of the pontoon need sorting. Why not get a fabrication company to put in similar to what's in the upper barrets/findus/smiths (when they weren't broken) and get their company name on it? Helps keep the atmosphere and prime cheap advertising

Quoted from MuddyWaters

First, win more games then win more games by playing good football then challenge for promotion.

In simple terms, create a feel-good factor that has been missing for too long. Essentially we go to BP to watch our team win, everything else is superfluous.

Hit the nail on the head right there!

Quoted from psgmariner

http://fcbusiness.co.uk/news/ten-ways-to-increase-attendances-in-2018/

Essential reading there.

reading that i think its pretty clear what the author feels is important to boosting attendance and becoming sustainable....the first four or five points are about appreciating, listening, engaging with supporters, fans matter...also mentions the importance of the liaison officer role...

whereas our club thinks ....

Shut up
O.P was a bad idea
bin off a very pro-active liaison officer as she wasn't club focussed enough

etc etc

A takeover would boost attendances. Fenty stepping down would boost attendances.

I used to ignore people who said I won't be going to BP unless such and such manager/chairman is gone, but Fenty really is acting like a huge drag to the club.

News of Fenty & co. leaving would be a great boost.

Atmosphere in the pontoon improving would help, but that’s a chicken and egg scenario. I understand that you usually don’t get a good atmosphere without a good product etc, and it’s not exactly the fans fault the team hasn’t been good, but in an ideal world the atmosphere would be much better than it has been in the last two years. There’s certain things (such as ‘ultra’ groups etc) that would help but that are generally mocked by English fans for some reason, although Palace have showed us that it really does boost home atmosphere. Knowing us going down a similar path would never happen (it’ll be called tinpot by the same people who complain English atmospheres are so quiet) I think something similar to Newcastle’s Wor Flags would be good, something which helps fam engagement and continues to add more spectacle to the day. Even bringing back the big flag for bigger games helps create that bit of a buzz. Small things like this won’t bring 8K to Blundell without a winning team but it does make those small differences, many people are excited about away days even when we’re crap knowing we’ll have some atmosphere and it might mean some people who go to a good number of games might find that excuse to go to a few more. ‘We’re not great but at least the crowd get into it’

Some good ideas, and some quicker returns than others, but I think it's worth saying that the club can give lots of things a go and shouldn't beat itself up if not all of them pay off right away.  Fundamentally, we need to build a wide, broad fan base that means we have 30-50,000 people who have some sort of interest in or goodwill toward the club, of which 20,000 would turn out for a Wembley trip and buy something from the clubshop for a relative, 10-15,000 would go to big matches at a new ground, 9,000 would go to big matches at BP, 6,000 will go regularly and 4500 of whom will buy season tickets.

I think immediate short and medium term gains though all depend on supporter experience, so here are a few of my ideas:

-  A fanzone at BP, whether in the Harrington Street Corner of the Findus Car Park as suggested further up the thread, with food trucks, drinks and a space (whether an old shipping container or stage) for games, interviews, bands etc.  Using outside providers can reduce risk to the club and keeps it simple.  Also allows you to mix it up with the seasons (summer flavour for Opening Day through to September, Christmas Market etc)

- Speed up drinks service at BP. There are loads of reports that suggest the main loss of revenue at venues is not in stock wastage but in missed sales. Ie, not serving people quickly enough and they end up not buying (When I go I don't bother as it takes ages to be served and then there's nowhere to go).  Whether thats a token system to reduce cash-handling, pre-pouring of drinks, changing the queuing and serving layout, or just providing space for people to move to once they've been served.  Do a market sizing of people who'll drink outside the ground and see if you can just encourage a fraction of them to come inside and have one extra drink in the ground.

-  Sell more tickets to away fans: Identify games with potential for a lot of fans and push sales to that club by sending them lots of information about the ground, travel, about Cleethorpes. Promote these games eight to twelve weeks ahead of time on our opponents official and unofficial traditional and social media, when fans are thinking about making travel plans and when advance rail tickets go on sale.  Just 50 extra away fans per game would bring in about £25,000 over a season.

-  Expand the season ticket pack target list:  Who do we send these packs to?  Just last season's STHs?  Try sending them to anyone who's had a ST in the last five seasons, plus anyone who has bought more than 15 matchday tickets in the last few seasons.

-  Have an outbound sales strategy: Instead of waiting for people to come to the ticket office, proactively call our fans and sell them a season ticket on the phone there and then, whether up front paid, or on monthly direct debit.  Contact fans after games to thank them for their support.

-  Exiled Mariners Membership! Spoken about so much but never implemented, probably because it's difficult to pin down what it should include.  There are probably (my guess based on the bump for away support around London/SE and Manchester/NW) 400-500 around each of London or Manchester (and more around the country) who follow town but probably don't get to BP very often. An exiles package costing about £50-100 and run like a membership club, can give these fans things like discounts at the club shop, priority booking on in-demand games, a free ground tour on their "home visit" back to BP, some exclusive content or invitations to web chats, reserve a retro shirt, e-programmes, nostalgic content and generally a feeling that you're being kept involved and connected to your club.  Sell 500 of these at £50 and that's £25,000

Quoted from Azimuth

Hit the nail on the head right there!

But easier said than done. It’s like no one else has had the idea of winning football matches before.

Some great great ideas here but sadly and sorry to stress this most of these ideas have previously been put to the Club or put to the Trust to put to the Club and nothing has come of them in the main . I might be a cynic and it`s only my opinion but I believe there are two reasons for the lack of response one sheer embarrassment that the fans have a far better grasp of things and two most of the people at the Club who would oversee this change CBA.

Quoted from MuddyWaters

I don't disagree. The same thing has been stated on here for years - sometimes you have to speculate. We are a relatively poor club in many ways but we have a rich heritage and a very loyal fanbase - get some of those fans back by showing some ambition on the pitch. Whether you think it's a pisstake or otherwise, John Fenty is 100% correct - the best place to do your PR is on the pitch. There are hundreds of Town fans who would be back in a heartbeat if we were successful.

Look at Lincoln (again!), they haven't doubled (and more) their attendances by fancy PR, they've done it by showing intent and going and winning football matches. As a consequence, they've picked up more sponsors, more investors and more fans.

It's a combination isn't it?  

Lincoln capitalised on their success with good PR to build and build and build.   Town had that success, the footballing fortune if you like.  We took in excess of 10,000 fans to Wembley twice in less than a month which resulted in an epic promotion that should have been the best recruitment ground ever.  It's no different to what Lincoln had with their cup runs and promotion.  Instead we did nothing to take advantage of the extra 6.000+ fans that were potential customers.  With little to no extra marketing, we managed to keep about 1,000 of those coming through the gates in the early parts of the 16/17 season but that soon tailed off.  

Success brings new fans - looking after them keeps them.  If you keep them you generate more money.  More money (generally) means better players, resources and in turn results.