Fans action group (to improve attendances)

[The Art of Hand and Foot]

Promotional activity needs to be well organised. Starting with the objectives.  Seems obvious doesn't it, bums on seats. However it's not that simple. We need people to take Action, ie come to games. But, they need to Decide to come. They can't decide to come unless they are Interested. Now comes the clincher, in order to be interested they need to be Aware! In reverse it's known by the acronym AIDA. 

Initial promotional activity involves making people Aware. Will leaflets increase awareness? It will help, as will posters and signs. Along with social media etc.But there has to be a message, a message that goes deep and has meaning to people. What is that message? 

Fordy knows what it means to him, I know what it means to me. As does everyone of you. 

I noticed that there was video of fans explaining what the club means to them. We need more of that message.  More fans, new fans, old fans, interviews with potential fans. 

Perhaps even a focus group of all members of Oldham society to find out what that message should be.

[Enk27]

1 hour ago, The Art of Hand and Foot said:

Promotional activity needs to be well organised. Starting with the objectives.  Seems obvious doesn't it, bums on seats. However it's not that simple. We need people to take Action, ie come to games. But, they need to Decide to come. They can't decide to come unless they are Interested. Now comes the clincher, in order to be interested they need to be Aware! In reverse it's known by the acronym AIDA. 

Initial promotional activity involves making people Aware. Will leaflets increase awareness? It will help, as will posters and signs. Along with social media etc.But there has to be a message, a message that goes deep and has meaning to people. What is that message? 

Fordy knows what it means to him, I know what it means to me. As does everyone of you. 

I noticed that there was video of fans explaining what the club means to them. We need more of that message.  More fans, new fans, old fans, interviews with potential fans. 

Perhaps even a focus group of all members of Oldham society to find out what that message should be.

Such a great post. As a lapsed fan who came back to now making most games, I thought about why I did. The simple answer? Boundary Park. Yes I love Oldham RLFC but as someone who was too young to go the Sheddings, Boundary Park is nostalgic to me. Whitebank just never felt like home. Boundary Park does.

My other half, she had no interest in Rugby. I practically forced her to come when I returned. She went from not caring to telling me to cancel plans in June, just in case. Why? We attended the end of season party at the Fox and Pine, some of the players took 5 minutes to come and speak to us. Just to thank us for coming down. That connection resonated with her and she's now a massive fan. She owns more merch than me (albeit I'm a cheapskate).

 

I was thinking about this past week when we signed Nene and to the reactions of the less than 1,500 attendance. Lots of "come on support your town, we are winning" posts. However a lot of that only matters if you already follow rugby. In truth, a new flash signing and winning is only of interest to current fans. Go to Spindles and ask someone what they think of Nene, they will likely think it's a new dance on TikTok.

We need to attract new fans, those who at the moment likely would think a 40-20 is a new cocktail and who are puzzled as to why the team that concedes kicks off.

 

Yes winning can bring fans, but it's not the most important thing. I daresay that everyone on here would still support the club if we had the same record that Hunslet or Keighley currently have. That's because our "why" is not tied to winning. We need to find like 3,000-4,000 more of us. To do that we need to find their "why".

My "why" is nostalgia, the game allows me to feel like I'm 10 again and have 80 minutes away from stresses, my better half's "why" is that she has built a connection to the club and it's players.

 

What's your "why"? 

 

 

 

[Godzilla]

My take:

I understand that the club are between a rock and a hard place when it comes to knowing whether to open another part of the ground, the capacity of the Joe Royle stand is limited and it could well be that it gets full at some point this season but I also share the worry that some of the things that are being done at the moment haven’t been properly thought through and there doesn’t seem to be a plan.

The crowds this season have obviously been lower than the club hoped but they aren’t out of line with a lot of other championship clubs and I think it’s more than 20 years since Oldham averaged more than 2000 a game. Even before the ‘old’ club went bust crowds weren’t always that big. The club put up a clip from the 1996 game against PSG recently – the crowd that day was 2,500. The way the club has been turned round in the last couple of years has been great but getting the club back to where it was in the good old days is going to take time (and planning).

Cutting prices for the Barrow game was a nice idea but it was done at the last minute and it wasn’t that well publicised – not everyone lives on social media – the friend I see at most games and who (unlike me) actually lives in Oldham – had no idea that the prices had been cut until I told him a couple of days before the game.

I don’t have a problem with charging a premium for buying on the day but again it seems to be a last minute decision – so some people are going to turn up unawares on Sunday and find the price has gone up 20%. I also worry that a £4 difference is too much and is likely to make some people feel they are being ripped off. I find it concerning that when I read about the £24 charge on Facebook the club website was still showing the old prices (it has been updated since) – again it suggests a lack of forward planning.

The club has also (again at short notice) decided to move the Bradford game to a Friday night, again not a bad idea in principle but the lack of notice means attendance is likely to be lower and if the gate is disappointing will that be because people don’t like Friday games or because they didn’t know about it early enough?

Or indeed will it be because it’s the next Home game after the Fev game and those people who only find out about the £24 entry price this Sunday think sod that and boycott the next (Bradford) game? If you change too many things at once it becomes harder to tell what impact each individual change has made. And that makes it harder to tell what has worked and what has not.

Distributing leaflets is something that I think was first raised on this forum and again the club seems to have gone for it without thinking too much about it. Bill has asked for volunteers to deliver them but as mentioned above the cost of getting a firm to deliver leaflets is so low is it really worth using volunteers to do it? What will the leaflets say? Will they target a particular game or games, there’s a 7 week gap between home games coming up soon, is it sensible to send leaflets out now or would it be better to wait and target the run of games after the break?

Right well I think this post is long enough now, let’s hope the crowd on Sunday is indeed big enough that the club have to hire some more stewards!

[sheddingswasus]

The Friday night situation is interesting. If we are fortunate enough to get to SL games will be changed often to suit the requirements if Sky. 

[Stevos Barber]

I noticed that Bradford only had 1606 for their game against Sheffield. 

We shouldn't beat ourselves up too much as the game , as a whole,  has a low profile and is struggling. That said Bill, Mike, Sean and the boys deserve better

[returning after 20 years]

Hello, I've not been to a game in a long long time last time I think Mike F was player coach etc. and we were playing at Boundary park, before that shedding's etc. home and most away games back in the 80's taken by friends dad's etc. (I even played badly for Waterhead under 15 and 16's in the 80's). I started to get mildly interested last year when the changes happened. So went last weekend (Barrow game) with cousin (also ex-amateur player/fan) his first game as well. As I said to him as we walked to the ground (I live 10 minutes walk away), if they can't get people like me back then it's never going to work. Now here's the positives two tickets for Featherstone just purchased (and two hat's it was very sunny last game hope they turn up for weekend).   We will probably go to most of the remaining home games this season. It's taken me about year to come round so there is hope and I must say the investment financially and emotionally shown by Bill etc. has been my "Why" . They may well make mistakes going forward but they appear open honest and able to admit when they get things wrong you can not ask for anything more. See you on Sunday.

 

Edited April 8 by returning after 20 years

[Enk27]

10 hours ago, returning after 20 years said:

Hello, I've not been to a game in a long long time last time I think Mike F was player coach etc. and we were playing at Boundary park, before that shedding's etc. home and most away games back in the 80's taken by friends dad's etc. (I even played badly for Waterhead under 15 and 16's in the 80's). I started to get mildly interested last year when the changes happened. So went last weekend (Barrow game) with cousin (also ex-amateur player/fan) his first game as well. As I said to him as we walked to the ground (I live 10 minutes walk away), if they can't get people like me back then it's never going to work. Now here's the positives two tickets for Featherstone just purchased (and two hat's it was very sunny last game hope they turn up for weekend).   We will probably go to most of the remaining home games this season. It's taken me about year to come round so there is hope and I must say the investment financially and emotionally shown by Bill etc. has been my "Why" . They may well make mistakes going forward but they appear open honest and able to admit when they get things wrong you can not ask for anything more. See you on Sunday.

 

Welcome back and hope to see you regularly at games from now on. I do wonder how many lapsed fans there are and more importantly, how we get them back.

This should go hand in hand with looking to find new fans too.