How does your club publicise/advertise itself?

[grimsby archer]

On checking the "find a club" section of the GNAS website recently I was dismayed at how few clubs in my county had taken up the option to provide contact details.
Unfortunately, internet searches fail to provide much more about many of the clubs in my county.
If I were a person interested in archery, some clubs are almost impossible to find.

Putting modesty aside for a moment, my own club has a listing on GNAS, we come high in the search engine listings for "Archery" and my town or county name, we are listed in the yellow pages and thompson local, not to mention posters in the local leisure centers, libraries and articles in the local newspapers. We even put old copies of ArcheryUK in waiting rooms with a sticker on saying "your nearest club is....."
I STILL get people who say "I didnt know there was an archery club"

My question to you is "How does your club publicise itself?"
Do you do anything I havent already done?
What works best for you?
Are you easy to find & contact?

[pHz]

we come up first on google for 'archery oundle' - shame we are in peterborough and have a name that doesnt match our location ! (also my fault for still not sorting the metatags on the website ! )

we are on GNAS but with out of date details (i tried to edit these but long story ... )

we are obviously on archery organiser too but i guess if you know about that youre already an archer ?

ive put us on generic sport club websites too (like this newish one - http://www.sportspage.co.uk/user_home.php ) as ive come across them

we get fairly regular (every 3 months or so i guess at the minute) coverage in the local paper and i always include website address in my press release

slainte : rob

[clickerati]

This is one of the main reasons archeryOrganiser.com was created. When its creator (lewney on here, aka Anthony) was looking for a club and couldn't find anything on the GNAS. Luckily our club had a website with contact details, but knowing that there must be others out there who couldn't find clubs or events, he put together aO.

We've got a great club website, which most of those interested find us through. Plus a list on aO, a presence on here, quite good press coverage locally, fliers up at Quicks, the occasional item in AUK, etc.

[grimsby archer]

Oh, I forgot the most important one of all.
The guy at Centre Parcs has heard of us.

"Wow, you're the best we've ever seen! Where do you come from?"

"Grimsby"

"You'll be wanting Grimsby Archers then!"

Thanks man at Centre Parcs!

[TJ Mason]

We publicise the club in several ways:

• our own website, with contact details and directions (top result if you Google on archery club england)
• up-to-date page on the GNAS site
• contact details on the YAA and NCAS websites
• up-to-date details on the local council's website.

Recently one of our members was interviewed by a local radio station, leading to more good publicity.

And that brings us all the interest we can handle! We'd struggle if we had more enquiries and requests for beginners courses.

One of our members recently took it on himself to make some leaflets and shove them through letterboxes in the local area. This brought one enquiry, and eight complaints. Hopefully he won't do it again.

[Hodgelett]

Eastbourne Archers is about 10min walk from my house. Had I heard of it before asking at my annual summer camp "how do I continue to do archery?" Hell no. I followed the supervisor's advice and looked up GNAS.
The EA website hasn't been updated for a while either, there's photos in the junior section from when I was one.

The same went for my uni club. "So...is there a King's Archery club?" "Nope. Try ULU." "Say what?" "YOO LOO...University of London Union. Next to the library Hitler wanted to use for his Brit HQ and the Brit Museum."
Similarly, despite telling a girl repeatedly ULA exists, she went and set up KCLA...then only advertised it at the Guy's Campus Fresher's Fayre. **** Medics.

[grimsby archer]

Originally Posted by TJ Mason

[*]our own website, with contact details and directions (top result if you Google on archery club england)
.

I'm impressed with the google result!
Do you want to share the secret, if I promise not to out do you? "archery club lincolnshire" would be good.
Do you pay extra, or is it just by clever website promotion?

[TJ Mason]

The trick is simply accessibility engineering. I've been careful to make the site very accessible to visually-impaired people browsing with assistive technologies. And as it happens, the search-engine bots are effectively visually-impaired users, so the site is very readable to them, resulting in high search-engine rankings. I was pretty surprised when I found that this particular query gave such a high result, though!

Some specific info:
Phoenix Bowmen archery club of Halifax, England - accessibility

[napolienne]

Almost entirely through our website - I'd say 99% of enquiries about beginner's course and membership come from there. Having Nic Simpson around is also a bit of a boon in terms of publicity - she's been on BBC Radio Oxford twice now (by invitation, it wasn't asked for) and is BBC Oxfordshire's sportswoman of the year. All of which raises the club's profile.

To be honest at this stage there isn't much point in advertising to any greater extent. We're already at full capacity in terms of beginners courses (until we get some more L1s, that is) - four full courses a year, and the August course is already pretty much full over two months before the start date. What we really could do with are some keen regular members, but the way to get those is by working on what we already have rather than trying to get millions of new people.

[Trunkles]

I have updated the GNAS web site entry for our club - just email at the moment and we get a lot of enquiries (and spam) from that. Otherwise a lot is friends of members. Only a small club so we cannot really cope with hordes of beginners. I keep thinking about a web site but we can just cope with the volume we get. Being in a big city I always point out the other local clubs when I respond as they might be more convenient to the enquirer.