As many of you will remember, before the last Focus Meeting, we asked on the message board for ideas people had to improve the marketing of the club in an attempt to increase attendances. Following the apparent positive response at that meeting, a Group consisting of members of the Trust and members of UTS got together to out together what we considered to be the ten best ideas to be presented at the Club’s regular, internal “Fans For The Future” meetings.

Those ideas were, briefly:-

1 – Season Ticket Seat Exchange & Seat Upgrade.

Season ticket holders to have the flexibility to move seats and also upgrade.

2 – Maximise Advertising Through Current Sponsor Banks.

Home fixtures on a monthly basis to printed on Banks beer mats during the season. .

3 – Advance Tickets for Groups & Families.

Review of the family ticket/group ticket scheme to encourage more families and groups to attend.

4 – Singing Section.

Move away fans into side stand, allowing home fans to use unreserved seating behind the goal with entrance by cash turnstiles, advance ticket or by season ticket allocated to a seat in another part of the crowd.
could we increase the entrance charge/increase revenue?

5 – Transport by Train/Bus

Have dialogue with rail & bus companies to explore the ideas of:-

A £1.00 match return ticket from anywhere in West Midlands. Ticket only sold if season ticket or match ticket is shown
Season ticket holders being able to pay £20 extra when they renew to obtain a travel card entitling free travel to all home matches.
Trial a free bus service for Aldridge, Brownhills areas which do not have rail links to the ground.
Any special buses to use Wallows Lane which could have a manned, removable barrier fitted to allow access by buses. This would allow rapid access and exit from ground.

6 – Leaflets/Flyers

Encourage fans to volunteer to distribute Leaflets/Flyers at places of work, to family & friends etc. Literature to be downloadable form club website.

7 – Asian/Ethnic market

Develop ways of encouraging more non white English fans to attend matches by: -

Arrange pre-season friendly with a touring Asian or Polish team
Marketing material in languages other than English, i.e. Urdu, Hindi, Gujarat, Punjabi, Polish etc
Creating links with local temples and mosques
Offer the ground and facilities for Asian football tournaments, hockey and Kabbadi. Get ethnic minority groups used to actually coming to the stadium.

8 – BBB - Beer, Bet & Burger

To encourage people to get the ground early, thus spending money on food/drink items, the club could get the bookmaker back and do a deal for a £5, for which you get a beer, a bet (£1) and a Burger.

9 – Un-used Season Ticket Stubs

To encourage an increase in season ticket sales, introduce a scheme where at the end of the season ticket holders with unused ticket stubs can return their books to the club and obtain a slight discount (Up to £30.00 max) against their new season ticket.

10 - Lapsed Season Ticket Holders

Using the historic data at the club, identify all fans who have purchased a season ticket over the last 5 years but are no longer season ticket holders.
Contact them to establish why they no longer want an ST and then subject to the reason, discuss what would make them purchase again or re-attend matches if not going to matches any longer.

These ideas were sent to the club some days ago, care of Dave Storr, the Stadium Operations Manager and Safety Officer and a well known as a friend of this site, who has said that they will be raised at the next meeting (although he himself has problems with two of them – moving supporters to the WBBS Stand – cannot do this because there are season ticket holders there and it would have to be discussed at the Safety Advisory Group anyway - and the unused season ticket stubs, which may be open to abuse so it may not work.

We will await developments with interest and keep you informed on progress as it happens.