Free advertising

[DM]

Race details for some local Saturday events have been put on Runners World Website and in the magazine, all FREE. 4 new members as a result of this this year. Talking with 2 of them, they commented orienteering is not visible enough, few efforts are made to publicise events to a wider audience.

Why don't more clubs take advantage of this free advertising??

[Angry Haggis]

I listed the City of London race on it, although didn't get anything on the RW forums. However the SLOW Trail Challenge events are also listed and have some forum discussion.

[SeanC]

I suspect the answer to DM's question is one or both of

1) Some clubs don't do much publicity at all.
2) Many orienteers are unaware of the Runners World site.

We had our first newcomer email us via http://www.wherecanwego.com/ the other day.

The other (national) free event site I've found is:

http://www.britevents.com/

Local papers and councils also have free event sites down my way.

We've not been using these sites for very long, but a few newcomers a year is a good return on the effort. I'll add Runners World to the list now, thanks DM.

[distracted]

Why? As has been said before - because orienteers are great at advertising to existing orienteers, with the associated reams of jargon, and think that this will do... Making the effort to cut things down to basic, understandable details so that Joe Bloggs on the street would understand things, and marketing outside the 'closed circle' unfortunately seems beyond many clubs. And if it carries on in this way, they might not have a club a few years down the line...

The thing is, it doesn't take very long to do and can make a lot of difference!

National Office have produced some very good, professional looking and customisable flyer designs that the some clubs (e.g. those working with Steve Vernon) have had access to - these should soon be accessible by all clubs and are well worth the cost. They were used by the recently formed Buxton satellite club and helped attract well over 100 (yes, one hundred) newcomers along to a local, accessible venue. So there are definitely people out there willing to give things a go if they are aware of things and if it's easy to get there - like in a town park!

[Mrs H]

National Office have produced some very good, professional looking and customisable flyer designs that the some clubs (e.g. those working with Steve Vernon) have had access to - these should soon be accessible by all clubs and are well worth the cost. They were used by the recently formed Buxton satellite club and helped attract well over 100 (yes, one hundred) newcomers along to a local, accessible venue.

Blimey - I wish I'd thought of that four years ago - i might have got over 100 newcomers to my events

[DM]

Angry Haggis ; I'm not so interested in the Runners World Forums, which you could start yourself. It's the listing of the events in the online calender and the magazine that has a circulation of 87000 per issue that I'm after. All FREE. If more clubs put their races in there, regular runners would realise there is much more choice out there and start having a go.

SeanC; Good to hear wherecanwego is getting you results as well.

The issue seems to be convincing existing orienteers that promoting races/clubs does work. I really hope it's not the other possibility which is that they just don't care about getting more people into the sport.

[distracted]

Blimey - I wish I'd thought of that four years ago - i might have got over 100 newcomers to my events

Maybe someone is taking note of what is successful?

[SeanC]

DM wrote: "I really hope it's not the other possibility which is that they just don't care about getting more people into the sport."

True for some no doubt, but generally I don't think it's the case - it's probably more complicated.

In the past we've left publicity up to the event organiser, That's tough on the organiser who might not have any experience at publicity, and non-essential tasks like publicity to non-orienteers have a tendancy to be dropped if time is short...

Some clubs have posts unfilled, in this case you could see why posts such as treasurer and secretary are seen as more important in the short term. Maybe with the new fixtures software, fixtures secretaries will have more time on their hands to turn to publicity?

I think the publicity officer is a hard job. There's limited help out there for those without natural aptitude or experience, publicity officers often plug away on their own, and success may not be immediate. It takes a determined character to be good at the job I think. Good to see nopesport posts and articles in Compass Sport on publicity, this helps.