Attracting new faces to your club

Big G · #1 02-07-2010

So you have a club and it has it's regular 15 people racing.

What do you do to encourage new people and boost your racers?

DCM · #2 02-07-2010

best thing, is a good tie-up with the local hobby shops, so when people come in to buy cars, they get given a flyer for your club. Then when they get to your club, members be helpful.

If you want to attract existing racers, give them what they want, track time, fun and good racing.

Borat · #3 03-07-2010

Naked lesbiens, but not the men ones.

Teddy truman · #4 03-07-2010

the people who are coming.. get them to tell there friends or people they know.. or advitise locally..

Si Coe · #5 03-07-2010

Convert the local bashers.
Whenever I see people out bashing, I talk to them about racing, tell them about our club and invite them over to use the track.

Since many bashers use the Bury track anyway, we tend to meet some whilst practicing. They are normally impressed by how much better our cars go round the track, and get interested.

Finally, to help the conversion, first race is free, so a basher can give organised racing a try with no real outlay.

mdb_75 · #6 03-07-2010

Four qualifying rounds instead of three!!

Hairy Spider · #7 03-07-2010

If you knocked on the door of the 10 closest houses to your venue and asked them if they knew there was a model car racing club there, how many would say yes? If they don't know about it, what chance have the rest of the county got? That's not meant to be sarcastic, that's just an observation. We've been going 25 years and we get our members from 3 main sources:

Word of mouth from the members via school friends and work colleagues etc. Why not lend your mate from work your old car to try for a few weeks...
Running race meetings at local summer fetes. Quite simply the best way to get the locals interested is to show them what you do. We've picked up a member or 2 from almost every event we've done over the years. You would be surprised at what else you can pick up from the local community once you start to get involved with it
The Club Website. Probably the single biggest contriutor to new members over the last 5 years. "I saw your website and I thought I'd come and have a look". Get them though the door once and there's every chance they will come back again

If you are looking for seasoned racers then that's more difficult since racers by definition probably already have somewhere to race.

Hope this helps and good luck

Jon.

Big G · #8 03-07-2010

Quote:

Originally Posted by mdb_75

Four qualifying rounds instead of three!!

I'd like to keep the 5mins between rounds Michael!

Thanks for the replies. I'll get some flyers made up and look for local fetes are around and see if we can get some of our racers taking part

mdb_75 · #9 03-07-2010

Quote:

Originally Posted by Big G

I'd like to keep the 5mins between rounds Michael!

Lol, I think we could run four rounds if we got going sooner than we do, we're all there, but we don't seem to get going very quickly!?

Back to the main topic, gaining members can come from word of mouth, but people really need to see the cars racing to appreciate them and get interested.

I remember racing at the Ludlow Carnival when that ran and it would get a fair amount of people watching. Of course the carnivals long gone now, but if you/we can get to other similar events and race then we should be able to get people interested.

There's the Richards Castle soap box derby next Sunday, that might have been ideal, but it might be a little short notice now...

On the up side Rob from my work has bought my red/white SX and will hopefully be racing with us this coming Tuesday.

Big G · #10 03-07-2010

the soap box derby would be ideal. at least it's already got car people there!

mdb_75 · #11 03-07-2010

Get it organised Gareth!! We'd all need to be there though.

Col · #12 03-07-2010

Quote:

Originally Posted by Big G

So you have a club and it has it's regular 15 people racing.

What do you do to encourage new people and boost your racers?

Quote:

Originally Posted by mdb_75

Four qualifying rounds instead of three!!

This is a good point. At York we usually get around 40 on a good night. 5 mins between rounds is ridiculous! We open doors at 5:45. From there it should be easy to get racing before 7, 2 mins max between heats and there you have 4 rounds. Any less isn't worth putting the stuff in the car for.

SlowOne · #13 03-07-2010

Local paper. They're always looking for a local story, and we make an ideal subject. The best stories are when you get a young lad who wins something (even if it is a local club race) and then do a story in the paper with a headline like "Local wins race at 300mph!"

Play on the speed, the acceleration, the complex transmissions, the relationship to BTCC/Baja/F1/whatever and the tyre 'war' - everything we might think is too noddy is exactly what the paper wabts to publish. These sort of stories sell RC!

The other thing that works is getting into local schools, giving demos, and then doing a Q&A session. Again, you have to be persistent and consistent - it's no good doing one you have to do lots of them. If you do it in conjunction with the local shop, who can bring kits and parts along, it is really a big deal for the kids. Try to get to infants school as well as secondary school - you can't start them too early! HTH

AlisdairO · #14 03-07-2010

Make sure you're well advertised online. Particularly anything locational - like http://www.centralbooking.org/cbs/in...ubs&Itemid=151 . When I first started going to titchfield, it was pretty hard to find online, and it was only because I was really persistent that I found out it existed. You don't have to get your homepage to the top of google, but just make sure that if someone searches for 'rc club <your county>' that pages come up which have your club listed. Pages like the one I mentioned above, or rcmap, will help bring people in if you aren't on them already.

Big G · #15 04-07-2010

yeah I'm working on an overhaul of our website since it's pretty basic right now

strobe · #16 04-07-2010

BTRDA Woodpecker Rally.
Get in contact with Sixty & Worcestershire Motor Club Ltd.
Rally takes place on 4th Sept.
Based at Ludlow race course. See if you can have an area and set up a track/display area.
The rally drivers are bound to be interested and could get there kids/relatives involved.

info link http://www.btrdarally.com/events.asp?id=78