“Half the money I spend on advertising is wasted; the trouble is I don’t know which half.”
And this is true when you try to do it without spending money too!
As an ex marketeer I adopted a blanket approach to spreading the word far and wide about Walking Hockey so it is difficult, as per the quote, to identify which channels work the best. Below are all of the areas I contacted and / or advertised the project in.
On my own personal page (as a sports coach by profession I have lots of friends who are interested in what I’m up to) so I posted lots of times about Walking Hockey
On our club’s page
I set up a Walking Hockey page
On our parent club page (cricket hockey and tennis club) so that other sections became aware of Walking Hockey
And any other local group that was prepared to let me talk about Walking Hockey (after gaining their permission).
The message was sent out at regular intervals across all pages leading up to Christmas with daily refreshes after Christmas through to launch. This will continue
Club Website
I created a dedicated Walking Hockey page for our club website and added it to our Welcome page too.
I have opt in email access to over two hundred parents of our juniors, about one hundred and twenty Back To people from our various campaigns, one hundred parents at a local school, and all of our several hundred club members. Again, I sent repeated messages out to them about Walking Hockey.
Press
I sent a Press briefing out to two of our local papers about our Walking Hockey project. They have both been magnificent in their support. This was the most quoted verbal source of awareness by participants though we have asked everyone now to let us know what sparked their interest so we can prioritise future campaigns accordingly.
Use my own account plus the club and other members to tag key bodies, for example @englandhockey and hope they pick up on the Walking Hockey project
Radio
I’ve done several pieces for BBC radio on both the general Olympic legacy issues starting in 2012 and continuing into 2016 as well as more about hockey. I therefore emailed my contact and was able to secure two live interviews to talk about Walking Hockey, one on the Breakfast Show, which was chatty and light, the other during the Saturday afternoon sports show which was more serious. Both went out in the week before we launched. They asked for follow up too.
Slimming World
One of the girls who plays for us, promoted the Walking Hockey project at her local club. This resulted in five people expressing an interest; three came this week with two more following next week. Now another local Slimming World group is promoting it.
Age UK
Two local branches offered to promote the project for us.
County Sports Partnership
I met with a representative of our local CSP and negotiated an agreement whereby they would fund my coaching time for the six week pilot and pay for a Facebook advert under their name as well as advertising on their website.
School Sports Coordinator and local Sports Development team
Both offered to assist. Our discussions have now progressed to investigating a similar project for children and adults with individual needs.
My local village community social media
They did a piece for us on their website, Twitter, Facebook and newsletter
Local Ramblers Clubs, Lions Clubs
No response from them as yet.
Walking Hockey World 