B2H: Advertising
How We Do It & How Successful It Is

Surbiton B2H is now most likely the biggest ‘Back to Hockey’ section of any club in the country. Other clubs have development sections where their primary emphasis is on Game Play development for league preparation. Here at B2H, our emphasis is on attracting past players (hence the use of the word ‘Back’ in our title) into our world of fun, excitement, challenges on the pitch and the social scene that we are developing this season. Our primary objective is to get players ready to join the league teams if they wish, or just continue to enjoy what we have to offer, and provide an interesting path for New-to-Hockey members into the sport. To see what we do to attract players read on...

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We have a captive audience for our advertising in the form of the parents of our club’s junior members who make up 32% of our membership. At the beginning of the season, we have a promotional gazebo stand at the Junior Fun Day where this year we attracted around 13 parents onto our Trial Membership Register, with a 55% chance of them attending the two trial sessions that we offer before joining. We consider this a very good return for our attendance, where we also show off the silver trophies that we have won.

To further attract potential junior parents and visitor members as well, the club (via the organisation of Josh Blair when on committee) has placed a B2H advertising board with QR code by the entrance to Pitch 3 which provides the majority of ‘passer-by’ interest. If that is not enough, the club has placed a big banner on the far side of Pitch 3 and an even bigger ‘B2H – Come and join in the fun’ sign at the far end of P1 (until removed for the EHL week). When we have a Saturday Game play session or our monthly four team 7s Tournaments in progress, we also have a portable “In Progress” display board hung on the entrance gate to P3 with our contact details on.

There is of course the continued support from Beckie Middleton, Club Newsletter/Magazine editor, who regularly places articles written about B2H in both of these news outlets for us, informing all club members how we are getting on with our developments and successes.

We have had an article placed in a local freebie magazine that we “jazzed up” using an online AI re-write that came out very well.

We have promoted the presence of SHC-B2H last season at the London Pride Hockey Tournament and to HC Rotterdam during our visit to them in the Netherlands. There is the possibility this season of maybe also going to France for the Le Touquet Festival in June.

So far, we have undertaken static display advertising and to supplement this we have just launched our ‘Player of the Month’ award for both of our training BTL and ADV groups where the awards are either a B2H printed coffee mug (for the warmer months) or a B2H embroidered beanie hat (for the colder months). We are hoping that the mug will be used to inform home visitors of the presence of B2H and invite conversation, while the beanie hat can show to the public in the street that we are here.

We are also making available to any member, the option to purchase an “I Love B2H” embroidered Classic Cap for promoting B2H at the club and elsewhere.

As for how successful all of this is, I can really only state that collectively all of these methods listed above have risen our membership over the last 18 months from around 30 to 80, with 93 enquires during last season and 45 enquires so far this season. Not all enquirers join in the end of course, but this season we have had 22 join, ten withdrawn, seven never turned up and six currently trialling the club to see if they wish to join.

All in all, a very good record and this is all down to many volunteers from those mentioned above, B2H committee past and present, coaches, kitchen staff, many club senior officers and umpires, to name but a few… and to the members themselves who continue to attend and spread the word about our great Back to Hockey group.

Our B2H Classic Cap (£11.56) can be obtained from Roger Hitch at backtohockey@surbitonhc.com, so buy one and support us with £1 per cap donated to the club’s ‘Clubhouse Rebuild’ fund.

Next week’s article is on our ‘Winter 11’s Series Preparation’