MatthewVanitas
Member
As mentioned before, several THR members coach/shoot at the UT Rifle and Pistol Club, the on-campus range at UT Austin.
Been handing out lots of flyers advertising the club, easily over 1000 since September. Noticed a few interesting trends:
1) The people most receptive to flyers can be surprising, not at all the cohesive block of white frat-boys that some would expect. Plenty of the jocky guys have no interest in the range, and I get a lot of *rolls eyes* "I already know how to shoot" from the South Texas types.
2) About 40% of flyer accepters are women, though some of that may be my targeting too. First time visitors are around 20-25% female, dues-paying members about 30% female. The gender balance continues to improve as the club continues, as word-of-mouth is a major factor with female visitors.
3) Huge trend: ten people in a row will turn down flyers, then one will take one, and then 10 of the next 15 people will take one. There's probably a better marketing term for this, but I call this the "Wedding Ring" effect. They see that someone else really likes you (takes flyer and looks interested), so they figure that the flyer must be pretty fascinating. This is also why I target groups, because if one person in the group is interested, it often spills over to the others.
4) You get some rather interesting pockets of positive and negative:
-- Gay/Lesbian student groups: often very positive response
-- Indian exchange students in Engineering: single most reliable positive response
-- Hipster or videogamer Asian-American undergrads: second most reliable positive response.
-- Long-haired/pierced/dreadlocked hippie type are evenly split between "oh cool!" and "no thanks." Almost all the people who actually hassled me for recruiting were the tastefully-dressed professional types, not the hippies.
-- Single consistently worst reaction: the Free Palestine table that recruits on campus. Man, real hostility there, even if it's staffed by people I've never approached before. In fairness, I did myself no favors with them today: THEM: "we don't believe in guns" ME: "How ironic!"
Just a few observations. I know there are a good number of other campus gun clubs on THR, so would be glad to hear other observations/suggestions.
Take care,
-MV
Been handing out lots of flyers advertising the club, easily over 1000 since September. Noticed a few interesting trends:
1) The people most receptive to flyers can be surprising, not at all the cohesive block of white frat-boys that some would expect. Plenty of the jocky guys have no interest in the range, and I get a lot of *rolls eyes* "I already know how to shoot" from the South Texas types.
2) About 40% of flyer accepters are women, though some of that may be my targeting too. First time visitors are around 20-25% female, dues-paying members about 30% female. The gender balance continues to improve as the club continues, as word-of-mouth is a major factor with female visitors.
3) Huge trend: ten people in a row will turn down flyers, then one will take one, and then 10 of the next 15 people will take one. There's probably a better marketing term for this, but I call this the "Wedding Ring" effect. They see that someone else really likes you (takes flyer and looks interested), so they figure that the flyer must be pretty fascinating. This is also why I target groups, because if one person in the group is interested, it often spills over to the others.
4) You get some rather interesting pockets of positive and negative:
-- Gay/Lesbian student groups: often very positive response
-- Indian exchange students in Engineering: single most reliable positive response
-- Hipster or videogamer Asian-American undergrads: second most reliable positive response.
-- Long-haired/pierced/dreadlocked hippie type are evenly split between "oh cool!" and "no thanks." Almost all the people who actually hassled me for recruiting were the tastefully-dressed professional types, not the hippies.
-- Single consistently worst reaction: the Free Palestine table that recruits on campus. Man, real hostility there, even if it's staffed by people I've never approached before. In fairness, I did myself no favors with them today: THEM: "we don't believe in guns" ME: "How ironic!"
Just a few observations. I know there are a good number of other campus gun clubs on THR, so would be glad to hear other observations/suggestions.
Take care,
-MV
