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Re: [AGA-mcm] AGA Advertising



The old poster Ray had was one I made for NEC and handed off to him. I can just do the same thing again this year if he's over his grump and willing to take it.

As far as advertising is concerned, I don't know enough about it to know how to use our money effectively. I DO know that publicity tends to be more effective than paid advertising, and that is an area that, if we had the people to do it, could be extremely useful in terms of creating more awareness of AGA and bringing in new members.

ALL of the big mags will print short promotional articles for no charge, and people are more likely to read that than a tiny classified ad that we could afford in the back. For that matter, at least TFH, and maybe the others run small classified ads for hobby organizations. I know we've had one in TFH for years. It was one of these ads that first got me involved with the Boston A.S. and the organized hobby.

Local news papers are another good source of publicity. I recently did an interview for the Boston Globe talking about both the Boston A.S. and AGA. A few years ago, Steve Dixon actually did a segment on planted tanks for a PBS gardening show. (I think I still have the video tape) Of course he promoted AGA in the segment!

All of these things take work, but I'm not sure they take more work than a GOOD advertising campaign, and they are free.

I think that publicity aimed toward the pond people and even terrestrial gardeners has a HUGE amount of potential. This is a much bigger segment of the population than aquarium hobyists, and I think they really do have more interests in common with aquatic gardeners than many "fish" people do.

Karen

----- Original Message ----- From: "S. Hieber" <shieber@yahoo.com>
To: "AGA Advisory Committee" <aga-mcm@thekrib.com>
Sent: Monday, March 07, 2005 10:04 AM
Subject: Re: [AGA-mcm] AGA Advertising


I think it's great that Phil made these suggestions.
Anything that targets growth is, imo, great for AGA.

If we did advertize and it cost any appreciable time or
money, I'd like to see it be planned out and strategic from
a marketing standpoint. Okay, beyond this point, I can only
bluff -- those with marketing expereince/training have to
step in. But I'm pretty sure that some techniqes are much
more effective than others and at the very least, some
basic principles generally apply.

I suppose any advertizing we might do would be largely
limited by what's available and affordable. Yet, the key to
advertizing is that it brings (or is supposed to bring) in
more than the ads cost. If we knew that was going to
happen, we'd want to spend a bundle on it, get over the
1,000 member hump, expand TAG attract even more members.
The market must be out there; look at all forums out there.
Of course, could be the Dallas and southeastern
mainstreamers showing up in all the same ones ;-)


RE Ray. Having a convention at all this year is too up in
the air for us to be able to make a commitment with Ray for
2005. He might be willing to still display a posterboard
and brochures at all his events like he did last year. I
think that fence is mended.  We can talk to him in
Connecticut at the NEC. Just in case, maybe we should have
the posterboard and a few hundred brochures on hand?

sh

--- Cheryl Rogers <cheryl@rightstuffwebsites.com> wrote:

Phil Edwards wrote:
> If we're to get the not-online crowd then we need to do
some sort of
> print advertising.  If we came up with something I bet
Ray would be
> willing to add it to his array of stuff.

I'm sort of stupid when it comes to what the heck Ray
does, so pardon me
when I ask what this means?

I brought the last of my old
> tri-folds and TAG backissues to the Raleigh show and he
put them in his
> display.  Speaking of which, I need more backissues to
send to folks.

You want back issues or more of the current issue?

>
> What publication would you want to advertise in?  The
North American
> Water Gardening Society (NAWGS) has approached us about
advertising in
> TAG, what about doing some sort of reciprocal deal with
them?  I know
> Aquascaping Lifestyle (a pond mag) has NAWGS info in
it.  For starters I
> think doing a directed advertisement in pond magazines
would be a good
> beginning.  Those folks are already into water plants.
If they see they
> can have something pretty inside during the winter we
could probably get
> a decent return.

I like that approach. I was thinking more along the
traditional fish mag
lines: TFH, FAMA, Aquarium Whatever, etc. But I was also
thinking about
online advertising on certain sites. We could trade ads
for some of
that, I bet.

Cheryl
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