How Do
Wannabe Dancers Find You?
by Jack “FROSTY” Frost
Corvette City Bop Club; Bowling Green, Kentucky
In case you didn’t know it, both our club and our community are the smallest in the A.B.A. Yes, it’s a blessing and a curse. We’re so small we’ll probably never have a big multi-day dance party that generates $1,000’s. If every paid member were to show up on our scheduled Tuesday night club night – we’d have 37 people. Bowling Green has only 50 k citizens (plus dogs, cats, chickens, and goats). So what works here may not work everwhere, but some things are universal. What I’ve got in mind should work regardless of population base.
Advertising in the newspaper produced absolutely nothing. Advertising on TV or cable is too expensive and nearly impossible to measure. However, getting ON TV was much more effective. We’ve succeeded in getting our local ABC affiliate to cover stories about:
 | The exercise-health benefits of dancing (fighting obesity). |
| Increased interest by baby boomer empty-nesters seeking entertainment activities. |
| How and why the club offers lessons to the general public. |
| Sponsoring a dance with a silent auction and food sales with the proceeds going to “Relay for Life” (raised $450). |
| Putting on a dinner and costume dance raising $245 for the local no-kill animal shelter. |
We’ve had success on several occasions getting the local newspaper to cover our club as an alternative entertainment choice to the local bar scene that caters primarily to our university (one price for all you can drink) crowd.
We have done demonstrations at women’s clubs, international festivals, and concerts on the square. We all wear our club shirts and have simple flyer available to hand to people at these events.
Further, we’ve encouraged members to place small “Come Join Us” invitations at their places of work in the break room. These small 4" square slips of paper have our dance night, location and times, as well as, our website address.
We use our annual club picnic as a recruiting tool, having members invite co-workers from their’s respective places of work and friends from all types of formal and informal relationships.
We have cultivated a good rapport with the local Community Education program. That program always has at least one 4-week dance lesson program each Spring. Once they’ve learned to dance a little, they want to have a place to hone their skills – our club fills the bill.
You may be asking: "If you’re so successful, how come you’ve only got 35 members?" One answer: Attrition. The plague of all dance clubs. This is no baloney, every year, a dance club will loose 25 to 30% of its current membership. Death, divorce, grandchildren, surgery, relocation, all of these and more decimate almost every club. If a club is lucky, they’ll replace what they lose to this dance club plague. Unfortunately, maintaining a status quo is not the same thing as growing. We’ve kept our head above water for the past 2 years. If we grow, it will be at a slow rate.
In closing, let me give you the BEST ADVICE — The world wide web. In the 5 years our club has been in existence, second only to word-of-mouth (always the best for anything), our website has generated more inquiries, contacts, and appearances than anything else. Just a few words about how the website works: It has got to be EASY to find out what you want to know. Our site has everything a searching dancer needs to know (where do you meet, when do you meet, what kind of music do you play, how much does it cost, and do you have lessons). Pictures really do say a thousand words. Not seated pictures, DANCING pictures. Images of people having FUN! Success doesn’t just happen. It requires hard work and marketing to people who are most likely to want to have something to do in the evening.