In the 2004/5 season I chaired a working group of fans who were tasked by Allan Rowley to indentify areas in which the club could improve and,if feasible, undertake some of these projects ourselves.
We had a small group of people involved, including Leyther Matt and Woolrab .In my view , we put forward a number of interesting ideas to the club--Mike Callaghan was the point of contact.The working group operated in a professional manner and we had agenda and minutes for each meeting.Unfortunately, the lack of resources within the club meant that the suggestions did not get the attention they deserved.
We carried out a large scale questionnaire survey at an Halifax home match and followed this up by questioning people on a Saturday at the Spinning Gate.The results from the questionnairs surveyed were subject to detailed analysis and a report was written and given to Allan Rowley.I presented the key findings to a LISA meeting at which Steve was present.
The essentials of the study can be found in the following paper:
Dale BG,van Iwaarden j,van der wiele T and Williams ART.Service Improvement in a Sports Environment: a Study of Spectator Attendance.The paper was published in Managing Service Quality in 2005 ,volume15,number 5 ,pages 470to 484.
Barrie Dale

As has been explained , using local press doesn't work and as Fred has pointed out , the club just doesn't have the resources , also even just asking attending fans doesn't give you enough information , so how do you get the response we need to provide the answers we are seeking ?

Well if you look just beyond the LSV , you see what ?

A college , one that has students in it , students that are doing courses on media and quite probably marketing , and part of those courses include ?

Data collection , it is to the college we should be looking to provide us with the man/woman power to collect , then collate and provide the break down of information we need

But then you have the next question ? , what do you do with that information ? , how do you use it ?

As the song suggests jonny , there are more questions than answers

In fact my suggestion is you start with the questions first , and the questions you ask are to yourself , what am I trying to achieve , then decide how you get your answers

Forget it.

I bet if you ask the majority of people who have stopped going in the last 4/5 years why they will say no promotion!!

Until we have P&R back our crowds will NEVER increase much beyond what we have now. They are more likely to go down.

I wonder where all those people are who quite happily went to Blackpool and drank themselves silly all weekend now.

The only way that you could cover the area would be a royal mail letter drop or a volunteer one. I would before the drop puit an advert in the local press for a few weeks and get it put out on the local radio and if possible hit the local tv news desks with the idea saying "Leigh fans hit the streets to save the club" type of headline. The idea of a chance to win a ST could be a good incentive say offering five with lower prizes of shirts and so on down to stickers. The advert would be a plee to the people of our district to please just fill in the questionaire with the chance to win something. In the letter put a little brochure about the LSV showing what fantastic facillities we have ( a piece maybe the LSV could contribute to as they would be benefiting from it also). A tv press launch with loads of us in front off the stadium with postie bags on and our shirts,on Look North and Granada Reports would get it noticed also. I know it going to cost but how do we do it. I have sounded out the Post office to do this for me and would be looking at about £5000. That cost could be massively reduced with volunteers and cheaper printing. I for one would deliver a bag full.

That's one way of looking at it.

The other is that there's no evidence at all to support that argument.

We all remember the glory days of P & R in the 90's when we posted sub 1k crowds and a 1500 attendance was a good crowd. Then we remember getting promoted, smashed and then dumped back into the national leagues in 2006.
Our crowds then have gone from

2006-2281
2007-1867
2008-2490
2009-1984
2010-2144
2011-2379