Paul, thinking about what you've said, there seems to be two issues: how you can make the club better and how you can make the club better-known.

On the first, I've nothing to add – you have a great club that ticks all the boxes for me.

On the second, though, maybe it would be helpful to approach this as a marketing brief (which, as I may have mentioned, is what I do for a living). A few years ago an advertising agency might have taken this on as a 'chip shop' account (that means one that's taken on for the prestige of doing great creative work rather than making money and originated when a Manchester agency decided to promote their local chip shop and won loads of awards for the work). Unfortunately, in today's economic climate, few agencies are prepared to do this now. If you wish I can, however, give the problem some thought and maybe pick the brains of colleagues to see if they have any bright ideas.

Two things spring immediately to mind:

1.        Your current approach appears to have been successful – what it amount to is viral marketing. There may be ways of extending this and the advantage is that it's cheap and, especially in the music industry, has on occasions been spectacularly successful. It's an approach that more and more mainstream advertisers are looking into. At the very least, you should be building your email database by adding as many email addresses as possible (get everyone's who comes to the club, if possible). There are some data protection issues you'll have to address but nothing that should be a problem.
2.        I understand that you want to attract younger people, but that might amount to pushing water uphill by going against the prevailing demographics. The 50+ sector is the only one that is growing in the UK and it's growing exponentially (the agency I work for specialises in this market and is now the biggest agency in Yorkshire). Also, this age group comprises a big percentage of the 'folkie' genre (just look around at festivals and folk clubs). I'm not saying that you should ignore the younger sector but ensure that, at the very least, you produce 'ageless' marketing.

As I said, if you want me to, I'll have a think about this and maybe talk to you again about it at Pickering. (Hey, it's not often I can wear my marketing hat and my folkie hat at the same time!)

See you there.

Pete