I'm more skeptical.
I think the attitude of football fans has changed over the years. Liverpool/Everton fans now laugh at us, rather than see us as a little Brother, perhaps. The gap between Premiership and League football has never been wider and we aren't the only ones suffering from that. So we've lost out on a lot of support from Wirral based Liverpool/Everton fans perhaps, that we might have had previously? I'm not an expert, just speculating. Also, previously having players who had previously played for a long period over the water, like Aldo, Stevens, Nevin etc might have been a factor. That said, it didn't really work with McAteer...but I think that the board may be hoping that the appointment of McAteer/Barnes might bring a few Red's through the gates; again, I'm skeptical.
I also think that the profile of the club was massivley raised by our cup exploits. Though I don't care much for the cup competitions - would rather see a successful league campaign - our reputation in this respect was definetly enhanced under Aldo, going to Wembley and all that. We've not had a good cup run for aaaages...
Also the obvious fact that we're in League 1 and showing no signs of rapid progression is going to make people bored - especially those old enough to have watched us surge up the league under JK, with the sky appearing to be the limit. Expectation levels from these fans inparticular seems to me to be unrealistically high, and many of them don't seem to accept that we have perhaps found our level playing L1 football.
A series of inept managerial appointments has brought years of rubbish football in recent times...Aldo got us relegated and was succeeded by the awful Dave Watson, Mathias started well but ultimately lost a lot of games, whilst Little inherited a gem of a team and ended up nearly getting us relegated. Moore has stabalised the club - looking at it, we were on a massively slippery slop - took over and within 3 years had us back on the brink of the playoffs, with budget cuts each year. But I think it was a bit too late, as we'd already bored a lot of fans into leaving in the Watson-Mathias-Little era.
So, raise the profile of the club? A good cup run would seem the most realistic, short-term way of doing this IMO. Promotion seems a less likely target but would probably be equally useful. The £5 offer was particulaly amusing - we could make it free to get in and still wouldn't sell out. It screamed of desperation and ultimately failed.