I want to zero in on some of the items I mentioned last week in order to help you connect with your community, or as marketers would say, your target market. Now the odds are that you could find people in all demographics who would be interested in your product or message, but the reality is that the manner in which you communicate your message or product will only target a niche of people in that demographic pie. You need to be able to communicate in the best way to reach the largest slice of that pie. If you already belong to a large social group, say a religious, service, or business organization then you may have access to free demographic information. But if you've investigated that and found it lacking then you need to do your own research in order to be able to grow outside your immediate circle of influence.
So where can a person go to discover this information? Well you could certainly pay for that information, but if you are just getting your business started, or you are in a small church, you may not have the necessary resources to hire a marketing company to do your research for you.
You could walk around your community and look at the type of housing and businesses that it has. Knock on some doors and visit with people to ask their opinions. And though this may be feasible in a small community, it will require plenty of legwork.
A fairly inexpensive option would be to pay a couple of hundred dollars for a mailing list for about 5,000 people in the zip code areas you want to connect with. You could go to a company like Postnet for something like this. Or you could use an advertising mailer company. Such a list has provided me with information like average age per zip code, average income, as well as the percentage in that zipcode that consist of families with children.
Another excellent source would be the local chamber of commerce for your community or the U.S. Census Bureau. They have a wealth of information regarding the demographics of your community and beyond.
Alright, now that you've discovered the demographic of your market, how do you connect with them? Where do you discover the common cultural markers that connect with the people groups in those demographics? In today's world...the internet.
When I worked for a large church in the Pacific Northwest, part of my job entailed discovering cultural trends that would help the church connect with its surrounding community. So I would scour the internet looking for marketing information that was free that would enable us to do exactly that.
How would I approach that? Say I wanted to develop a message series or an ad campaign that would help me connect with the demographic we were targeting. In our case we were specifically targeting families with children. Next I would look for trends that would help me connect with them. I would go to websites like Arbitron, Billboard.com and Nielsen ratings website to see what people were listening to and watching. Next I would go to various marketing, video and graphics blogs to see what was being created to reach that demographic.
And with the information I gathered I would meet with our creative team and see how we could apply this to connect with our demographic.
The church I worked at had a history of being creative. And as summertime was approaching several years ago we were looking for a message series to run through that season. I started doing some research and discovered that more people played video games than went to the movies. So during our meetings, I suggested a series based on video games. It turned out that Microsoft was launching an updated version of their Xbox 360 so we decided to head that direction. We were aware that Microsoft greatly impacted our demographic here in the Pacific Northwest. Using creative license we developed a series called Xbook 365. This worked because the messages we shared were from a bestselling book, the Bible and the 365 had to do with the fact that Christianity was to be lived out all year long. We tied into the buzz surrounding the new Xbox video game system. We created some videos that played just before the sermon. We even had monthly drawings for free video games. People could sign up for the drawings by giving us their name and email address. The series was a big hit, it connected with people, gave us a lot of contacts and helped us to grow.
We did this kind of legwork for most of our sermon series. Some worked, some didn't. But what we were doing, based on the information we had gathered from the internet, was casting a broad net. You catch more fish with a net, then just one fishing rod. And more often than not, what we did worked. Of course making the connection was only the first step, closing the deal will be for another blog.
The end result of what we did was that in 2010 the church was listed as part of the fastest growing 100 churches in the United States and we achieved mega church size (a church with an attendance of 2,000 or greater).
So let me close with a list of websites that you can go through at your leisure. These are websites that I use on a regular basis to discover what companies are doing to grow their markets and connect with their communities. Some of them are also church websites which I list because of their creativity. Some are video or graphic design sites. The links are listed on the right side of my blog. I encourage you to check them out and make your own list. What worked for me, might not work for you.
A good place to start to develop your website resource list is a website called Alltop.com. This was started by a businessman name Guy Kawasaki. A brilliant man who has keen insight on how to connect with people. He has authored several books that are well worth your reading. (Check out his blog at blog.guykawasaki.com). Alltop.com is a topically arranged site that makes it easy to arrange and customize the websites you want to keep tabs on.
So take advantage of the free resources available to you on the internet to help you connect with your community. I would be interested in learning what some of your own favorite website resources are. Post them in the comments section.
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