8 Key Ingredients of a Powerful Community Outreach.
C. Michael Johnson
What are the main components every effective
saturation media campaign must have?
1. The only communication that really works is incarnational. What works well personally shows up even better in media. Make your communication thoroughly and completely an incarnational withreach. Go for the God-dreams in people. See these two articles to go deeper.
• Withreach: Part of the Journey is the Definition Itself
• The Greatest Mistake of Outreach
2. Speak with an authentic voice. Be real, honest, affirming, and honoring. Inspire hope in a credible way. Don't waste money on clever gimmicks and worn-out cliches, they will fall flat. This is a challenge with today's media- savvy audience, but people are will quickly respond to communication that has the ring of a honest conversation.
3. Have clear objectives. Know precisely what your goals are and plan for each step in the response path. Does the mass media lead to a landing page on your website that, 1) looks like they are in the right place and, 2) has what they need to take the next step. And what are those steps -- a phone call, an email, a request for a free brochure or booklet, a bridge event, a link to your blog? And then, where do you want to go from there in the developing relationship?
4. Be truly audience-centric. Determine from the start to see yourself and your message the way they see it... would you respond? Make sure nothing is hidden and your "offer" has no strings attached.
5. Marketing is conversations. Before, during, and after, its all about conversations. All media should awaken dreams and begin a conversation. The beauty of mass media is that you can literally start thousands of conversations. They won't all respond immediately, but those that are ready will. Generally, the track of conversational media goes from mass to online to personal. But you can't expect many at the end of the funnel if you don't keep the the funnel wide at the start. Saturation media does that.
6. Let your audience design your media. This is the purpose of research, to let your target audience tell you the best way to reach them. This can be done through casual focus groups and 'community conversations' but also by reading existing research and emersion into the culture.
7. Invest wisely. So you can extend your reach, look for the lowest cost-per-impression (not distribution). Make sure its really an impression... if they don't see it, it don't count. For example, while most media is highly fragmented, direct mail achieves true saturation because every piece is seen. However, direct mail is only as good as its content (which is its highest factor for results). Carefully-designed, responsive content completes the impression.
8. Begin a comprehensive plan. Plan strategically and build your city-reaching, community transformation plans thoroughly and wisely. With intelligent planning you will reach your objectives, and reach them more cost-effectively, with smoother coordination, and with deeper, more strategic insights, that can lead to leveraged, viral movement, and exponential results.
Michael
Planning Guides and Documents:
• Community of Dreams Overview
• New Church Launch Marketing Plan
• Strategy Articles
• Withreach.com
Copyright
2006, Breakthrough Media Group
Want to get specific?
If
you’d like to explore this in an email dialog, please feel free
to drop the authors a note at mike@breakthroughchurch.com.
The Community of Dreams National Cityreaching Partnership
is launching innovative pilot projects with a local churches in
500 U.S. cities in 2006 through 2008. The focus is on using Withreach
and Community of Dreams positioning strategies to support one church
as an effective catalyst in each of those cities, using innovative
cityreaching strategies, comprehensive marketing plans, and an integrated,
branded identity package.
If you would like to learn more about this initiative,
please send a short backgrounder on your church with complete information
on how to contact you. Email to:
mike@breakthroughchurch.com
If
you know of another church in another city who may be a good candidate
for their city, please feel free to forward this document.
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Donna Crowell
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800-595-4327
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