Orange Week | Refine the Message | Part 3

Yes, one more post for today. Refining the Message is just that important!

Refining the Message also matters when it comes to marketing. A rule of thumb: a person needs to see/hear about a product or service seven times before she will make a definite decision about that product or service. As you plan out your calendar of events for the year, make a conscious effort to plan out how you will communicate those events.

We create a document that we can post as a visual reminder of when we need to begin talking up events. The initial work is time consuming; however, in the end we know that parents and kids will find out about what is going on in our ministries.

A few ideas that have worked for us:

In our environments, we have TVs hooked up to MacMini desktops. We create a Pro Presenter script that includes all of the slides that coordinate with the lessons for the month. My tech coordinator creates these weekly shows with the bottom line, memory verse, and virtue slides. The show also includes several of the videos from the Get Real videos from 252 Basics. This is a great way for parents to find out what’s being taught in class as well as learn more about the strategy behind the curriculum.

Because we still have physical name tags posted in our environments, we do direct marketing for events in their plastic holders. Since parents need to take the name tag off the board, they will see the direct marketing piece and take it with them. We place these in name tags two weeks prior to an event. You’ll notice this is a great visual for your attendance patterns.

For e-mail blitzes we use Constant Contact. It’s a great easy e-mail service with both templates and fully customizable layouts for e-mail marketing. They also have a new archiving feature with the ability for the recipient to post the e-mail to Twitter, facebook, or a whole host of social networking sites.

Video advertisements are a great use of time and energy for communication. People are used to watching commercials. Cleaver, exciting videos can be a great way for people to hear about your event and catch vision as to why they should attend.

Getting small group leaders to attend events is one of the best ways to market events. A child will have much more buy-in to your event if their leader is coming. Have leaders call kids at home and get the KIDS excited about the event. If kids like what’s going on, guess who will also like what’s going on: Parents.

What are some of the ways you’ve had success in marketing your events? I’d love to hear more ideas!