Here’s a pretty great quote from Cammie Dunaway, the vice president of sales and marketing for Nintendo of America in an interview by the Wall Street Journal concerning the Wii Fit:
“What we see is consumers are increasingly turning to friends, family and news articles as credible sources of information about products, more so than in the past … because consumers are getting much smarter, because they have better access to information and they are able to share information online. They are bombarded with advertising messages–so they have more tools to avoid that advertising today.”
I don’t think it’s any secret, but it’s a good reminder.
Branding for Dummies says we are subjected to over 3,000 marketing messages a day; I’ve heard numbers as high as 10,000. So what are we to do?
The Internet has tools like Adblock Plus, and the real world has good, old-fashioned tunnel vision. People are getting a little tired of the Papa John’s Sargento Cheese and Fellini Pepperoni Dot Com Bowl at Historic Coca-Cola Field at Maytag Stadium. And so your church has the tough task of getting its message across without overwhelming people with the brute-force advertising that leaves such a strong distaste.
Nintendo knows this, so they rely on friends telling other friends about the Wii Fit. In today’s world, your church has to be more strategic than ever about when to advertise and when to let word of mouth do the trick for you.
Unfortunately, there’s no perfect handbook to explain how to do this. The one rule that will never fail you is this: know your target audience to the best of your ability, then know them even better. In a city friendly to religion, advertising by quantity might be effective. In a city with a particular aversion to religion, seeing your church’s name everywhere might leave a little distaste in peoples’ mouths.
You have to have a relentless commitment to knowing your own location, and when people see that commitment, they’ll be a lot more receptive to your advertising, whether that’s a billboard, fliers over a urinal or the recommendation of a friend.
(quote via Tony Morgan)
Nathan A
May 19, 2008
Its all about captive audience. We put posters at, uh, eye-level in bathroom stalls and urinals.
The latter is particularly effective because by the Men’s Bathroom Code of Ethics there’s no other place to look than straight forward.
That’s marketing.
Dave Jones
May 19, 2008
What a Urinal? Come on Guys? I wouldn’t say there is a perfect model out there, but I have published a book just recently that lays a pretty good foundation for reaching the most amount of people for the least amount of money.
Just like anything else there are good investments on your money and really bad ones.
Advertisting in certian mediums are a complete waste of time and resources, and others are not. For instance, yellow pages and newspapers are a bad investment of your marketing dollars. The proven undisputed heavy weight champion when it comes to reaching the most amount of people for the least amount of money is…. Televsion. Yellow pages and newspaper are bad investments for two reasons, one they are dying medium(s), two its a very old medium. I do agree with Tony(article above)you need to know your target audience. Knowing your demo is one essential aspect to your media plan. The next one is cultivating a commercial that compels the audience to do something(called 2 action), and the last one is to know where to find the biggest audience for your target demo.
Lastly, your campaign needs to be accountable to the money you are spending. Too many ministries don’t know what they are trying to accomplish when they spend money in media.
Ok… So you know your demo, and you know where to find the biggest audience of people, and you have a compelling non linear commercial… now what?
Now its time to put together a budget. How much do you need? Well, its going to take about 17 impressions for your audience to react to your commercial. How you get to that 17 could take one month or 6 months depending on your budget. $500 a month is going to take longer than $3,000 or $4,000 a month.
Sorry guys but it has nothing to do with location or Urinals and a little bit with commitment. its about a compelling commercial, with frequency and reach to your demo. This is how you rise above the 3,000 impression or more per day!
Want more…
http://www.spendlessreachmore.com
paul murray
July 15, 2010
did you say tv? are you kidding?? who watches commercials on tv anymore? have you heard of dvr or tivo? the only time we might actually watch a show live is a sporting event and the cost of running an add during an nfl game is outrageous. Clearly, this is another outdated idea based out faulty information. Will we ever start thinking creatively and try new methods of reaching out?
Kristin
May 27, 2008
That last paragraph is golden.