Advertising for Churches - Diversity and Repetition

Of course this series is in no way a comprehensive advertising course, but I hope it is a tool to better help you prepare for any advertising you may want to do.

The final segment in this series is called Diversity and Repitition. These two characteristics are important to a successful ad campaign. First, your advertisement needs diversity. You stand a greater chance of success utilizing more than one medium for your campaign. For example, use the list of advertising platforms created in the earlier step to give your advertisement some diversity. If you prioritized social media and television for your top two, then split your advertisement between those. If you had an extensive list of places to present your ads then diversify in your top categories as your budget will allow. Keep in mind, however, that in any ad campaign you need plenty of saturation in the medium you choose so don't sacrifice saturation in order to diversify. Your budget will dictate the amount of diversity you can have.

Second, Repitition should not be overlooked. When you start your ad campaign it should include enough frequency (Repitition) that it will appear in front of the greatest number of your demographic audience. Repitition also creates memory in your target audience and therefore is very important.

Thanks for spending some time with me on the subject of advertisement basics.

Blessings,
Doug Johnson
www.dougjohnson.net

Advertising for Churches - Connecting to your Demographic

We last spoke about determining your target demographic. If you spent quality time in this area defining who you were wanting to market your products or services to then it will greatly help you in this step. Let's take the sample list of habits for teens that we listed in the last post.

Watch music television networks
High School Sports
Facebook
Heavy music listeners
Spends 40 hours a week in school
Movie theater goers

Now we have to spend some time determining what forms of media are available for each of those areas. To give you an example, we will work through a few of these.

Watch music television networks - teens are obviously what drives the music industry. Yes we all love music but teenagers monetarily consume more music than any other demographic. So, what do they watch or listen to? To answer that we have to list out all of the areas that they listen or view music.

MTV
VH1
"Top 40" Contemporary Radio Stations
ITunes

We also know teens are Social Media lovers. Next make a list of social media websites they frequent every day such as Facebook. Continue this process through all of the areas of interest your target demographic displays. Next, determine the methods of advertising through all of the targets of interest. For example, Facebook uses Pay per Click or Pay per Thousand impressions. You can actually target region and demographic characteristics through most social media advertising.

Radio station advertising is usually done by radio commercials. Be careful with radio though, because you only want to advertise during the times they are listening. This is true even on their favorite station.

Once you have exhausted the entire list of advertising methods then you need to begin gathering the pricing of these methods as well as determine the priority of the different habits of the demographic. You will notice very quickly that some advertising media avenues are far more expensive than others. This is one of the reasons you need to prioritize the list of habits. If the number one priority is too expensive for your budget, then you may want to consider the number two priority.

This should give you an idea of where you should be spending your money. One thing you need to note is the fact that advertising results are better seen when you diversify your advertising money into different advertising media. We will discuss this in the next post.

Blessings,
Doug Johnson
www.dougjohnson.net

Advertising for Churches - Determining Demographic Habits

When you have a product or service you want others to take part in then the first step you need to do is define the target group of people you want. This should be the easiest part of the whole process. If your event is for teenagers then you know your target audience is teenagers.

Next you need to find the habits of your audience. Start here by making a list and think outside of the church zone. In other words, write down things such as:

Watch music television networks
High School Sports
Facebook
Heavy music listeners
Spends 40 hours a week in school
Movie theater goers

Spend some time in this area because it will make the next steps easier. Going through this process helps you to see who you want your advertising in front of and where you need to place your ads. Next, we will look at how to get your message in front of your audience.

Blessings,
Doug
www.dougjohnson.net

Advertising for Churches - Overview

Far too often I see the media sales representatives target churches to sell them advertisement. It is difficult to say no to the experienced sales representatives making their living on selling in a highly competitive arena during tough economic times. The responses of many churches is to give in and follow the lead of the sales rep. The problem arises when the sales rep queries the church on the amount they have in their budget designated for advertising. If given, the sales rep will design an ad campaign to use the entire amount with their company. Is that the best use of the church's money? Absolutely not.

The key to advertising is to put your product or service in front of the people you want to see it. For instance, if you have an event that is specifically designed for teenagers, then you would not want to advertise it on Fox News. Your target audience does not spend it's time watching the news.

Whatever needs be advertised must be researched to find the best connecting point for the ad. You must know your product and know which people would be interested in that product. Second, you must know the habits of your target audience. Third, you must use that information and place your ad in front of the habits of your target audience. Finally you must keep in mind two words, diversity and repetition. Over the next few days we will cover the following steps in detail:

• How to determine the habits of your target audience.
• How to connect your ad to your target audience.
• What is diversity and and repetition and why is it important to a successful ad campaign. 

Don't let one particular advertising sales representative take all of your budget funds for their media product. It is not the best use of your funds. 

Blessings,

Doug Johnson

www.dougjohnson.net

Facebook Notes Import

If you have logged into Facebook recently you may have noticed a message at the top of your screen that says notes will no longer be automatically created from outside sources such as blogs.

You should only see this message if you had your notes setup to create a new note file from a new blog post. This has been the ideal way to create Facebook notes from an outside resource.

Over the past few years this message has been my instruction to college groups on the best route to update your Facebook notes without suffering the Social Media catastrophe. What happens to all of your work that you created exclusively on a social site when a new one comes along? It dies with the old site. Remember what happened to MySpace? (sorry, I didn't mean to bring up bad memories)

If you create your important thoughts on a blog or website then you don't have to worry about the new fad that comes along. Just link the old info to the new site. The Facebook notes import function used to be a decent way to do that. So, what do we do now?

There are third party Facebook apps that accomplish the same thing. Just spend some time to research and test. The easiest way is just share a link to your new post on your favorite social media sites. This drives people to your site or blog and offers plenty of opportunity for others to see your previous work.

Blessings,
Doug Johnson
www.dougjohnson.net

The Entertainment Platform versus the Pulpit

Spending numerous years in the entertainment business allowed me to see the best (or probably the worst) in people. The entertainment platform is centrally focused around selling tickets or advertisement. In the process of increasing ratings there is a parallel that takes place. The entertainer has a tendency to become self-focused and prideful. This is partially due to the fact that the personality or actor essentially plays the "popularity" game. The more popular, the greater the ratings.

There is a vast difference when it comes to the pulpit and the one who occupies it. Even though the pulpit is a platform that stands before groups of people, the central focus is not the speaker but rather God Himself. Therefore, there is no room for a self-focusing spotlight. Pride cannot even play a part in the life of the minister. If by chance he becomes self-focused and self-presenting, then there is great potential to create a congregation who will be just like him. The result is an attitude to be served rather than to serve.

C.S. Lewis once said "to humble oneself before God means becoming so aware of the greatness and reality of God that the self falls into its proper perspective, certainly not at the center, but infinitely worthy and precious because God is fully present and in control."

Christian, you also have a platform. You can either point to yourself or point to Jesus. Think about the message you are conveying and ask yourself the question "who am I pointing to?"

In Christ,
Doug Johnson
www.dougjohnson.net