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The One Simple Secret that Will Help You Reach More People
By chris | December 27, 2006
Okay, today I reveal the secret you need to reach more people than ever before. The truth of this secret is something that will have to sink in before you “get it”. But once you understand how to use it, you will reach more people. The secret is a paradox of sorts. Here goes: “You will reach more people, by reaching fewer people more times” Read on, I will show you the ironic paradox of getting more from less.
Many churches work hard to reach people by trying to broaden the number of people they reach. They buy larger ads in the newspaper than they need to, they fork over big dollars for useless prime time advertising space, and they increase the size of their direct mail orders to no avail. They see the law of diminishing returns in their advertising. More media reach using interruption marketing simply doesn’t lead to more people reached.
What you need to learn, and lead others to understand as a coach, is for churches to narrow their focus and reach fewer people more times. The term in media is frequency. Another way of putting it is, “You can’t be a big fish in a big pond, but you can be a big fish in a small pond” When you reach people more frequently you leverage your media to break through all the clutter that is out there competing for the attention of the people you want to reach. It really works! You also use your media in a way that is compatible to the physiology of people.
Getting Attention
There is more to it than just narrowing your focus on a smaller group of people. You have to really understand the people you want to reach. Because your focus group is smaller, this is possible.
Let me use an example from secular marketing. A marketing consultant wanted to set up a marketing consulting business. He could try to reach everybody and get lost in the sea of other marketing consultants in the world, or he could look for a smaller target he can reach. He discovered there were no marketing consultants for pool and spa dealers. He became a marketing consultant for the pool and spa industry.
By narrowing his focus, he began to learn as much as he could about the needs of pool and spa dealers. His consulting business offered the marketing solutions they needed. Because he was the only pool and spa marketing consultant, pool and spa dealers began to notice him. He got their attention. Word of mouth spread quickly in the industry, he easily became a featured speaker at the pool and spa conventions. He wrote articles, made speeches and even self-published successful books. He had more business than he could handle within the “small pond” of the pool and spa industry (is that a pun?). He learned the secret that less is really more!
The One Book You Need That Will Help You Reach More People
You can know the people you want to reach and learn what they perceive their needs to be. But first you need to do your homework about the potential groups that need to be reached in your community. As they used to say on Sesame Street, “Who are the people in your neighborhood?”
I have found many churches are unaware of who the groups of people are in their community. Many ministers are content reading nationally published books about unchurched people. All the while, the book they need for reaching their community is not one they can buy; it is one they need to write. If you are going to be effective, you need to become an expert on the people you want to reach. You need to write the book on your people. This is the kind of research work good missionaries do before they attempt to target a people group. What do you know of the people groups in your community?
Just as our pool and spa marketing consultant learned, it is easier to learn the needs and make contact with a smaller group of people than it is to reach everybody. Honestly, how can any ministry meet the needs of everybody in a community? It just makes sense to understand your ministry calling, your strengths and your ideal target audience. I can’t reach everyone in Paris, but I can reach everyone on the Eiffel tower and work my way out from there!
Getting Physical
Another benefit of narrowing your focus is you increase your ability to reach people more times. Media researchers tell us the average person experiences 1,500-3,500 attempts to get his attention each day. The amount of interruption marketing people experience is overwhelming! Thankfully God has built our brains to filter out unwanted noise. Everyone’s brains have a part called the “reticular activating system” that (among other things) helps filter out distractions. Mine doesn’t work as well as it should sometimes, I am a little on the attention deficit side–look a bird!
Think about all the noises that you are filtering out unconsciously right now. Stop and pay attention. Do you hear the gentle hum of the climate control system in the room you are reading in now? Perhaps people are talking across the room, or in another room, you don’t notice them so much do you? Unless your spouse calls you from the other room, then you notice. Or pretend not to notice! However the case may be, somehow you manage to pay attention to them only when you “need” to notice them. Funny how that works!
When you have smaller targets to reach, you can identify much more affordable ways to reach them. You can use all kinds of low-cost and no cost methods to reach them. By narrowing your focus, you are actually beefing up the impact of your limited marketing budget.
Needs Drive the Communication Process
People only pay attention to what their brain tells them they need. For example, when my children were younger, they decided they wanted a pet kitten. We all agreed it would be okay for the children to have a kitten. The next day, I noticed for the first time all the kitten communication in my community. I saw “Kittens for Adoption”, “Free Kittens” signs everywhere it seemed. Also, I overheard people even talking about kittens. I even saw stray cats! What made the difference from the day before? On that day I “needed” a kitten for my daughters.
The fact is people’s needs drive what people pay attention to. People usually only notice what will benefit them in some way. As a ministry marketer, you need to understand people’s specific needs. You can’t understand the specific needs of all people in your community, but you can understand the needs of a smaller group of people in your city. When you know who you are trying to reach and begin to understand their needs, your communication can be presented in a way that speaks directly to their needs. That means, they will pay attention to your communication and not block it out. You will break through their reticular cortex through speaking to their needs and by reaching them frequently.
You can reach more than one target. The point is not to get you to have only one target. The point is to help you understand how to reach any target. Once you learn to apply the secret, you will reach more of each specific people group you want to reach. This is an easy secret to understand, but it will take some extra work on your part to implement it. Here is what you will need to learn to do. We will cover all these in future posts.
- Learn to use demographics to identify your ideal target audience
- Understand how to use original research to identify needs
- Learn to speak to people’s needs in the way you develop media
- Find media that match the target you want to reach that you can afford to use frequently
- Build in a follow-up and assimilation plan that is a match to your target audience’s needs.
Topics: Develop the Message |
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