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In the Youth Min world we have a lot of events. Sunday night youth, Wednesday night Bible study, fundraisers, weekend trips, mission trips, and so on. We’re busy people with a lot of events. With so much going on it’s easy as a youth or a parent to completely miss an upcoming event if it’s not properly marketed. Here are 5 helpful marketing tips in the YM world:
1) Be Deliberate. Make sure that you’re sending out your information to the right people at the right time. Just because you’re planning your summer mission trip in August doesn’t mean that you should be advertising in August and just because there are two older adults going with you doesn’t mean you should be advertising to the older adult community.
2) Be Creative. E-mail blasts are great, but there are other ways to market events too. We’re doing a “Adult Night Out” this week where we watch kids 5th grade and below for a small fee. We gave all the Sunday School kids (5th grade and under) stickers while they were in the class – they wore their stickers around Church and drew a lot of attention towards the event. Make T-Shrits, Wristbands, Sunglasses, Posters, Postcards, Videos, etc. There are a ton of ways to market!
3) Think it Through. Don’t market the same way two times in a row. If you made bracelets for your Fall Kickoff don’t make them for your Winter Retreat, too. If you made a super colorful and catchy poster for your Lock-In make your D-Group poster simple and elegant. Make sure that when you’re marketing for an event it doesn’t get confused with a previous event.
4) Get Opinions. Is this a good idea? Is it offensive? Is the message clear? It would be awesome to market our Super Bowl party by handing out free Youth Group football jerseys – but will outsiders get the message? Is the purpose on the jersey? Are the youth aware of why they’re wearing a jersey? It would be awesome to promote our dance party with a poster of Disco Jesus, but would that offend anyone in the congregation (ummm….yes). Always get a second opinion before starting a campaign.
5) Market Often. It never hurts to give yourself too much publicity. Send a few e-mails, write a few facebook posts, update your twitter a few times, send a few texts – make sure if someone doesn’t know about an event it’s clearly because they don’t pay attention to anything (then slap them around a bit).
I would love to hear your thoughts and any additional ways to improve the marketing campaigns of your youth events.