Reaching your target markets

Hi All-
Following our second teleconference on Developing your Marketing Plan, I thought you might share some of your most successful approaches to reaching your markets. We discussed some of these during our teleconference but I am sure there is much more to share than a one hour call would allow. It would be helpful if you gave a sense of the cost of your successful approaches so that your colleagues are able to incorporate some of these ideas into their own marketing plans.

Your ideas will form part of the materials that will be on the RESNA website with the teleconference materials and recordings.

Thank you,
Mary Virtue

Hi. This is Paul with the RESNA's Catalyst Project. In a previous job, one of my most successful approaches to reaching markets was to cultivate relationships with am radio talk show hosts. As a result, I was able to get on the airwaves and market my programs to many markets.

Paul, how did you develop those relationships? Was it a matter of belonging to groups they belonged to? Asking to meet with them individually? Just happening to have a personal connection?

Fred,

It was a matter of introducing myself to different talk show hosts. I began to listen to a lot of loacl am radio too, so that helped me get to know the personalities. Do you listen to local am radio?

One approach we've taken to conferences...

We do presentations, but have found exhibiting to be less effective (at most statewide conferences). Often, for these conferences, the exhibit hall is an afterthought, or at best not a focus. To reach more people than we do during presentations, we decided to take our "exhibiting" to a higher level.

We did this partially as an alternative to having our own AT conference. Since we didn't have the funds to create our own AT conference, and since we want to reach non-"AT" people, we partner with disability oriented conferences that have the audience we want to reach (special ed, supported employment, independent living focused conferences).

The higher level is to become a conference "partner," in which we add value to their conference by establishing an Assistive Technology Center at each of their conferences. We become a part of their conference planning committee, help with promotion of the overall conference, and create a space that might be 2 to 4 booths large, in which we bring a lot of technology and schedule individual device demonstrations. We even integrate with their registration form, so that we get people signed up ahead of time.

This costs us a good amount in terms of time, but so far, all of the conferences have bought in enough that we don't pay anything for this partnership (some of them ask us to pay the cost of exhibiting, which is just a few hundred dollars). If anyone is interested in learning more about this approach, just let me know on this board, or contact me directly: ftchang@advopps.org

no, not really, and we have a problem here in New Jersey that our media markets are mostly NY and Philly. But you know, there are a few local AM and even one FM station that are more news or talk oriented.

When you think about who you are reaching, radio is very broad. Who are you trying to reach? who is the target that is listening to AM talk radio?

pgalonsky wrote :
> Fred,
>
> It was a matter of introducing myself to different talk show hosts. I
> began to listen to a lot of loacl am radio too, so that helped me get to
> know the personalities. Do you listen to local am radio?

I live in Wilmington, Delaware, and and there happens to be local talk show hosts that focus on minority issues during the week and on the weekends. At the time, I was working on minority mental health ourreach, so it was a good fit for me to get to know the local am shows. I agree that it could be much more challenging in bigger markets such as Philadelphia.

Hi
I would like to reference this thread of posts in the teleconference on February 9th.

If Paul is on the line, I would like to have him talk about the market he was reaching via local radio. Was it rural, not served by television news channels that provided local news?

If Fred is on the line, please discuss his "partnering" at conferences.

In both cases, we are talking about cost-effective approaches that would be good to share.

And, anyone else who has some cost-effective outreach suggestions is very welcome to chime in on this site and on the teleconference.

Thanks,
Mary

sounds good. I'll be on the call. Just let me know when you want me to speak (I assume, being a conference call, you wouldn't want me to speak for more than a couple of minutes).