Who You Gonna Change?
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| Morguefile |
The point being you can't reach everybody with marketing anymore - maybe you never could, but in the days of three networks and PBS, you could reach a LOT of people with a 30 second TV commercial, in the days of Time and Newsweek, you could reach a TON of people with a full page ad. But, he likes to say, we live in an age of a billion channels (and it's true), so you can't reach everybody. Why try? You have to be VERY selective now.
So...who you gonna reach. And since marketing is about change, whose mind are you going to try to change? He then lists a bunch of questions to figure out once you can answer the who - the very specific who - and, face it, if you can't answer the who, don't bother going on.
So, what follows applies to church too, I think. Generally. We're not trying to sell, so much, as reach. But it's still about connecting a person with a message...
So, here are his questions (copyright Seth Godin, not me - though I'll probably make comments...)
Once you've identified the SPECIFIC who:
Then, be really clear about:
What does he already believe?
What is he afraid of?
What does he think he wants?
What does he actually want?
What stories have resonated with him in the past?
Who does he follow and emulate and look up to?
What is his relationship with money?
What channel has his permission? Where do messages that resonate with him come from? Who does he trust and who does he pay attention to?
What is the source of his urgency—why will he change now rather than later?
After he has changed, what will he tell his friends?*
I see the potential in thinking through those kinds of questions as the church as we reach out into peoples' lives. Not to "market" to them, but to RELATE to them. And I'm less interested in making "right" answers to these questions as I am, as the church, being authentic in my answers to these questions. If I can't answer them honestly, then I need a different "who" I think to reach out to... Or at the very least I need to figure out how to be me in relationship to the who I need to reach out to...
*Not intended, I think, to be an exhaustive list - either from the marketer's perspective nor, certainly, from the church's perspective - but a starting point to get us to think about the questions we need to ask...
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