Reply To: How much do you pay for advertising?

[cameraclicker]

If I have been following, you live in a very populous geographic area and want to help families of “special needs” children.  Or, perhaps even a subset of those children?

FB and Adwords seem like a shotgun approach to a job requiring a sniper.    Admittedly, all parents probably shop at the same supermarkets, travel the same roads, use the same trains, and visit the same parks.  The job of advertising is to reach the target audience when they are receptive to the idea of purchasing the advertised item.  Much of the advertising in our life is spraying media and hoping a percentage will remember the ad when they are in the store.  Listening to music on YouTube, I click on the end ad button with regularity and during the last day or two, their ads have been so frequent I may be driven back to listening to CD’s again.  I could not tell you what any of those ads wanted me to know about.  When driving, I sometimes comment to my wife about the last ad on the car radio.  She has no idea what the ad was about.  We have learned to tune out a lot of the noise we don’t care about.  Having software tools that block ads is not even necessary, unless the ad is doing undesirable things like opening new windows or playing sound without permission.

A few of our churches have people that drive miles to attend.  Many draw their entire congregation from within a few blocks of the church.  Having church-goers, within some radius of you, being aware of your service may be worthwhile because of networking.  You may reach a few families directly, but you really reach the local community who know someone in the area who may be interested.

Here, if I were offering the same service, I would be trying to get notices into The Sick Children’s Hospital and Wellesley Hospital, because they run programs that cater to children with medical problems.  I might also try to get a notice into Ronald MacDonald House, since that is where out of town parents stay when their child is in one of the city’s hospitals.  Having a notice on a bulletin board may have the desired effect over time.  Having the staff talking about your services would be nice too.

If there are specific illnesses or conditions the children have, then the FB page for that condition may be a place to add a comment.  Targeting other specific web pages may be helpful.  If you connected with a page like this:  http://www.addrc.org/  You could argue that your service supports families with a member suffering from ADHD by providing a better level of photography because of your experience with those patients.    Someone looking at a page like that may be specifically looking for treatment options, but may be open to improved quality of life services as well.