I’d love to see a church use this technology to pull in people who drive by to check out their facilties after hours.
Real estate agents and car dealerships are already using this FM transmitter to send messages about houses and automobiles while onlookers sit in the comfort of their car.
Here’s the idea … record a message from the pastor, post a sign prominently near the most visible entrance where guests may come to look (like to the worship center), and offer some sort of an incentive for them to visit in the broadcast message (like a special pastor’s guest reception at noon on Sundays).
(Link via MinistryMarketingCoach Blog)
The United States Marines are using the popular teen/young adult networking portal MySpace.com to recruit, according to the Associated Press. So far some 12,000 have visited their profile on the site. In six months, 430 have asked to be contacted with 170 being considered potential recruits.
Other companies using MySpace to market: “Toyota Motor Corp. has a page to promote the Yaris, its new subcompact car. Verizon Wireless sponsored a contest on MySpace for the best single by an unsigned band.”
“MTV Angles for MySpace Generation”
“Wal-Mart Courts MySpace Generation”
Facebook, the social networking site aimed at college students with more than 7.5 million registered users, has a great feature where they list the most popular music, movies, books, and TV shows with their users for the previous seven days.
It’s called “Pulse” … if you’re ministering to college students, check it out and bookmark it.
Here’s some fascinating facts about Facebook (from their site):
Over 2,200 colleges, 22,000 high schools and 2,000 companies supported
Two-thirds of registered people return every day
People spend an average of 20 minutes on the site daily, according to comScore
#1 photo site on the web, with over 1.5 million photos uploaded daily
Seventh-most trafficked site in the United States (Now, that’s something!)
The site’s also estimated to be worth $2 billion …. here’s a profile on their under-30 CEO Mark Zuckerberg.
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Attention Youth Pastors: Want to learn how to reach this youth culture? Learn from the best. Here are 12 excerpts from a blog interview by Guy Kawasaki (who helped make Apple computers famous) with a youth market research guru Kathleen Gasperini.
On the researchers talking to teens: “In youth culture markets, a guy with khaki slacks and a blue button-down shirt and a clipboard simply scares off young people. Our field research teams are just as likely to have a tattoo as the person they’re talking to, but they tend to be older than the target market and many have journalistic capabilities.”
On the term “teen:” “For the sake of young people who may read this, we prefer to refer to ‘teens’ as ‘young people.’ No one these days likes to be referenced as a ‘teen.’”
On the popularity of sites like Facebook and MySpace: “The appeal is that they allow for creativity, communication, and discovery.”
On information overload: “We asked the question across all our global studies about information overload: “Do you feel there’s too much information coming at you to absorb?” The young people in the United States, Canada, and Japan said No. If anything, young people want more…they’re hungry. You can see this in our China Study too.”
On fads: “A 15-year-old’s sense of history is about three years, which explains, for example, why they think they’re creating punk rock, even though their parents may have listened to the Sex Pistols.”
On the importance of music: “Music is the common thread because it’s emotional and personal and taps into that mammalian cortex.”
On authenticity and grassroots marketing: “Grassroots and bottom-up is the most authentic way to go, and you can do this much faster than in the past given the speed of communication and viral marketing. But you can’t try to be cool and grassroots if it’s not true and real. Grassroots takes being out in the marketplace—being there, in their lives, and relevant … young people can smell anything that smacks of insincerity a mile away. To them, some companies just stink.”
On two ways to influence them (worth the price of your time): “first, get associated with music and artists; sponsor up-and-coming bands; and know what’s going on in various new music subcultures” and “The North American youth culture marketplace of 13-25-year-olds is among the most philanthropic and environmentally conscious demographic in the world. Young people tend to support brands that give back, and they have far greater respect for celebrity-activists. What this means is that there’s a great opportunity for reaching young people in an authentic and grassroots level by appealing to their sense of ‘ood causes.’”
CAN YOU SAY THE CHURCH, THE GREAT COMMISSION, SERVICE, SACRIFICE?!?! Are you hearing them now?!
What Motorola did right in marketing to them: “They targeted the lifestyle, not just as a communication device, but as a key accessory of cool, must-have information source and connector.”
Can you say “ring tones:” “There are young people who are eBay addicts and/or claim that a phone brand is their “favorite site” because they are obsessed with getting the latest model.”
Find out who snowboarder Shaun White: She calls him “a shining star” and compares him to Michael Jordan.
On the ever-popular T-shirt: “57.3% of young people in America buy ten to fifteen T-shirts per year, making T-shirts one of the highest grossing markets within the youth fashion industry.”
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