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The River:
Advertising Campaign

This page last updated on 12/31/2007

by Ronald W. Waters

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Strategy for Launching The River

My original strategy was to use newspaper advertising; direct mail; and press releases to the newspaper, radio, and television stations. Unfortunately, I didn't plan far enough ahead and was not able to order the direct mail postcards in time. (We're doing that for our Easter promotion.) So I had to go more heavily with newspaper ads than I had planned.

We had a total of 18 ads in the Waterloo-Cedar Falls Courier from Sunday, March 7, through Sunday, March 14 (our paper did not yet publish on Saturday at that time). See samples. The insertion rate was as follows:

	Sunday, March 7 - one 3 column x 7 1/2 inches; two 2 column x 4 inches
	Monday, March 8 - two 2 column x 4 inches
	Tuesday, March 9 - two 2 column x 4 inches
	Wednesday, March 10 - one 3 column x 7 inches (in the Hometowner - an tabloid shopper that is inserted in the newspaper on Wednesdays and sent to non-subscribers on Thursdays)
	Thursday, March 11 - one 3 column x 7 1/2 inches; two 2 column x 4 inches; plus one 2 column x 4 inches in Pulse, the entertainment tab section of the paper
	Friday, March 12 - one 3 column x 7 1/2 inches; two 2 column x 4 inches
	Sunday, March 14 - one 3 column x 7 1/2 inches; two 2 column x 4 inches

The ideas of multiple ads in the same day's paper was to attempt to get exposure in several parts of the paper. We ran the large ads to get attention and the smaller ads to reinforce the message.

Cost of these ads was just under $3,000.

We followed up with one ad each on March 19 and 26 (Friday) using a similar design but focusing on the upcoming Sunday's message.

Strategy for Easter, April 11

Since I missed the deadline for producing and distributing a direct mail postcard for the launch of our second service on March 14, I decided to do it for Easter. Outreach Marketing (among others) has some great resources for this type of outreach. We purchased their community bundle that includes mail house service for 10,000 ImpactCards, 400 InviteCards (fold-over business card size cards that we will design for our people to hand out to friends and relatives), an Impact Banner, and an Impact Web Site. We chose carrier routes within a 2 mile radius of the church. We put these cards in the mail on Monday, April 5, for delivery during the week before Easter. Total cost for this bundle was about $2,250 plus postage of about $630.

We had about 400 extra ImpactCards, so we asked our people to take some and give them to friends. We also mailed cards to inactive members and recent guests who live outside the mailing area.

Also, the Impact Web Site has a provision for sending an e-mail invitation. Click here to see a sample of the eCard.

It may be a blessing that we did not make the deadline for March 14. This will give us a second wave of promotion to follow-up on our initial publicity.

The River: Advertising Campaign

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The River:
Advertising Campaign