Just wanted to let everyone who reads this know about the results of our survey from a few weeks ago. You may remember that I had everyone write down how they got their news. What had prompted this question was that we were looking at how people get their new from the standpoint of advertising. We've had many opportunities to advertise in the local paper, but it's expensive and we didn't know the level of impact. Here's what we found:
42% got news from TV
30% got news from the newspaper
26% got news from the internet
2% got news from the radio
What does that tell us? Because of the cost and the impact, we probably won't be doing much advertising in the paper. We will use our advertising dollars in other ways, probably in more ways like community impact. How a church shows up big in a town is when they become outward focused and begin concentrating on outreach to their community. This is God's desire for His church. That's our mission at Oakwood. Be praying about how God wants you to be involved in outreach.
2 comments:
Mr. Keller, you might consider the statistics you just found out. Your congregation gets about 56 percent of its news from the newspaper and the internet. You have an opportunity to have that kind of reach with only one medium that the majority of your congregation uses -- both provided by your local media company, The Enid News & Eagle. The newspaper reaches roughly 40,000 readers a day and the newspaper Web site reaches another 8,000 to 9,000 unique visitors -- each day. Also, ask your congregation how many read Etown or Vance Scoop - other products produced by the Enid News & Eagle. You are right to focus your marketing dollars where they have the most reach. And community outreach should certainly be high on the list. We have found that most people looking for a church home do turn to the newspaper to find out service times, etc. listed in the local newspaper. Reaching the unchurched is a large part of community outreach, and that opportunity is provided every Friday in the local newspaper and on the newspaper Web site.
I think you'll be surprised to find out just how much your most dominant local media can provide, and that by far is the local newspaper company and its vast number of products.
Cindy Allen
Enid News & Eagle Editor
I appreciate your input, Cindy. I'm glad that you're reading my blog. I've got some tracking software on it now, and it's amazing how many unique hits I can get, just on my little blog. We've recently spent more of our funds on website upgrades and find that's been our biggest pull for new people just coming in on their own to our church. Even this will never replace the power of the personal invite. On our communication card that's in our bulletins each week, we have a blank where guests tell us how they came to Oakwood. Over 80% in the last 12 months have come through the website. It seems that when people are looking for churches, they google churches in the area they are in or moving to and find them that way. The fact remains that I want to see our church do more for the community, with which you seem to agree. Your publications are good, I'm sure. We've advertised in some of them before. They are just not affordable, at least ones that we've been offered of late. It also seems that we've personally seen little or no impact from them when we have advertised, so that's why I was curious and did the survey on how people get their news in the first place. I've read in a couple of places that the 20-40 crowd doesn't take the paper. This next generation gets they're news from other sources, so it seems. I would be interested for to know what the average age of your readership is. Maybe that would be a good poll for you all to do? Please do not take offense. Enid needs a good newspaper for its readers and you're it. I hope to meet you face to face sometime. Be blessed and be a blessing!
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