Hey everyone, it's Tyler with REDboat Digital. This is part 3 of our Branding series. If you haven't already read through part 1 or part 2, I encourage you to do that.
Part 1 was all about mission, vision, values and defining that as the cornerstone of who you are and what you're trying to do. Then we're pivoting into part 2 to talk about your brand archetype. And now, we're at part 3 is where we're going to dive into a community persona: so who are you trying to reach, who's your target audience.
Now this is something that we get a lot of pushback from our clients, who are almost all churches. They really struggle with this idea because we all want to reach everyone. We love Jesus. We've been transformed by His power and His love, and we want to share that with our communities. But the truth is, it doesn't work like that. This is something marketers already know. They are going to be as focused as possible. The messaging, the content, the visuals, everything is going to be specifically targeted to this idea of a persona.
Some might call them buyer personas, we're going to call them community personas. Basically, all this is a fictional character that you are going to create that is then going to be the target of the rest of your brand guide development, as well as your content creation down the road, whether that's on social media, blog posts, or whatever it is. We're thinking missionally, thinking outside the walls, and really focusing on who are you trying to reach. Well, this is who you're trying to reach. We're going to get down and focus on that person.
So this is going to be someone that you're going to give a name to. Somebody that yo're going to give a backstory. You're going to give them all the demographic information. You're going to give them a job. Even dive further in and think, what's their family status? Where do they work? How much do they make? A great resource to get a broad picture of demographic information in your community is City Data. Just type in your zip code and really take a look at what are the broad categories in your neighborhood. You don't want your community persona to be such a small segment of your community where you won't have enough critical mass to really target with your messaging. Then after all that, you'll really get into the psychographics of this individual. What's their experience with church been like? What are some of their pain points in life? What are some of the things that they struggle with?
All of those things together are now going to come together with your archetype. And hopefully, they align in a way that who you are, your archetype, speaks to the wants and needs of your community persona. It's the exact thing, exact messaging, and uniqueness of your church that speaks to your community persona and that's when the brand of your church comes together. It just inspires people.
People can get an emotional attachment to brands. Those are the best brands, the ones that we feel really emotionally connected to. Hopefully, this has been really valuable for you. Next week, we're going to wrap it all up and you're going to have a completed brand guide that's going to offer you a lot of clarity around your messaging. That complete brand guide will help you clarify your message and amplify your mission.
Comments