Are you finding your ideal stakeholders challenging to reach?
You know you do your best work with a certain segment of the population but man, they’re not easy to get in front of.
Have you considered a different approach?
I was talking with a nonprofit leader the other day about this exact challenge. They were actually trying to reach two audiences at once and needed each to fuel the program they’d developed (a really cool play where aging seniors mentor high school seniors – seniors4seniors.org). This was creating a “cart/horse” type situation where each audience was needed to attract the participation of the other audience.
With limited funds and a real head-scratcher in terms of figuring out how to get these groups on board, we backed away from the challenge to view it from a different angle.
“What about targeting another group entirely that has ties to the other two to let those individuals spread your message out to the other parties?”
See, this third group of people – the parents of the high school kids who are children of the older group – is potentially much easier to reach (they sit in the sweet spot of Facebook’s primary demographic) and have a vested interest and challenge keeping each of the other two groups motivated. Engaging the “facilitators” would be easier and less costly than trying to manage multiple channels to sell the idea to the other two groups at once.
So sometimes, when a direct approach either isn’t working or is more expensive than one might hope, stepping back and evaluating ways to get near your audiences can be super effective.
In what ways can you reach your stakeholders by building relationships with proximal influencers?
