Get to Know Your Community

Who do you want to reach? The second step to developing a promotional plan requires you to get to know the people in your community. Different audiences need different messages. Knowing who you are trying to reach is key to developing compelling messages and promotional plans.

Use these guiding questions to identify your target audience⁽¹⁾:

Is your product tailored for a specific demographic (i.e. sex, age, ethnic or racial background, income)?
Is there a geographic boundary for your product (i.e. a neighbourhood, people who live near a geographic feature, a whole municipality, or community)?
Is your product tailored for people at risk for or experiencing health concerns (i.e. people with diabetes, high blood pressure, or other chronic diseases)?
Does your product target a specific behaviour (i.e. at-risk youth, people who smoke, people who participate in active transportation, etc.)?
Is there a group of people you are trying to impact with your product to change their attitudes or understanding (i.e. Engage older adults in active living by providing appropriate exercises for their abilities)?

What Motivates Your Target Audience?

Knowing what is important to your target audience ensures that your promotions resonate with them⁽²⁾. With your team, use these guiding questions to learn what motivates your target audience:

What does your audience value?
What are your audience’s interests?
What are the needs of your audience?
What are the strengths of your audience?
Why would the target audience choose your product over competing products or activities?
What is your audience currently using instead of your product?

As you answer these questions, keep in mind the demographics and characteristics of your target audience.

Need help identifying what motivates your target audience?

Visit the Programs Pillar of the Healthy Communities Framework and check out the following resources:

Developing an Asset Map
Determining Community Values
Gather the Community

Programs Pillar

Product Placement

Where and How Does Your Audience Access Products and Information?

Placement refers to where you physically sell or offer the product and where you promote your product. The goal of placement is to choose the best location to get your product in front of your target audience.

When thinking about placement, it’s important to know:

Answering this question helps you to determine where best to place your product or host your service. Proper placement removes the most barriers and includes prompts to increase sales or participation⁽³⁾.

Answering this question helps you determine where to promote your product or service so that your target audience will likely see the promotions⁽³⁾.

Where to Place Your Product

With your team (or with the community), consider the following prompts to pick the best placement for your product or service.

These are products that are sellable items. For example, healthy food or drinks.

Consider:

What locations does your target audience frequent? (i.e. A community centre, recreation facility, parks, grocery stores, online shopping, etc.)
At frequented locations, where can you place your product so that it’s⁽⁴⁾:
- At eye-level?
- In a high-traffic area?
- Near checkout?
- Within easy reach?
- Presented in an attractive display?

Within the Healthy Communities Framework, a service is either a Healthy Eating or Active Living program.

When considering where best to host your program, apply an EDI Lens to ensure that most people can participate.

Begin by Checking Your Assumptions
Ask About Inclusion
With your team, the community, or target audience, consider whether the program location has:
1. Accessible infrastructure
2. Accessible and public transportation
3. Barrier reduction services (i.e. Childcare, nearby food retailers)
4. Virtual accessibility (i.e. Digital literacy, user-friendly platforms, reliable internet speeds)

Where to Place Your Promotions?

Where does your audience search for or access information? With your team, community, or target audience, consider the prompts to pick the best places to promote your product or service! Does your target audience:

Feel comfortable and confident accessing information online?
Use social media? If so, which platform(s)?
Prefer email, phone calls, flyers, word of mouth?
Access community or municipality information webpages?
Regularly visit or frequent specific locations around your community with spaces to place posters?
Require direct or indirect communication?

Need help promoting healthy food and drink options in recreation settings?

Check out our free Healthy Eating in Recreation Settings (HERS) online eCourse which aims to teach actionable skills around improving healthy eating environments in recreation facilities via 10 different modules. Consider taking Module 5 – Marketing Healthy Food and Drinks: the 4 P’s.

HERS eCourse

Key Considerations

Direct vs. Indirect Communication

Organizations use direct communication styles to aim their messaging at the end-user or the target audience. Indirect communications are when organizations aim their messages at the people who influence the target audience. For example, if a teenage hockey player is your target audience, you may want to aim your messaging at their parents, coaches, trainers, or older role models⁽¹⁾.

Developing a Promotional Plan

Continue exploring the steps to help guide you through developing your own promotional plan!

Step 1: Identify Your Product

Continue Exploring Promotions

Tips & Tricks

Community Tool Box [Internet]. Section 1. Developing a Plan for Communication; 2022c [cited 2023 January 14]. Available from: https://ctb.ku.edu/en/table-of-contents/participation/promoting-interest/communication-plan/main
National Recreation and Parks Association. Communications Toolkit: Attracting Families to Your Youth Sports Programs [report on internet]. The Association; 2021 [cited 2023 January 14]. Available from: https://www.nrpa.org/siteassets/youth_sports_communications_toolkit.pdf
Business Development Bank of Canada [Internet]. How to write a marketing plan; n.d. [cited 2023 January 14]. Available from: https://www.bdc.ca/en/articles-tools/marketing-sales-export/marketing/5-no-nonsense-strategies-attract-customers
Alberta Health Services. Healthy Eating Starts Here Placement Poster [report on the internet]. N.d. [cited 2023 January 14]. Available from: https://www.albertahealthservices.ca/assets/info/nutrition/if-nfs-hee-placement-poster-rec-centre.pdf

Get to Know Your Community