Let People Know – Promote Your Pack Program!
Let people know what you do … share your list of fun activities. This leads families to you. A great program plan isn’t enough – you’ve got to promote it in the Pack and beyond. As a way to share what you do, empower interested parents to be a team of New Member Coordinators – any parent who likes Scouting can spread the word. They can be a big help in letting people know what your unit is doing because peer to peer and parent to parent recommendations are the best.
Marketing Opportunities: Free and Easy Publicity
There are lots of paths to promote your Pack using social media, electronic messaging and even traditional media – pick all you like.
The benefits of social media and electronic messaging – they are free, easy for your families to share, and can go viral if they do share.
Soft media can be used to share your flyers that have your calendar of fun activities – and so much more.
- Websites – any or all of:
- Your own Pack Website (more on this below)
- School Website (Can you link there? Can you post announcements, pictures, video?)
- Church Websites
- BeAScout.org
- Google Maps
- Local community websites (neighborhood, town/city, local news like patch.com, and more)
- BSA District Website (does it have a Pack list with contact links?)
- Email Blasts – any or all of:
- Pack email lists of actual members and “maybe” members (people who contacted you or attended an event but haven’t decided)
- School Email Communications (ask if you can add stories, pictures, video and contact links – enlist parents to communicate with other parents at their grade level)
- Church email blasts (ask if you can add stories, pictures, video and contact links)
- Local community email lists (many neighborhoods have Yahoo or other email listservs)
- Social Media – Where do your families live and share online? Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, Twitter, Blogs, YouTube, Evite, Signup Genius? Other sites?
- Be where your families live, and empower your families to share with their friends and their groups
- Don’t let your families think “only the leaders can post”.
- Encourage them to post – and give praise in comments when they do (“what a great picture” “that was a fun event”)
- Be where your families live, and empower your families to share with their friends and their groups
- See the BSA Social Media Playbook for tips, and the Social Media Guidelines
- Social Media on Steroids – Facebook Ads and Geofencing – you might be able to use “geofencing” on Facebook to target parents (for a nominal fee to Facebook). This is probably of most value right before your Pack Sign-Up Events and other Fun Den or Pack Welcoming Events.
- The BSA National Marketing Team broadcast this video about Geofencing, Search, Social Media, Peer-to-Peer Recruiting – here is the PowerPoint slide deck from that presentation.
- Basically, on your Unit Facebook page, go to Ad Center to create a standard marketing campaign. When you set up an add, you can alter the audience by age and location, with as narrow as a one-mile radius. More at this website.
- Here’s a How to Set Up a geo-fencing Facebook Ad Group YouTube video recommended by Membership Chair Laura Lerman from Northern Ridge District.
- Newspapers and Local Media. You may be able to get your Pack’s news in the local “hard” newspaper and/or their online space.
- News organizations and other groups love content – whether newspapers or community groups or churches, schools, etc.
- To help give them content they can use quickly, an example of a Media Release is below that could be used and adapted to fit your unit or event. (The example there is a generic service project, but you could write up a Pinewood Derby, crossover to a Troop, a Pack campout, a Den hike – anything that you do.)
