Tropical Amps

Support Group Marketing

Here are several good ideas for ways to market a peer support group. this is not by any means an exhaustive list but does cover many of the basics and is an excellent starting point.

By: Teresa Bryant
Date: Wed, 31 Aug 2005

• www.vistaprint.com - go here and look at their free designs. They have tons more that you can get if you want to spend a little more, but even the free cards are very good quality and nicely done. Just include basic info, meeting time and location, and a contact name and number. Carry them with you and give some to the other members of your group. This is probably the single most effective thing we did to promote our group. Also, we feel it's important to ALWAYS have our meeting on the same day, at the same time every month like it says on our cards. We never change the dates. Once the card is out there, you never know when people might just show up without ever calling anyone. It happens to us almost every month, someone will show up unannounced. We never want them to come and find no one there.
• Look through the yellow pages for prosthetists, physical therapists, and orthopedic surgeons. Even primary care physicians are good. Write an introductory letter about your group and send it to them. Ask if they would put up a monthly flyer announcing your meeting. Ask if you can put some cards in their offices, most will say yes. We keep a business mailing list separate from our regular individual mailing list. If you have time and are so inclined, a personal phone call or visit goes a long way, especially with the prosthetists. They see more amputees than anyone else and if they support your group you better believe they will pass the information on to everyone they see.
• Make a simple monthly flyer template on your computer. Change the actual date each month and add a little personal note about anything special going on at the meeting. Print them out and mail them to everyone on your mailing list about a week or two before the meeting.
• Have food. We do two cookouts and one or two holiday dinners each year. It's all potluck, everyone brings something. These are a huge hit and really make people start to connect and feel more like "family".
• We don't have alot of programs, our meetings are mostly social, but we do have them from time to time. We have had a prosthetist come and talk about new socket designs. We've had someone from the recreation commission come and talk about the programs they offer for the disabled, golf, biking, swimming, wheelchair tennis and basketball. You could ask a PT to come and maybe do some kind of gait analysis. We've never done that, but it's something we've thought about. Not sure if it would actually work or not. We planned an outing to the theater to see performance of A Christmas Carol at Christmas time. A member of our group is a scenic artist for the local theater group and got us discount tickets.
• Another thing we sometimes do is plan a separate dinner meeting at a local restaurant. This isn't an official meeting or anything, just a dinner out together. We did these every month (except November & December) for a little over a year and then interest fizzled so we've stopped for now.
• Last, and most importantly, be patient. It can take a few years to get a group off the ground and most fail before that point because the leaders just get discouraged and give up. Don't be afraid to stop doing something that isn't working (just be sure to give it enough time first) or to change directions and try some new things. Let other people help you. People need to have an ownership in a support group. It makes them feel needed and they will want to help the group succeed.