fbpx

Increase turnout by using good promotional tools

Promoting your pro-life event is one of the most important steps you’ll take, and the best way to ensure a great crowd. Use the tools below to let the world know about your event.

Be sure to also see the action on Promoting your pro-life event on Facebook for more promotional tools.

Promoting your event in church bulletins

Send out a bulletin announcement to all the local churches in your area. It’s a fantastic way to get free publicity! You can also send it to diocesan Respect Life or Life and Family coordinators to send to their local contacts.

Be sure to keep your announcement short as space in bulletins is very limited, but be sure to include the essential “What, Where, Why and When” information. Here is a sample bulletin announcement from an event we hosted for reference.

Announcements are often required to be handed in two Fridays before the Sunday you want them in the bulletin so be sure to plan in advance to take advantage of this great free publicity.

Promoting your event via email

email

Email is an essential tool for spreading the word about your event. But there are some best practices you can follow to make sure your email invitation is as effective as it can be. Here are some tips:

1. Write as if you’re addressing a single person. People are more likely to respond to an individual plea (“Dear Friend”) than one addressed to a whole group (“Dear Friends”).

2. Avoid using the word “we” to refer to a group that the recipient is not a part of, since that can be subtly alienating. Using “we” to mean “you and I” will help your recipients feel included.

3. Keep paragraphs short—a maximum of 4 lines of normal length.

If you have enough lead time, send an email invitation several weeks in advance of your event, another one week out and a final reminder the day before. Here is a sample email from one of our events for reference.

Promote your event with flyers

Another great way to get the word out is by passing out or leaving flyers at your local churches, schools, or anywhere else you think pro-life people who will want to attend your protest might be.

Flyers can also be attached to email messages you send out so that others can print off flyers and help you spread the word.

For some of our nationwide events like #ProtestPP effort or the Stand Up for Religious Freedom rallies the League sometimes provide customizable flyers for you to use. For your own local events, you can design your own flyer using free, easy to use tools.

A flyer can be designed in a word processing program like Microsoft Word or Pages, or in a photo editing program like Photoshop or free software like GIMP. Find a list of other free photo editing programs here.

Use colorful photos to make your flyer more attractive, and make important information stand out using type size and contrast. Keep fonts to a minimum, two or perhaps three if it’s absolutely necessary.

Get some more basics of design that will help you create much more effective flyers here and here.

Here is a sample flyer for a previous League event you can view for reference and inspiration.

Broadcast your event with a public service announcement (PSA)

Public service announcements (PSAs) on local radio are a powerful, free way to get the word out about your event.

Your first step is to find out what radio stations in your area offer this service, starting with the website for each station. If you don’t find the information you need, make a phone call. Find out what the guidelines and deadlines are for getting a PSA on the air.

You can see PSA scripts we used for a previous event for reference right here.

You can often go to the local radio station to record your audio for your PSA, but if that’s not possible, most operating systems like Windows have a built-in voice recording application you could use to record from your home computer with a microphone. If you have a laptop, it likely has a microphone built in.

For better quality audio, use an external microphone (you can get one at Radio Shack as low as $5) and dedicated audio recording software like Audacity for free.

Be sure to ask what format the radio station wants the audio file to be and to save it in that format before sending it to them.

Local radio and television stations also sometimes offer a community calendar where copy promoting your event could be aired. Call your local stations to find out if that’s a feature they offer.

Share Tweet Email