Marketing to the Children

For once, not a diatribe against TV or McDonalds.

I spoke today with someone setting up a hand-holding service for seniors. Literally, sit with you in the doctor's office, tenaciously ask for clarification, comprehension of medication and, as needed, literally hold your hand as a genuine comfort in times of stress.

(I could use that service once a week!)

Early efforts to establish a market by contacting health-care centers have failed ("Oh, we already provide that" - but they don't really).

It seemed to me that such a personal service can grow only by word of mouth.

That means establishing contact with ???

Not with the seniors; they perhaps feel quite capable, or perhaps don't like to shed their independence. In some cases perhaps they are just too senile to make a decision.

I figured that it was the 60-year old children of the senior who would make the decision. But how to get the word out to them?

That brought us to churches, getting one's name mentioned by the local minister.

And that brought us to establishing a program of 60-minute seminars, hosted by a church geographically central to a group of churches; each church inviting members to attend.

Twenty minutes at the podium, 40 minutes taking questions.

Of course, one needs a professional business card, a brochure, a web page and a serious email address , but then, that will be pre-established.

Estimates vary but:

	area	pop	pop/sq km
Tor	630	2,480,000	3,937
GTA	7,125	7,000,000	982

If we take the area of Toronto as 630 square kilometers, and imagine a set of squares 2 kilometers on a side, a church in the center of each square would have a catchment area of about 1.5 Km radius.

There must be 630/4= about 150 loci in Toronto.

150 seminars to present, each seminar with a catchment of 4*4,000=16,000 people, of whom perhaps ten percent are in the market for hand-holding services.

And so we are Off To The Races ....

What's The Point?

Sure, it's a great solution to a marketing problem, but more than that:

It's a great example of what happens when one entrepreneur chats with another entrepreneur.

Two heads are better than one.