Sound of Hope Engagement Campaign Guide

Engagement Campaign Guide

Sound of Hope: The Story of Possum Trot

Sound of Hope Engagement Campaign Guide

Moving Beyond Awareness

The Opportunity

Sound of Hope: The Story of Possum Trot, presents an incredible opportunity to mobilize your community to care for children and families in foster care. But to translate this moment into long-term impact, you want to structure your community engagement efforts around specific outcomes. And awareness, while a necessary first step for a viewer if they aren’t familiar with foster care, is not an outcome in and of itself. We want to move people beyond awareness into taking a realistic, tangible next step.

CAFO’s More Than Enough initiative created this guide to help you run a campaign that uses Sound of Hope in a way that leads to long-term engagement and change.

A Quick Word on Strategy

If your community is like most, there is a shortage of foster and adoptive families. So you might start with the assumption that your goal for this movie is to recruit more families.

However, relatively few people in your community are called to foster and adopt—at least as their first step. And there are many ways to reduce the shortage of foster families. So as you design your campaign, focus on connecting your audience to their best initial step in caring for children and families. And then leverage this movie to get as many people as possible to take that first step.

From there, you can move people through a funnel, inviting them to take progressively deeper second, third, and fourth steps. And as you walk alongside them, many of these people might become foster and adoptive parents. But along the way, you will have also built a host of relationships with people who ended up serving on wrap-around support teams, supporting social workers, donating to your work, providing mentorship to former foster youth, and more.

So don’t leave people on the sidelines by only inviting moviegoers to foster and adopt—a step that likely isn’t yet right for them.

Identify Your Audience and Outcome

Defining Your Who

As you consider how you want to leverage this opportunity, narrow your audience. Take a moment to reflect:

Who is the group of people you want to think, feel, and act in a new way after seeing this movie?

Rather than saying, “I want everyone in my community to see this and step up,” get specific. For example, you might say:

I want church leaders to understand the biblical call to love our neighbors in foster care, feel like their congregation can do something meaningful about it, and book a meeting with me to explore concrete ways their congregation can serve children and families based on their church’s vision and resources.

In the space below, identify who your primary audience is and how you want them to think, feel, and act in a new way after seeing this movie:

Refining Your Outcome

As you invite the above audience to experience the film, what next step are you hoping your specific audience will take? And how exactly will you help them do that?

This is your call to action. It’s a refined, and specific extension of your audience statement above. For example, your call to action might be:

FOR A LARGE GROUP OF CHRISTIANS WHO AREN’T CURRENTLY INVOLVED IN FOSTER CARE

Learn more about being on a wrap-around support team for a foster family—doing things like bringing them a meal or helping out with errands or groceries. Scan the QR code / go to YourURL.com to sign up and we’ll answer all your questions and help you get plugged into a team.

FOR A SMALL GROUP OF BUSINESS OWNERS

You can help transform foster care here in _____ by providing discounted services to foster, kinship, and biological families. Scan the QR code / go to [URL] to sign up and we’ll help you connect your business to families you can serve in powerful ways!

FOR CHURCH LEADERS OR PASTORS

Your congregation is equipped to offer children and families in foster care relational, spiritual, and material support, but what that can look like is unique to your church’s vision and DNA. I’d love to support you in identifying your church’s best next steps as it lives out its call to love our neighbors in foster care. Pull out your phone and text me your name at [NUMBER] and I’ll follow up to get some time on our calendars!

A Note on Calls to Action

No matter what your call to action is, there are four things to keep in mind to make it as strong as possible:

• Communicate a desire to serve your audience—not just to get something from your audience. Language like “It would be a privilege to connect you to a wrap-around support team” presents you as a resource to your audience. Language like “We need your help on a wrap-around support team” positions you as taking something from your audience.

• Focus on a single and achievable step. It’s tempting to list five ways people can be involved and hope one sticks. But it’s generally most effective to highlight a single, simple next step to engage your audience and build momentum. As long as you get their information (name and email), you can follow up with them with additional opportunities.

• Make the “how” clear and immediate. People need to know how to take that next step and to do it immediately while mentally and emotionally engaged. What website should they visit? How do they sign up? Give them time to take that initial action right away—the best of intentions get crowded out by the chaos of life if they have to do it later.

• Be sure you have follow-up ready to go. When someone acts, be sure to have a second step ready. For example, if they sign up for a prayer letter to pray for specific needs in your community, be sure to add them to your emails immediately and then follow up with another opportunity to act in a few weeks.

In the space below, identify your specific call to action for the audience you are targeting:

Design Your Experience 2

Based on your audience and purpose, what type of moviegoing experience will be best? Some organizations and networks are taking small groups of people to the film, and others are renting out theaters for mass viewings. We’re outlining these two general models below, but feel free to get creative based on your audience and purpose: MODEL 1:

Microgatherings

Basic Concept: A gathering “host” guides 6-8 people as they go to the movie and then discuss it over coffee/dinner after the film.

Identify Hosts:

• Recruit staff members, volunteers, or church leaders who are willing and able to serve as facilitators for the microgatherings.

• Set show times and theater locations for the microgratherings based on host availability.

Equip Hosts With:

• The Messaging Guide and Discussion Questions to help them talk about the film and facilitate conversation.

• Your call to action and any necessary materials. (A sign-up sheet or contact cards? A QR code that goes to a web form? Give them everything they need to deliver the call to action over dinner/coffee and get people to take the next step in the moment.)

Invite Attendees:

• Market the microgatherings to your audience and have them sign up for the time and place that works for them (capping at 6-8 people per gathering); OR,

• Have the hosts invite 6-8 people they are personally connected to; OR,

• Invite specific people to microgatherings based on their role/background, offering more focused conversation and calls to action (you could have one for pastors, one for business owners, one for young professionals, etc.)

Purchase Tickets:

• Group Ticket Purchase Instructions

Facilitate the Experience:

• Contact hosts immediately after the microgatherings to debrief the experience and collect any data (contact cards, etc.)

• Implement your follow-up steps with the people who took your call to action.

MODEL 2:

Book a Whole Showing

Basic Concept: Rent out and advertise a whole showing in a local theater, providing context before and after the film and delivering a clear call to action.

Select Your Theater:

• Theater Private Buyout Instructions

• Check in advance with the theater about the AV situation–will you be able to have a mic, or can you bring your own portable speaker? Also, check how long before and after the film you can keep people in the theater.

Publicize Your Showing:

• See Step 4 Below

Example Showing Agenda:

• As People Arrive: Give everyone the contact card, QR code, etc. that they will need to complete your call to action, along with any welcome material about foster care in your community.

• Welcome Audience (Emcee): Take two minutes to welcome everyone to the showing, and position the movie using the Messaging Guide as needed.

• Show the Film

• Debrief Audience (Emcee): Use “Connecting the Dots to Your Local Community” content in the Messaging Guide to pivot audiences to the full scope of foster care and your local data.

• Q&A: You can approach this as a panel with pre-determined questions asked by the emcee, or you can open it up to the audience. (See Messaging Guide for recommended talking points around potentially sensitive topics.)

• Present Your Call to Action: Invite people to take the specific next step you’ve identified. Have them complete the next step mechanism on the spot (ex: fill out the contact card and pass it to the end of the row, go to the QR code you received on your way in and fill out the web form, etc.).

In the space below, outline which model (or a completely different model!) you would like to offer your community:

Prepare Your Digital Spaces 3

Hopefully, Sound of Hope will translate into increased interest in foster care in your community—and increased web traffic for your organization or network. But there are a few ways you need to prepare to leverage that traffic.

Audit Your Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

Entirely apart from the release of Sound of Hope, are people finding your web page? What searches you want to show up for will vary based on your organization and audience. But you want to show up on the first page of Google searches for the terms that matter to you, especially searches specific to the geography you serve.

For example, if you are a foster care agency in Des Moines, Iowa, Google terms like:

• Foster care in Des Moines

• Adopting from foster care in Iowa

• Becoming a foster parent in Iowa

If you are not on the first page when you Google phrases like this (or whatever phrases apply to your organization or network), add them to your website headlines and page titles.

In addition, if you work in a specific city and don’t have a Google Business Profile, this is a great time to set one up. Adding a business profile will move you up the search rankings when people in your city search these terms.

This foundational search engine optimization (SEO) work needs to be in place to capture traffic from the movie once it is released.

For additional guidance about SEO, please see this helpful SEO checklist.

Modify Your Home Page and Build a Landing Page

Once Sound of Hope is released and moviegoers find your web page, they need to know they are in the right spot immediately.

Add a row or pop-up to your homepage that explicitly references the movie. The essential elements to this block will be:

• Visual and text references to the movie

• Mention of your community

• Mention of foster care and/or adoption

• Invitation and link to a landing page/blog post where people can go deeper.

For example, it could look like this:

The landing page or blog post you link to should:

• Tie into the movie and then pivot readers to your community (draw on the language in the Messaging Guide, if helpful).

• Include a web form to capture people’s information (see below).

Build Lead Generation Forms

You want people who visit your website to give you their contact information so you can communicate with them moving forward. So you need them to fill out a form.

To incentivize people to fill out web forms, More Than Enough is making “Finding Your Fit in Foster Care,” a booklet showing all the different types of people who have a role in caring for kids and families, available to your organization for free. You can open this resource in Google Slides or Powerpoint, add your organization’s logo and URL on the back cover, export it as a PDF, and then offer it for free to people who sign up. (Or you can use your own resources with your forms.)

A Note on Forms

Many of you will use simple web forms to gather people’s information after the movie or to capture web traffic. As much as possible, these web forms should be:

• Tailored to this opportunity: Create a simple page with an image from the movie and the logo in the header, reiterating the next step you are asking people to take. Do not just tell people to go to your website and sign up in the generic footer for your newsletter.

• Fast and simple: Keep it short with fields for First name, Last Name, Email, and (optional) Church/Organization. Do not try to get people’s full address information on these forms. The form will take too long to fill out, and people won’t finish it.

• Automatically integrated: Have an email set to send as soon as people fill out the form. This email should include a welcome and what people can expect next. (Ex: “Welcome . . . Here’s a video showing the difference wrap-around support makes—a staff member will be in touch soon to connect you to some training and a family you can serve.”)

Consider Paid Google Ads

If your budget allows, this is a great time to invest in paid Google Ads, which bring you to the top of the list when people in your specified geography search for your selected terms. Predicting exactly what search terms people will be using after seeing the movie is impossible at this time—you will need to closely monitor Google Trends in your area to see what terms are spiking after the movie releases.

But you can set up ads before the release that focus on your existing key organic search terms. In addition, it’s possible Sound of Hope might generate increased traffic around terms like:

• Foster Care in [Your County / State]

• Adopting from Foster Care [Your State]

• How many children in foster care in [Your State/County]?

• How many children are waiting for adoption in [Your State/County]?

For registered nonprofits, Google also has a grant program to provide a limited amount of free advertising for nonprofits. While the process can be a bit complicated, this could be a great time for you to approach a marketing agency in your community and see if they would be willing to set up and manage these grant-funded ads for you pro bono.

Reminder: to engage moviegoers who visit you from any searches—whether organic or paid—you’ll want Sound of Hope prominently displayed on the page you are pushing to.

In the space below, list any steps you need to take to prepare your digital spaces:

Publicize Your Experience 4

Once you’ve defined the basics of your engagement campaign and prepped your digital spaces, it’s time to publicize your experiences to your community.

What to Share

• Graphics and Clips: Create materials that reflect the movie and your brand drawing on the Media Kit assets provided by Angel Studios. Please note and follow their brand guide listed on the Media Kit page.

• Data: To localize your marketing and highlight less overwhelming numbers, consider integrating the number of children in foster care, the number of children waiting for adoption, etc. for your specific community. Much of this data is available on the More Than Enough Dashboard. (Example: In social media posts, rather than saying, “400,000 kids are in foster care in the US—it’s a crisis,” say “135 children are in foster care here in Jackson County—and we can help them thrive.”)

• Stories and Reflections: Do you have staff, volunteers, or families who could share what the movie meant to them, whether in a blog post or short social video? Or could they share about the difference support from local churches makes in the journey of foster care? Movies are powerful tools, but they are not personal. Do whatever you can to personalize your communications with content from people in your community.

Where to Share:

• Social Media: Share both about the movie as a whole and your viewing experiences.

• Local Media: Issue a press release to highlight the movie, what foster care looks like in your community, and your network/organizations work. We’ve created an example press release template you can use and modify.

• Email: Communicate with your email list before, during, and after the film release, inviting your list to participate in the experiences you are hosting and encouraging them to share about the film in their circles.

• Community Forums: Are there business networking breakfasts, Rotary meetings, mom’s groups, or other existing community networks that might be interested and willing to connect their members to these showings?

• Churches: This is a great opportunity to engage churches and connect congregants to God’s heart for vulnerable children and families. Church partners might be interested in hosting their own microgatherings or renting a theater. Feel free to pass along the resources in this guide to church partners. However: Present these showings as a tool to serve the church as they seek to disciple their congregations. Do not transactionally ask churches for help filling theaters so you can recruit their members to join your work.

In the space below, identify the primary channels you will use to publicize your experiences and list what content/resources you need to create to do so.

Follow Up Thoughtfully 5

Again, the goal of your community engagement campaign is to see people take tangible action on behalf of kids and families. So what happens after people see the movie is as important as getting them to the movie itself. The follow-up will look very different based on your audience, work, and your call to action. Below you’ll find general guidelines you’ll need to customize.

Consider building an automated welcome series that triggers for everyone who fills out one of your web forms. This series will look unique to your organization, but four emails over a month is probably a good rhythm to target. These emails should reference the movie, while sharing stories and information about what foster care looks like in your community.

In addition to an automated welcome series, be sure to follow up with personal emails or phone calls to facilitate whatever next steps people might have volunteered for. If a pastor signed up to meet with you, follow up to schedule it immediately. If someone volunteered to bring meals, get them in the system immediately.

And down the road, identify what next form of engagement you’d like to invite people into based on what they’ve already done, and communicate that second call to action.

Reminder: Eventually, you need to integrate these new audience members into your standard communications channels to hear about ongoing opportunities to care for children and families. Do not leave these people isolated on a list that eventually never receives any communication at all! So many efforts to cultivate new relationships are scuttled because a group of contacts falls through the cracks in systems or technology platforms.

In the space below, outline what follow-up you will provide to your audience following the experience of the film:

Open Hands

Sound of Hope presents an exciting opportunity to share about the world of foster care and invite your neighbors to take action. But when you care so deeply about an issue, it’s easy to internalize weight and responsibility that’s too heavy for anyone to bear.

You are going to leverage this movie the best you can. But ultimately, God is the one with the power to move people and transform communities. You and your team have the privilege of being a part of that work.

So in the midst of your thoughtful and strategic efforts to mobilize your communities, rest knowing that this is God’s work and His weight. Leave him responsible for the miracle of transforming foster care in our communities. And then embrace your piece of it with creativity and joy.