Need a Better Evangelization Strategy? Get to Know Your Audience with Messaging Research
Share the Gospel More Effectively with Tips from Market Research Experts
The culture is winning the language war. As Catholics, we know we have truth on our side, but the culture constantly and consistently romanticizes our flocks with lies. We fall for them ourselves sometimes, don’t we?
In order to evangelize more effectively, the language we use has to resonate. In order to make the language we use resonate, we have to know our audience.
Your target audience, the people you are trying to reach, have their own unique struggles, needs, and dreams. How well do you know them?
We know the stakes are high. And we know you are working tirelessly to spread the Gospel and transform people’s lives. Know that your work in evangelization is essential.
“Evangelizing is not merely a way of speaking, but a form of living: living in the listening and giving voice to the Father.”
– Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger (Pope Benedict XVI)
But, if we do not get to know our people better, and if we do not create better messaging, we will surrender countless souls to the culture.
How do we get the language right? We use the tools that are available to us. A powerful tool that is vastly underutilized in the Catholic Church is messaging research.
When you speak in someone’s language, they tend ot understand.
What Is Messaging Research?
Messaging research is a type of market research. What’s market research? If you’re new to market research, you can check out this white paper. It unpacks the basics of market research and its value and potential impact for the Catholic Church.
Basically, market research is a collection of tools used to gather information from your target audience.
Messaging research presents several different messages to a sample of your target audience to better understand which ones they find most motivating or compelling.
The goal of messaging research is to identify the most compelling messages for your audience.
What piques their interest? How can you best grab and keep their attention? And most importantly, what truly motivates them?
Why Is Research essential for evangelization?
The United States Conference of Catholic Bishops says, “Evangelization happens when the word of Jesus speaks to people's hearts and minds.”
That’s what market research is all about: recognizing your audience’s attitudes, studying their behaviors, understanding their spirituality, and uncovering their motivators
Because when you know what and how your audience thinks, you can better connect with them and serve them.
Market research, and messaging research in particular, helps you know what to talk about and how to talk about it. When you go through the message testing process, ideally, you first conduct qualitative research to determine what your audience cares about.
Qualitative research methods typically consist of focus groups and interviews. Conversations are a powerful way to learn about your target audience’s perceptions, opinions, beliefs, and attitudes.
You know this. Most likely, you have interacted with many people within your target audience. And you may have gathered helpful insights. But that can only get you so far.
Working with trained, experienced moderators and market research experts gives you a larger sample size, and access industry best practices and tools to ensure you get the insights you need to make key strategic decisions and craft messages that focus on what matters most to your audience.
Market Research Example: Kevin Cotter
Need an example? In this video, Kevin Cotter, currently serving as the head of content for Hallow, talks about a survey they conducted on men. (This was a project previous to his time at Hallow.) Through the survey, they learned vital information about why men engage and why they didn’t. They saved valuable time in developing resources because they knew where to focus. They knew the men they were serving.
How Does Messaging Research work?
Messages are crafted based on the information gathered in the qualitative research phase. We know what matters to people. Now we want to determine how to talk about those topics in a way that resonates.
Messages need to be evaluated based solely on the key point made and words used, so we create messages of roughly equal length.
There are several approaches to the message testing itself. The most basic is having people rate the different messages on a scale. Vinea Research’s preferred approach is a “forced choice” methodology called MaxDiff.
In this approach, we present respondents with five to six messages and ask them to pick the most and least motivating from that set. This exercise is repeated several times. Using advanced analytics, we then calculate message utility scores, which allows us to identify the most and least effective messages.
You can conduct messaging research for your target audience as a whole, or you can segment your audience by sex, age group, and other factors.
How to get started with market research
We believe the best way to do Catholic market research is to consider a formal project. That’s why we founded Vinea Research. We firmly believe the Catholic Church can and should be leveraging market research tools.
That being said, you can check out this Catholic market research white paper for three simple ways to get started with market research.
Why are commercial businesses so successful at selling their products? Because they prioritize getting to know their customers. Shouldn’t the Church use these tools too? We need data and insight on the body of Christ in order to meaningfully support and nourish it.
We have to be good stewards of our resources, especially donor dollars. Market research is worth the investment.
Market research is a proven way to listen to and get to know your audience. And when you know what and how your audience thinks, you can:
more effectively reach, engage, and motivate your audience,
create more effective messaging,
demonstrate the impact of programs and products, and
motivate donors and investors.
Sign up for a free consultation to see how market research can help your organization.
Messaging research and the new evangelization
Messaging research is a powerful tool that can dramatically improve our evangelization efforts. The message of the Gospel never changes. But in order to make it resonate, we first have to look. We have to listen to our audience.
We can craft messages that sound good to us, but end up missing the mark when presented to our audience. Or we can listen to our audience, understand what motivates them, and speak in a way that resonates and inspires action.
When you speak in someone’s language, they tend to understand.
Listen to your audience.
Who is Vinea Research?
Vinea Research was founded with the goal of applying proven, business-based market research methods to helping Catholic groups get the information they need to further the New Evangelization.
Vinea Research offers a full range of market research techniques to deliver critical customer insights that can help transform the way Catholic leadership, parishes, apostolates, and advocacy groups reach and motivate the people they serve.
Vinea Research is built on a team of experienced market research experts and deep knowledge and understanding of Catholicism. Our mission is to support Church leadership, apostolates, parishes, and other organizations by helping them better understand those they serve through expert market research and insights.
