Dear Laraine,
I am trying to advertise a brand new activity but I am having great difficulty filling the places. Surely in this day and age everyone is on the internet. Why is it so hard? The Deaf world is small – surely we can share information quickly? What’s your advice as I know you have been running courses for years.
Yours, Wannabe Deaf Advertising Guru 
Dear Wannabe Deaf Advertising Guru,
My initial response is “join the club!” You are not the first person to ask me this question – everyone has this problem. Yes, it does seem strange when we know the majority (but not all) of D/deaf people have access to the internet. But the internet is a huge and vast universe and where does one start? There is no central deaf clearing house where everyone posts their event. RAD (Royal Association for Deaf People) used to run a great calendar which people logged on to – but it proved very time consuming. I have found the same myself with my own arts freepage. In marketing terms they tell you “a scattergun approach does not work – don’t do it as you’ll end up annoying everyone”. They say looking at the “one percent of the one percent” will get you better results than sending a flurry of emails out and facebooking everyone (which can be equally annoying). So who is your target group? Where do they hang out in the virtual world? And you will already know that nothing beats face to face contact. Anyone who organises deaf children related events use the NDCS website, but do all parents know about the NDCS? (Does it make you feel better that a several million pound charity has the same problems as we do?)
Yours, Laraine
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