Know-How Exchange : Strategy

What other organizations also help this community of people in the neighborhoods you serve? For example: churches, fast food restaurants, community clubs, markets, etc. By reaching out to these other organizations you'll help their members stay healthier, which is a win-win.

If you are in an urban or near-urban area, try posters at bus waiting areas, smaller billboards in lower income areas of your metro. One org I know serving first gen Hispanic families used partnership with elementary schools in parts of town with high percentage of target population: flyers were sent home, in Spanish, with every kid. English paragraph gave quick overview of message and phone number for more info. Spanish text was more detailed.

Another good place for posters, flyers, etc is near day labor employment places. Hard to be specific without more info on your area, programs, budgets, etc., but basically you need to put messages into terms your market will understand, in a language (or languages) they'll understand, and locate them in places they're likely to be seen by the right people.

You may try to target those migrant families through the schools that their children attend.

The less legwork option is direct mail. VistaPrint.com sales 1,000 name mail lists for only $60 (less for bigger lists). You have to navigate through their postcard marketing options and really dig for it, but it's there. You can set up these lists to only return low income households within a certain proximity of the medical practice. Then you will have a mail list of low income households, and you can mail postcards to them about your service. Professional postcard design can be had for as little as $169. You can print 1,000 high quality postcards for $50 / 5,000 for $143. You can use volunteers to stamp and label your postcards or a mailing service.

Posters and brochures in places frequented by your target audience makes a lot of sense. You can print 1,000 13"x19", full color, glossy posters for only 42 cents each or less. Full color, glossy brochures for 7 cents each or less. A home health care / Medicaid personal care agency once told me that their best marketing tool was posters that they put up at the laundry mat. Of course, this was in rural a market where most people had their own washer / dryer and only lower income people used the laundry mat. Other advertising places that make sense:

Anything to do with the bus station and subway (except in markets where stockbrokers are just as likely to use mass transit)

Department of social services (there are usually social workers whose job it is to help low income people find medical care).

The local emergency departments. Low-income people often use the ED for routine care. Brochures and an information campaign for the nurses and case managers there could help steer your people to your medical practices.

Other places with similar target audiences, shelters, food banks, dentists who take Medicaid.

Stores that cater to people speaking only the language group you are targeting.

In some markets, their may be radio stations, especially AM stations, that cater to the language market you are interested in. It could be worth test marketing an ad on one of those stations.

Of course, you will want your advertising to be multi-lingual as much as possible.

Even though your audience will have less access to the Internet, a website could still be of value. There would be multi-lingual pages directed to your patient base, but the main target audience could be potential donors who would want to support your programs (assuming they are not-for-profit) and/or professional referral sources who would like to know more about your programs.