Gabriella is a 19-year-old assistant for a local dentist’s office. Her meager salary of $35,000 a year provides her with enough money to cover the cost of her apartment rent (which she shares with a friend from high school), car payment, and the occasional night out with her friends.
Gabriella’s Journey: From Missed Period to New Life in Christ
Last week, Gabriella missed her period. While this wouldn’t ordinarily be cause for concern, she is sexually active with her boyfriend. Additionally, while not actively practicing her faith, the church Gabriella grew up in didn’t believe in birth control, a conviction that stuck with her.
To complicate matters further, Gabriella’s boyfriend has already mentioned that he would never want kids. Besides that, he is currently struggling to earn a stable income which means being pregnant and having a child would strain their relationship and their finances.
Searching the Internet for Answers
At this moment, Gabriella’s mind is flooded with a flurry of questions that she doesn’t feel confident or comfortable asking her friends and family about. Instead, she’s on her phone, searching for answers on the Internet:
“When’s the earliest I can test for pregnancy?”
“Where can I get an abortion pill?”
“Can my boyfriend force me to get an abortion?”
“Is abortion legal in my state?”
The questions Gabriella is searching for are the first step on what we call “Her Journey.” These are the stages a young woman experiencing an unexpected pregnancy goes through that begin with the discovery she’s pregnant and follow through to the decision to commit to life or termination of the pregnancy.
Gabriella punched these questions into an online search on her phone and encountered answers from various websites, each offering competing messages.
For example, one of her searches was, “Where can I find a free pregnancy test?” In response to her keyword input, Google pulled up websites such as CVS Pharmacy, the World Health Organization, Planned Parenthood, and even a local crisis pregnancy center. Like most people, Gabriella went to the first search results first.
Finding a Pro-Life Pregnancy Center
Eventually, Gabriella found a website for “Abundant Life Pregnancy Resource Center.” While the website offered free pregnancy tests, the shame Gabriella was feeling made her feel less inclined to give up her personal information. Fortunately, a live nurses' chat line was available on the website. Gabriella texted the line and started chatting with a nurse.
The second step in Her Journey – making human contact. By offering multiple opportunities to chat, Abundant Life gave Gabriella a life-affirming voice, even to the point of scheduling an appointment to get her a free pregnancy test.
But, as all CPC directors know, it's one matter for Gabriella to schedule her appointment, and many roadblocks keep her from showing up. These are the Third and Fourth steps in Her Journey: scheduling an appointment and actually showing up to it.
For Gabriella, that fourth step of showing up for her appointment was the hardest. She had to meet new people and share her innermost fears and doubts.
However, centers that offer a live nurse chat feature on their websites find that the relationship with the center is much stronger, and the percentage of at-risk women who show up is significantly higher.
Choosing Life
Gabriella arrived for her appointment and tested positive on her free pregnancy test. The Fifth step in Her Journey was to get an ultrasound to confirm her pregnancy and determine when she conceived.
When Gabriella arrived at Abundant Life, the warm and friendly staff answered her questions, both the ones she had searched on her cell phone and even more. Her pregnancy advocate also provided her with a variety of literature and offered resources to ease some of her financial concerns.
Since the the Abundant Life staff was so supportive and honest with Gabriella, they earned her trust which led to long conversations about her options and her future. Gabriella was encouraged by her advocates and committed to carrying her baby to term – the Sixth step in Her Journey was a life-changing decision. Despite the objections made by her boyfriend and her financial uncertainty, Gabriella had the confidence to choose life.
Choosing Christ
While Gabriella was raised in a Catholic home, she never took her faith that seriously. Since moving out of her parent's home, she admits that she’s only returned to mass on Christmas and Easter.
The pregnancy advocates at Abundant Life offer empathetic care and services to all women experiencing an unexpected pregnancy, regardless of their religious or political views or even if they choose to abort or not. But they’re also very transparent in their own beliefs. Abundant Life is staffed by Christians and has a Christian mission at its heart.
Gabriella’s pregnancy advocate never tried to force a religious conviction on her, nor did she make proselytization a priority. What came first and foremost was the unconditional care and respect for Gabriella.
But that doesn’t mean conversations about Jesus Christ didn’t come up. Gabriella’s pregnancy advocate assured her that regardless of her decision to carry or abort, God’s love towards her was unconditional.
These conversations went further, and Gabriella wanted to learn more. Along with her decision to carry to term, she also recommitted her life to Christ and decided to raise her expecting child with the same faith her parents raised her.
This is the final stage in Her Journey – a commitment to Christ.
Your Impact on Her Journey
If you would like to see more stories similar to Gabriella’s, it's important not just to understand each stage in Her Journey but also to determine how well you’re impacting her experience.
This is where benchmarking comes in. Benchmarking is the process of collecting your internal data on how you impact Her Journey and comparing it with similar centers.
By comparing data, you help inform the CPC community about what works and what goals we should aim for. In fact, if you want to submit your data, you can do that here.
Once you know how your center stands, improving your metrics across each stage is next. To do this, look at best practices and try to implement them throughout your center’s engagement with clients. For example, CPC websites that offer an anonymous nurse’s chat line have clients who make it significantly further through Her Journey than those who don’t.
In order to improve your metrics across each stage, it’s important to be in regular dialogue with a community of center directors and marketing professionals who are driven by a desire to improve and willing to change center processes better to serve clients at each step in Her Journey.
This blog was written by 828Collective – a digital marketing agency for pregnancy centers. We provide pregnancy centers with industry-leading websites and marketing services at a price that is affordable for even the smallest centers. We devote ourselves to understanding Her Journey so you can more effectively reach her at every stage of it.
Visit us online or schedule a time to chat with us about your center’s marketing strategy, Her Journey, or any other questions you may have.