To reach people in your community, you will need to engage in a specific type of marketing, called social marketing. This type of marketing is similar to commercial marketing, except that its goal is not to maximize profits or sales. The goal of social marketing is to change behavior in a way that will benefit society, such as influencing people's awareness of gun safety so they will lock up their firearms to prevent theft or misuse.
If you want people to change their behavior, you have to offer them something, such as security, information, a positive social image, or a feeling of belonging. To know what to offer your audience, you need to know what they want—not just what you think they need.
At the heart of social marketing are the perceptions that influence behavior. These perceptions can be influenced by outside forces, such as information (what people know and believe), and external structures, such as the enactment and enforcement of laws. In social marketing, you need to affect those outside forces—by providing information, for example—to change the determinants that influence behavior. The key is to find out what those determinants are and what outside forces might change those determinants and hence that behavior.