Church Marketing Transparency
The challenge when creating church marketing and branding is to piece it all together in such a way that you maintain transparency and integrity. You may be thinking what? How would a church ever struggle with that? Well, think about it through the lens of these considerations:
How Do You Look?
- There will inevitably be the battle between the use of stock photos or real photos. If you use stock, they are more professional but not a “real” representation of your church.
- If you use stock photos are you representing your church as having diversity that isn’t actually a fair representation of the diversity that actually exists in your church?
- If you use poorly shot “home-grown” photos you risk sacrificing excellence.
- If you want great shots of real people…you probably need to hire a professional photographer…and that can be expensive.
What Do You Say?
- What is your message? Is your church really that different than the one down the street?
- Does your church really appeal to people who don’t care for “church”?
- What action are you calling people to take? Will you genuinely meet the needs they really have? Is your church prepared to do whatever it takes to meet people where they are at? Don’t say it if you can’t or won’t do it.
What Do You Do?
See, it is harder than you think…and there are no perfect rules or methodologies to putting together your church marketing. However, I think if you approach the entire process vigilant to maintain the integrity of who and what your church culture and community actually are, being transparent and true in your visuals and copy, you should hit the mark.
Keep Thinking
Why am I bringing this up? Well, it is because I discovered Steve Lewis’ blog today and a post (or rant) he wrote titled “Our church sucks 16% less than the sucky church you go to“, really got me thinking (and not because of the title). Thanks Steve. I encourage you to read his post so you can get a good perspective of how church marketing can come across. Keep his points in mind and most of all be true to who you are and represent Jesus with excellence!
Image: Flickr – Lightmash
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