Trust + Talking

It is the power of building off of the trust relationships people have in their sphere of influence, their networks with their friends, family, colleagues, and neighbors.  When people talk positively about a product, service, or organization that is word-of-mouth marketing.

On some levels it is really cheap…from another perspective it costs you more than you realize.

This type of marketing means that everything you do must compound to build a strong positive balance in your “account” with the perception you have with people you already have a relationship with.

Talkable

On today’s Ministry Story Church Marketing and Communications Podcast, Episode #5, I dialogue with Guy Richards, the author of Talkable.

I met Guy at a conference and we immediately hit-it-off.  We have similar heartbeats to help churches and church leaders to communicate more effectively so they can reach more people with the great-news story of Jesus.  I know that if you’ll invest 15 minutes of your day listening in to our conversation that you’ll be moved by his spiritual story and at the same time you’ll learn how you can make your church more talkable.

Special Gift

Guy signed a copy of his book and gave it to me to give someone in the MinistryStory community.  So, if you will write a comment here, or tweet about this church marketing podcast, or “like” the new Ministry Story Facebook page, you’ll be eligible to win the book.  I’ll ship it to the winner for free.  So, please share the news(talk about it online) and at the same time help all the church leaders you know to make their churches more talkable too!

Tension

As I have come to work closely with churches, I have discovered that there is a real misunderstanding about what marketing is.  As a result, tensions often rise when you use the words “church” and “marketing” in the same sentence!

Marketing is Not Just Advertising

I think a great deal of that tension comes from the mistake that most ministry leaders make in thinking that marketing is just advertising.  Marketing is much more than that!  Advertising is one of the sub-disciplines or sectors of marketing.  Marketing is the overarching discipline or process.  Underneath “marketing” are such important elements as

• branding
• advertising
• consumer behavior
• target market(s)
• research
• customer service
• social media
• web presence

There are many others that play a role in the marketing of your church. This list could be expanded and a lot more could (and should) be written on each element…and I might just do that as the weeks progress here in 2011. The point I am trying to make is that marketing is much more multidimensional that just advertising.

A Simplified Definition

A while back I wrote a short post to craft a definition of church marketing.  The result was this:

“Building a trust relationship with someone who needs the hope, love, and life-purpose that Jesus offers so you can share with them the power of his life-changing story.”

I admit it is brief…but it is practical, no?

It Is About The Story

Churches have the greatest story on the planet to tell – the life transforming story of Jesus.  At its core, marketing is simply telling your story and the tools you use to communicate it most effectively.

If we as church leaders hope to fulfill the great commission that Jesus gave us:

“Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you.” - Matthew 28:19-20

Then, we have to be great story tellers.  We have to build a relationship with someone who will trust us enough to want to listen.  Then we have to creatively share the story of Jesus in a way that is customized to their need so they can engage with it in such a way as to want to let Jesus change their life.  Isn’t that what all of us as Christians want?  We want (and I would even suggest have an inherant need) to share this great story of Jesus.  That is what we are commanded to do, right?

I want to use whatever tools I can that will help the story resonate with people I come in contact with – don’t you?

We have to be good stewards of this message – so let’s tell it with the greatest effectiveness, impact, and excellence!

Let me know what you think…

Youtube has proven that people have time to watch the messages that captivate them…and they’ll even pass the great ones on to their friends. That’s called “viral”. Your message has to creatively captivate – period – to achieve that action.

If you are not already convinced, the Youtube video is the golden key to your customer’s attention in our world today. You get people’s attention on their time – when they choose to engage with your message. Online video gives your message a voice like never before because it also engages many senses. The video below is my favorite “viral” video of 2010 – it is not spiritual but it does illustrate creativity and does a bunch of things very well for the “consumer”:

• it immediately captivates your curiosity - how did he do that?
• when you see it once or from one angle, you immediately want to see it again…and they show it again
• you are often saying to yourself…did he really do that?
• finally, it is engaging – you want to try it yourself…and you just might – after you watch the video!

Earlier this year, Old Spice created a new ad campaign in mainstream media that they then began to support through social media.  The campaign has been deemed a business, marketing, an cultural icon success story.  Even their commercial version on YouTube (inset below) has received over 21 million views (as of this writing).  This campaign success was achieved through a unique creative concept and the expenditure of millions of advertising dollars.

Copy-Cats

Many people will parody a successful YouTube concept –  copying the styling, and trying desperately to ride the wave of someone else’s viral video success.  The Old Spice ad is no different – it has spawned a wealth of mimicry but few of these copy-cats have garnered the eyeballs and viral sharing they have sought.

Occasionally someone will catch a viral wave – Grover has!  His Sesame Street Smell Like A Monster parody (inset below) has captured 4.5 million views in just its first 10 days on YouTube!  Just goes to show – it can be done but a viral video needs uniqueness and creativity - people need to be captivated and impressed by the concept or they will just shut you off and tune you out in disgust.

Is A Viral Christian Video Possible?

I guess as a marketer of ministries and churches, I am left wondering – could a church create a viral YouTube video that would represent Jesus well (not be about a church controversy or contain a cynical spiritual view) and be compelling enough to cause people to forward the link to their friends?  What would compel people to blog about it and mention it on Facebook and Twitter?  If we have the best message on the planet to tell – how can we tell it more creatively and virally?  Maybe you have an idea – if so please share it!

So, what do you think…is it possible for a church to create a viral video?

Enjoy the Grover video:

Do you have a strategy?  Maybe your church needs a man plan – a strategy that is proven to work in attracting men into a journey towards a real relationship with Jesus…read the whole story here…

There is a completely different perspective of the Christian Church in Canada.

We are a large country geographically (second largest in the world), yet our population is comparatively small.  Across this great land, churches are shrinking and closing their doors.  It is not that there isn’t a hunger for spiritual things – it may be that there is little respect left for “religion”.  In many ways there is a backlash to traditional churches (Catholic and Anglican) which were the foundational denominations of many of our country’s forefathers.  I think there is a hunger for spirituality, but seldom is there the reflex for someone to turn to a Christian Church when searching for spiritual significance and answers.

So what is a Christian church to do to promote itself in Canada?  How can a church effectively reach it’s community?

Print Advertising Doesn’t Work

Using traditional print advertising to invite someone to your Sunday morning church service doesn’t work – at least from my experience.

I was part of the church launch team five years ago for a church in Halifax.  When we were promoting our “grand-opening” we sent 22,000 professionally designed and printed postcards by mail to homes around our community, inviting them to attend our grand opening on Easter Sunday.  Twenty two thousand.  We had only seven (yes, seven) people come to our first service because they received a postcard in their mail.  There was some trickle effect…over the following couple months we probably had 30 new visitors because of the cards.  From a marketing success standpoint, the ROI (return on investment) was poor.  Not a great response.

We tried advertising in newspapers, yellow-pages, and more even more postcards over the following three years.  All this was good for “visibility”, but produced very few new attendees based on the time and dollar expense.

Service, Not A Service

What I have discovered is that for churches to reach their communities effectively they have to be relevant and provide a “service” that is deemed high-value.  Not a church service on Sunday morning, but a service to the needs of the demographic of their community.

Our church is based in a middle class suburban neighbourhood.  The core demographic is young families.  So, we created two seminars.  One on “marriage” and one on “parenting”.  These were relevant needs in our community.  Couples need practical help building stronger marriages and learning useful parenting skills.

One of our promotional strategies was another print postcard distributed to about 2500 homes.  One-tenth of the reach.  The response was about 40 people who were not attending our church.  Over the seminars, we were able to make deeper relational connections with these couples and many came out to Sunday services and eventually came to our church regularly.

So, one important and proven church marketing strategy is to invest in a relevant, practical outreach.  This shouldn’t surprise you really.  Church communities are supposed to be relational…and connecting with people relationally and building into them a practical skill set that meets a real defined need…that’s the ticket!

What do you think?  Have you tried any specific strategies that have garnered success for your church?

Last year, I wrote a post titled Marketing Jesus – in response to a Christianity Today article titled Jesus is Not A Brand.  So, is Jesus a product?  Well, he is a person, he is the son of God.  If you are a Christian, a Jesus follower, a student of Jesus if you will – then he is your saviour.  He is your hope, purpose, and peace.

Is He a Product?

To those who are not Christians, he is.  He is a spiritual product.  One of many options to be considered if/when they choose to investigate religions and spirituality.  He is a choice.

Brett Borders wrote a post on May 17th for Church Marketing Sucks (which seems to have been lost in their design upgrade so I can’t link to it) titled Jesus As A Product.  In his thought provoking commentary he writes:

But for those who don’t know Jesus, he is just another product. One that sits there in the Great Spiritual Salad Bar along with Budda, Humanism, Materialism, Good Person-ism and a lot of other things.

Whether you like that or not, it is true.  The sad thing is, most people are not interested in the spiritual salad bar.  However, at some point or another, people are drawn to ask questions with spiritual overtones.  When they do, how is your church representing Jesus?  How are you communicating, selling, marketing, his value as a viable option to be considered by those looking for answers?

Pause

I think that in most cases, churches don’t look at people in their communities with this mindset.  We assume that Jesus is the obvious answer to all their questions.  He IS the answer – but how is your church positioning his value-add?  We all like to think we are doing a great job, but if someone were looking on my church web site, would they get any indication that Jesus can solve their innermost pain, provide renewed life purpose, or be relevant to them?  Or, does our church web site represent “us” as an elitist spiritual insiders club with a bunch of programs for those who are privileged to be members?

I don’t have all the answers or solutions on how to change what we are all currently doing.  I just think it is worth a little introspection so we can look at our church web sites through a different lens and ask some reality-check questions.  Do we provide any real meat, any real relevance, any real insight, into Jesus so that someone standing on the outside, looking to make a spiritual choice, a spiritual decision – that they could get enough product information that would cause them to consider Jesus as a choice?

I think this is because many people equate marketing with advertising.  Advertising is merely one function of marketing.  Sometimes this struggle lies with people perceiving that “the church” should not be using the methodologies of the corporate sector.  I should remind you, that the church is still an organization.  I realize it is highly unique…but from my perspective that uniqueness needs to be clearly communicated all the more.

Everything A Church Does Is Marketing

Yes, that statement may cause the fur to fly but it is true.  Marketing is communicating.  Marketing is representation.  What is a church doing?  It is representing Jesus and communicating his message (or story) to a world in need.

Last year I crafted this definition of church marketing:

“Building a trust relationship with someone who needs the hope, love, and life-purpose that Jesus offers so you can share with them the power of his life-changing story.”

Now, lets think of merely a few examples that reflect church action and marketing:

• The church sign – what it says and how it looks tells a piece of your story.
• The church building – its style, its upkeep describes your church community.
• The church parking – creates ease or distress for visitors and hence creates a feeling before even entering the building.
• Greeters at the door – how people are greeted encourages or sets a tone for welcoming people into your community.
• The sanctuary or auditorium – creates a setting and an environment within which the story will be told.
• The church bulletin – is the table of contents the story will follow.  The “program” or additional ads or announcements within it reflect a lot about the culture of the organization.
• The music – sets the mood and provides a “score” which will accompany the storytelling.
• The preacher – the main storyteller…his or her style will be the narration of the story and will determine its style and the telling of the tale.
• The creative elements – video, drama, testimonies, art, dance or other will relate the key message in different forms which may resonate with people on levels that go beyond the spoken word.

OK, I could go on and on.  These are just a few examples.  Do you see where I am coming from?  All the elements market, communicate, or tell the story of Jesus and your church community.  Every element reveals your organizational culture and makes an impression in some way or another.  Good or bad, it is all marketing.  It all works together in symphony.

Think about your church.  Think about the marketing messages your church is sending every Sunday.  To visitors and regulars alike.  Is it good?  Does it inspire action?  Does it represent Jesus well?  What do you need to fix or refresh to represent Jesus more effectively or with greater excellence?

Share your thoughts by leaving a comment below…