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?

Leaders need to step back from their preconceived idea that marketing is merely advertising and look at it from a more macro perspective.  Maybe then there will be a recalibration of their mindset and a refreshed view that all a church (or any organization for that matter) does is a marketing and communication function and therefore tells a chapter of their story.  Read Jerod’s article to enlarge your understanding of marketing as it related to the church…

I have a great deal to be thankful for as I celebrate forty three.

I know, I don’t look 43 – thank you .

I am probably the healthiest I have been physically, mentally, and spiritually…ever.  I have a great wife, a peaceful home and a renewed passion to connect with God and represent Jesus with a greater impact now than ever before in my life.  I want to continue to do this through serving in leadership in my local Halifax, Nova Scotia church, but I am excited by the opportunities that are unfolding for me to help churches around the world.

I truly believe that local Christian churches have the best message and story on the planet to tell.  I am now called to help churches communicate with greater effectiveness.  I am definitely at the beginning of a new adventure – a new mission.  The best part is, I am in the prime of my career.  I have enough experience, knowledge, and training to help churches make wise and effective choices and decisions.  I also have the time to continue to learn, experiment, and grow with technology as it evolves in our culture.

These are exciting days and I thank Jesus for His provision, blessing, encouragement, and direction.  This is going to be a great year!

Cutting Through The Clutter

The culture we live in is filled with noise.  We are bombarded with messages and media.  Music, video, print, web – it is coming at us from all directions all day long.

So, how then does a church communicate and spread its seeds effectively?

We have to be clear why we exist.  We have to be clear what our mission is.  We have to be clear what our specific church community offers to the hurting world living within driving distance of our doors.

In order to communicate it effectively outside, we must craft the message clearly inside.

Each and every leader must be able to succinctly describe what the church is doing, why, how, and for who.  They must craft it clearly, hone the telling of the story, and practice it over and over.

Then – and only then – can the a church effectively take this message and integrate it into their marketing.  The church ministry story is then ready to be inserted into the church web site, into social media, into invitations, into press releases, into radio, video, or wherever else it needs to go to effectively reach the culture in your area.

My appeal to you, is to ensure your church has your ministry story crafted clearly internally and then disseminate it out externally.  If done this way, your church marketing will be much more effective and subsequently have greater impact.

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?

So, I want to outline five marketing tools and church marketing solutions that I think every church, regardless of size, should leverage to more effectively communicate their story to their local community:

1. Church Web Site

The tools and technology are widely available today such that every church should have a professional web site to assist with internal and external communication.  A web site is as important as your church building.  It is more important than being listed in the “yellow pages”.  If you do not have a web site, you essentially don’t exist as far as Google is concerned.  If people can’t find you online, you don’t exist.  Period.   If your web site is old, has pathetic graphics, poor navigation, and outdated content, then that communicates to any visitor that you simply don’t care about them.  It also communicates internally to your members that you widely accept mediocrity.  Any church can afford to have a great web site designed professionally today.  If fact, you can’t afford not to.

2. Church Logo

It doesn’t have to cost a fortune, but you should get a professional graphic designer to create a church logo and brand for you.  Image matters.  Invest in your church logo and it pays off in so many ways because the logo is the image that represents your organization, your pastor,  your people, and ultimately…Jesus to your community.

3. Church Invitation Cards

Every church can afford to have a business card sized invitation card created professionally.  This is a tool that can resource your church for representation in your community by leveraging the networks and sphere of influence your church members already have in their everyday lives.  This cost effective tool can help leverage word-of-mouth marketing for your church – which is the best marketing strategy any church can and should employ.

4. Church Social Media

Social media, particularly Facebook and YouTube are easy tools that you can leverage to promote your church and communicate effectively for little or no money.  These platforms are ones that are widely integrated into our culture today and they are not going away.  If you are not using them, you are missing one of the most cost-effective tools you can use to speak messages where people in your community are already hanging out…online.  I think every pastor should be on Facebook and that every church should utilize YouTube.

5. Church on Google Local Business Directory

Google offers a host of free tools for those wanting to leverage electronic media.  Their Google Local Business Directory is a free service that any church can register for.  By being listed, you ensure that you are on Google’s radar and that you appear in their listings.  It’s free, it’s easy, and it’s powerful.  Here are easy step-by-step directions on registering your church on Google Local Business Directory…

Share your thoughts on how any of these tools (or others) have effectively helped your church communicate.

Why Video

• People are visual learners.
• Video is more personal.
• Video is more active.

Video Value

The real value in integrating video into your ministry web site from a marketing perspective is the way it can capture the character of your ministry.  It can show the humanity, passion, and relevance of what your ministry does to meet the needs people have.

It is no longer acceptable in 2010 for your church web site to be a static online brochure.  It needs to captivate the attention of the visitor and draw them into taking action.  The desired action of course is that they will initially respond by making the inaugural visit to your church.

If you are to effectively leverage the medium of video, I would like to suggest that every church should create a short introductory/invitation video that resides on the homepage of the web site.  Having a video created that highlights the mission and vision of the church in practical applied language and terms is key to catching the attention of the first-time visitor.  If you can show them your mission in action and extend a heartfelt and passionate invitation to them to come check you out, I think video can facilitate that in a way that no amount of text or imagery can.

Time-lines are Critical

I would caution every ministry to carefully and strategically script the video and to keep it tight and focused.  By tight, I mean 30-45 seconds.  Remember, your visitor has a short attention span and will not likely be compelled to watch a 4-6 minute mini-movie.  I actually went searching through YouTube for some good samples, hoping I could show you one that exuded excellence and kept it tight.  Sadly, after 45 minutes of searching, most of what I found was either so poorly scripted and produced or 5-8 minute in length and as a result just lost steam from the word go.

You don’t want to do too much in this process.  You want to capture the essence of your ministry and whet the appetite so people will come explore what your community offers of relevance to them and their family.

So, what do you think, would you agree with utilizing short, focused, strategic YouTube video as a marketing tool for churches?  Do you have any examples of ones you have seen done that you could share?

As a result, I personally believe that every organization, church or small business, should leverage some of its promotion via video and via YouTube.

The Stats Tell The Story

Here are some statistics to validate the importance of YouTube:

• 3rd most visited website (according to Alexa)
• Localized in 23 countries across 24 different languages
• 15 – The average number of minutes people spend on the site each day
• 24 Hours of video uploaded to YouTube every minute
• 45 Million home page impressions every day in the US alone
• 70% of YouTube traffic comes from outside the U.S.
• 100 – Years of video scanned by copyright management technology, Content ID, every day
• 1700 – Years it would take you to watch the hundreds of millions of videos on YouTube

So, YouTube is very important in your web strategy.  Tomorrow I will suggest how you might strategically leverage YouTube.

Stats via TechCrunch.