Mar 29 2008
Part 2 of 4 - How To Create an Effective Church Ministry Marketing Plan
Does your church or ministry have an Evangelism plan? How effective are you at reaching prospective worshippers and members? Here are the four steps you MUST follow if you want to kick-start your growth for the next 12 months …
What People Want From Their Church
People want to “belong” to something larger than themselves, something that enables them to feel involved and “relevant”, and as someone who is themselves individually loved and valued.
They want a “human connection” that the modern world often lacks, but they want it in a way that reaches out and “grabs” their attention, in ways that are exciting and relevant to them personally.
They want things that challenge and engage them mentally, emotionally, and spiritually. They want an experience that is positive, uplifting, and inspiring.
They also want to be entertained. That may be frustrating to you as a serious and thoughtful man or woman of God, but it’s true. People want to have fun - they want to enjoy what they are doing - and they want to enjoy being with the people they are doing it with.
Churches and ministries have to compete not only with the wide, wide world of secular options, but often with each other.
People’s time today is severely limited - they have the same 24 hours a day that their parents did, but they now have so much more now to fill it with. You can no longer simply throw open the doors of the church, and expect people to attend, just because it is someplace to go.
You simply have to provide your people with a positive, fun, uplifting experience, and a connection that they are not able to find anywhere else. If you don’t, that’s where they’ll go - somewhere else.
Organizations and institutions (either secular or religious) that do the best job of providing the greatest number of benefits to the greatest number of people (note carefully that I said “benefits”…), and in fulfilling the wants, needs and desires of those people … such organizations will continually prosper and grow. Those that do not adequately serve those needs or desires will quickly wither away and die.
Here are two classic textbooks for applying marketing concepts to church ministry:
Double Your Church Attendance Deluxe Edition - Bob Hinds
Marketing for Congregations: Choosing to Serve People More Effectively - Norman Shawchuck
Developing an Effective Church Ministry
Marketing / Evangelism Plan
Step 1 - Have a Marketing (Evangelism) Plan
There is now a wide and ever-expanding world of marketing resources and tools available to you out there. Most secular marketing campaigns will use a diverse mix of them in order to effectively get their message out. You must do the same.
For example, did you realize that corporate marketing campaigns will often use up to twenty-seven DIFFERENT marketing channels at the same time? Newspaper advertising is only ONE of those possible channels.
Of course not every available marketing channel will be appropriate for your message, but it is important to identify as many available channels as possible, and to craft a plan that uses as many of them as possible in a balanced and sustained way.
Many churches will spend a great deal of money running one or two splashy display ads, or television ads, or perhaps a radio spot or two, and then become discouraged when they have expended their resources without seeing any apparent results.
Professional marketers will tell you that it takes AT LEAST seven exposures to a specific message for that message to even begin to filter into the mind of a consumer. In addition, you will want your message to actually be in front of the consumer when they are motivated and ready to hear it, and most especially when they have a motivation to buy.
At the very least you want to ensure that that your organization comes immediately to mind when the individual starts thinking about solving a problem or a need that they have, a problem or need that could potentially be fulfilled by your product, organization, or message.
Marketers call this “front of consciousness” positioning, and it is critically important. You simply cannot achieve this “front of consciousness” awareness without some sort of regular and sustained advertising and marketing, to that group of your most likely and desired “customers.”
In the same vein, it is important to have some means of actually tracking and monitoring the results of your advertising or marketing, in a way that gives you some indication of the relative effectiveness of your advertising or marketing efforts, especially as it relates to the specific channel or advertisement used to relay a specific message.
This can be difficult at times. For example, if you run a radio ad, how do you effectively measure how many people actually came to church as a direct result of the ad?
You can ask people directly, but often they may not exactly know, or in actuality their response was the cumulative result of several exposures via different mediums, messages or channels, and the final one (the one that they apparently responded to) was only the one that finally “put them over the edge”.
This is why a balanced plan is necessary, in order that all elements of the plan work together in a synergistic and sustainable way.
Your plan should include some method of measuring results of a particular communication effort or channel, so that you can periodically evaluate your plan and then re-direct resources (which are limited) to those channels or media which prove themselves to be the most effective (and cost-effective) in reaching those people in your community that you most want to reach.
A well-crafted “master plan” for your marketing and media efforts will be a tremendous help for you as well when it comes time to present an annual budget to your finance committee.
It might also prompt additional donations from members of the church who see the value and effectiveness of your proposed efforts.
Next: Craft Your Ministry Marketing Plan…
Christopher B. Nelson-Jeffers is CEO of Breckshire Communications, which offers a free Church Growth Newsletter and articles to churches interested in church ministry development. He may be contacted at http://Double-Your-Church-Attendance.com