Church Marketing? What If…
This is a follow up to my posting on Communications. I’ve been intrigued at the concept of church marketing. And – I’ve been thinking about how we do it (or the lack thereof). I guess first things first – I’m part of the problem and part of the solution. Our mindset in many church environments is one of letting the paid staff do the work of ministry. That work, while including spreading the gospel (‘isn’t that what we pay the pastor for?’), ministering to those in need, etc. seems to always be something staff should do. It is why they make the big bucks!
I’m thinking….NOT! I don’t want our staff to be the creative or end product of our efforts to market! It would be like asking them to be graphics artists – and the last experience they had with art was either doodling on a church bulletin (or in a hymnal if you’re old enough to remember them…) during a boring service or creating their paint-by-numbers masterpiece as a youth. What madness!
But God has given us diversity and talent, and I have no doubt that many in our body can be very creative in marketing. Please keep in mind I am talking marketing as in branding – putting what we, as the Body of Christ, are about in our fellowship. I’m not trying to ‘sell’ anything – but what is our identity? And how do we portray it to others?
In that spirit, I ask for 5 minutes. You may laugh really hard at this. You may not…hard to tell on the web. I see this is a great portrayal of church marketing, in something most of us can relate to.
So…marketing…what do we do in this area? What can we do better? When can we get started? I’m excited about the potential marketing has for us – and some of these concepts, coupled with what is going on with the Church Health team and other areas, perhaps the time is right to review a vision statement, a mission statement (for those more traditional ‘things’ we do), and then look at placing that in an identity (meaning something that reflects it in a minimalistic way, logos, slogans, etc. – like Nike’s swoosh or Intel’s trademark sound). Why not leave your comments here – I’m interested in hearing what you think (I’m positive not everyone agrees we should even mention marketing and the church in the same breath!).
Church Communications
It’s heady stuff – I was asked to discuss some ideas I had on communication with the church staff. When you love your staff, that’s like being called before God’s royalty (although having been ‘staff’, I’m positive there are many times when the staff feels as if they are much less than God’s royalty). The more I looked forward to it, the more I became mired in what exactly to say. Strange. I believe we wanted to talk of many things web related, but communications is so much more. So I started to do my homework. And this post is part of that process!
Communication – The activity of communicating; the activity of conveying information; Something that is communicated by or to or between people or groups; A connection allowing access between persons or places.
Some of us like our communications as they have always been – the church newsletter and the church bulletin. That’s the way God intended it! But there is so much more, and so many avenues that the church has not chosen to explore or benefit from. Let’s just look at some of the communication vehicles.
Newsletter – this is a very good way to get out tons of information. Everyone and their cousin can ask for inclusion in this medium. There are set deadlines to adhere to (this is published monthly) so items can be included. This is mailed to all members of the church. It is also posted to the web site.
Bulletin – another excellent way to get information out to individuals. This is also deadline driven (this is published weekly) and less information can be contained in this publication. It is available to folks who attend on any given Sunday and is also posted to the web site.
Fliers – these are mainly for special events or offerings being done within areas of the church. Many are posted to the church web site if ministry contributors are updating their areas of responsibility. Others are included as a matter of course (concerts, outreach events, etc.).
Web site – this was retooled a couple of years ago with a decidedly ‘outreach’ design. If you venture in past the initial pages, ministry contributors take care of updating the communications for those that are ‘on the inside’ of the body and are looking for information. Lots of potential here with current offerings being this blog, audio of sermons and publications of events taking place.
That pretty much sums up the vast majority of what many think of when we discuss communications. But I think there is more…much more that can and should be recognized. And if we’re brave / bold, perhaps we could even act on them!
Sermons, Sunday School, Awana, Upward, Vacation Bible School, Christmas Production – I’m going to lump these all in as things we are currently doing. With each one there comes a level of communication. While these are ‘things’ we do, how do we communicate them to the body and our community?
One of the better sites I’ve seen on this in recent days may catch you a bit off guard. It’s called Church Marketing Sucks. It’s a blog community of folks interested in spreading the Good News in a powerful and effective way. I would encourage you to read some of their articles, such as The Illusion of Community, Communicating To/With the Next Generation, or Stop Using Media. This is just a sampling of the food for thought in this area, and it certainly gets me thinking about not only what we are doing, but how effective (or ineffective) we are in our communications around this area.
E-mail – this is something that is effective. Personally, I believe we can do this better. Imagine that we could receive e-mails from a single source. Why is that important? If communications were not being received, the question would not be where did it originate from (that would be from a single e-mail address used for all church-wide communications), it would be what hindered it from reaching an individual (spam filter, black-listing, etc.). A single source for all communications! That would allow even those that didn’t want to hear from us from setting up a rule for those ‘special delivery’ mails without having to unsubscribe or ask us to stop sending them communications. Hey, a guy can dream, can’t he?
Social Networking Sites – we already have a pretty good contingency of folks on MySpace and Facebook. Again, we may want to look at articles such as The Illusion of Community to see if we’re just huddling together or impacting others for Christ. Do we have members who publicize and write about what is going on in our fellowship? Can we be more effective using these tools?
Central Materials / Themes – bear with me here. I’m not advocating we all run back to Lifeway to get age appropriate materials so we’re all on the same verses or lessons. But I do want us to understand what we do when we’re all doing our separate things. We’re not connected. We don’t mesh. There is no central ‘theme’ or point for discussion. It’s like a family all living under the same roof but never getting together in the same room or at the same table to share a meal. It’s disconnected. And, just for argument’s sake – remember the 40 Days of Purpose study and how that sparked a connectedness, growth, and common ground among the entire body? I’d guarantee you we won’t see that again if we don’t ever revisit common threads of central materials / themes.
There is so much more to discuss about church communications. I realize I have only scratched the surface and given you food for thought at this point. On my quest I also found a fantastic post titled The Five Steps of Effective Church Communications and Marketing by Yvon Prehn. I will be sharing a portion of this with our wonderful staff today as we discuss communication.
Let me leave you with this. What if…
- …we had a communications team?
- …we committed to better communications to our community?
- …we committed to better communications within our church body?
These are things we can do. But would it make a difference? Would it impact our community if we strove for excellence in this area? Would it impact us internally if we made it a point to communicate early, often, and excellently?