Church Growth Marketing

When it comes to church marketing, it’s almost as important to avoid mistakes as it is to pursue success. I’ve put together a list of the top 10 church marketing mistakes you’ll want to avoid as you improve your church’s marketing game.

When churches work hard and try new things to get the word out, I love it! But sometimes things don’t pan out the way pastors or communication teams think. Many times that’s simply because the approach could have been different.

This is not an indictment on churches. I love the church! If you’ve found your church making any of these mistakes, the key is to learn from them and follow the appropriate approach the next time around.

I want to do business with a company that treats emailing me as a privilege, not a transaction. - Andrea Mignolo

Even with all of the recent advances in communication technology, email remains one of the most widely used marketing channels.

Here are seven best practices every church should use when using emails to engage with their community.

1. Create a welcome series for new people

When someone joins your email list, the first thing they hear from you shouldn’t be an update about the mission trip or a mass invitation to your marriage conference. Those things are great, and you should tell people about them. But new people should always receive a separate series of emails before they start getting the stuff you send out to everyone.

A good welcome series thanks someone for checking out your church and helps them get more familiar with who you are, what you care about, and what you have to offer. It should also lead to what you’ve decided is the most appropriate next step for a new person to take, whether that’s an invitation to coffee with a pastor, an event for new people, or simply a note about your next service.

A strong email series can help catch newcomers’ attention and engage them in the life of your church. Plus, emails are low cost, low risk—all you need is great content and a plan. There’s tons more your church can do to make great use of content in emails and beyond. To discover how your church can utilize great communications techniques. Click here to download the free Content marketing For Churches ebook today.

2. Segment your lists

Segmenting an email list means creating separate groups for different categories of people. Or in other words, it’s using what you know about people to create more relevant messages.

For example, say you have an important update for your parents, but you don’t want to send that update to everyone on your church’s email list. Some churches would simply choose not to send an email, and to find another way to get the word out to parents. But having a “kid’s ministry” segment helps you ensure that only the relevant people receive your email.

The key to creating segments, of course, is that you have to actually know things about the people on your email list. You need data. Thankfully, most church management tools can help you collect this information, and chances are you’re already gathering some data with your connection cards. Use the information you have to create segments, so you can send more relevant communication.

3. Set clear expectations

Nobody likes to be bombarded with emails. And it can be uncomfortable to give someone your email address if you aren’t sure how it’s going to be used.

Before someone signs up for your email list, you can address their reservations by telling them what you’ll email them about and ideally, how often you’ll send emails. Your first email should also reiterate what people can expect to receive and how frequently they’ll see you in their inbox.

Telling people they’ll hear from you “once a week” or “a couple times a month” makes your email cadence more predictable, which in turn makes people more comfortable. You might also consider giving people more control over what type of emails they’ll receive, which essentially lets them segment themselves for you.

4. Personalize every email

People want to be connected to their church. And your ministry thrives on relationships. That’s why every email you send should come from a real person–even if it’s an automated mass email. Use a real staff person’s name. Include personal details when they’re relevant. And if it makes sense, use your recipient’s name in the email. Most modern email clients should make it easy for you to do that in mass emails.

Perhaps most importantly, make sure that the email replies go to this person—and gets answered.

5. Add value more than you ask for things

It’s totally appropriate for an email to ask your congregation to register for an event, give money to a cause, or serve. But if you want your email list to provide the best experience for your church members, you should ask people to make commitments far less often than you give them something.

You want people to feel like they benefit from being on your list, whether they’re looking for a deeper connection with your church, a stronger relationship with Jesus, or something else.

Your email list is a great place to share stories about what’s going on in your church, how your ministry is affecting people, devotionals, material that relates to your sermons, and other things people can enjoy without feeling obligated to do something. And the reality is, as you share more content that adds value, people will respond more positively to your requests.

6. Track your email’s performance

No matter what you do, some people will open your email and others won’t. Some of them will take the action you want, but most probably won’t. But there are all kinds of things you can do to make your emails more effective, and it ultimately comes down to knowing what your audience responds best to.

And if you aren’t tracking the open rates and click through rates on your emails, there’s no way to know what’s working and what’s not.

7. Keep your emails simple

Your emails don’t need to have all kinds of images and graphics to be effective. And if you don’t have a designer (or your designer doesn’t have time), that doesn’t have to prevent you from consistently sending something to your list or creating quality emails. In fact, done poorly, images can actually detract from your email more than they add.

Your congregation is going to open your emails from a range of devices (some mobile, some not), and they’ll use different email clients to read them. Every image you put in your email increases the risk that something won’t look the way it’s supposed to on every device and every email client.

Besides, text-only emails can feel more personal, because you don’t create branded images for the emails you send to your friends, family, and colleagues.

So why not just keep it simple?

Church websites should be well-designed and effective. There is no need to discuss the importance of having a great church website. This is an element that can significantly help your church reach more people. Many people will not visit your church without first checking your website.

These days it is a church’s website that acts as the front door so you must ensure that your website will help people enter your real door. You can do this by helping new visitors understand what to expect when they visit.

“If I was down to my last dollar, I would spend it on public relations.” – Bill Gates

In short, it’s all about storytelling. Knowing how to tell your stories in ways that intriguing is very important.

Whether it’s a visibility opportunity with TV and newspapers or business publications, understanding the importance of public relations for building awareness of your church and its ministries is one of the best things you can do!

Knowing how to grow a church is essential to provide longevity for your congregation because it can assure needed revenue for rent, expansion, staff, utilities and more.

If you know how to grow your church it will aid with sharing your overall beliefs and callings. Statistics show that over 80 percent of churches have less than 200 members in attendance each weekend service.

Many leaders are still looking at traditional means to grow their congregation because it worked in the past. However, social media, online digital promotional efforts and churches can work as one to help increase church membership. In this lesson, I show you exactly how I stumbled on some easy to implement strategies that resulted in 600% more growth!

Printed church bulletins are much maligned and put down. In my humble opinion, people don’t appreciate their value as an effective communication tool.

Your printed bulletin is a great tool to communicate to first-time visitors like your website is easy to access by people visiting your website rather than your church app. Your printed bulletin is brilliant for people who are still finding their way into your church. I know for some of you tech-savvy people this feels old and slow. But as communicators, we need to communicate at our audience’s pace. Not our own. And we need multiple touchpoints, not just one.

If you are reading this, it probably means that you understand the importance of tracking your performance and its progression over time, or possibly you realize it's time to learn.

Be it in marketing, or in sales, finance or for executives, reports are essential to assess your activity and evaluate the results. Management thinker Peter Drucker once stated, “if you can’t measure it, you can’t improve it” – and he couldn’t be more right. In the church world, I have discovered, if you can't measure it, you won't get more money for it either!

To know if you are successful, you first need to define success and track it.

Are your efforts paying off? How do you know that? If you are doing things in the right way, should you do more of it? Or drastically change for another path?

Once you know and understand this, and can prove it to leadership, the money will come and your budgets will increase!

Brand continuity is essential for success because it helps churches reinforce their image. The more often customers see the same message or image, the more likely they'll retain it. Unified branding is important for churches and especially for churches with multiple locations.

For example--imagine if a particular church did not take a coordinated approach to its marketing efforts, and changed its logo colors regularly. Or, if one of its staff members decided to change the branding message to suit their own tastes. Customers would be confused by the mixed messages, and mistrust would begin to grow. An inconsistent brand makes it difficult to build a strong reputation, and it's little wonder why marketing departments spend a great portion of their budget ensuring the coordination and consistency of their brand.

Brand clarity is all about getting yourself clear about the vibe, personality, commitment and vision of your business. The more grounded you are in this, the more you can write and create from the spirit and voice of your brand.

Why is this important?

In today’s world (and really in all of life) the thing that people want more than most anything is to feel connected. Aren’t you craving that?

People also really want to feel like they are part of something that’s good and that matters, that makes a difference in some way.

No matter what type of church you have – when YOU are connected to what matters to you and your church and when you’re able to convey that message in your marketing, services and products… then other people get to feel and be part of your vision.

Which is inspiring.

90% of text messages are opened within 3 minutes. Even in a busy world, texts help you get in front of your church members.

66% of people prefer texting over phone and email. Keep your members informed and connect with them instantly.

Using texting for communication at your church is an often-underrated strategy for contacting members with important information. Statistics show that 90% of text messages are opened, usually within minutes. But knowing that SMS messaging can be a good strategy and knowing how to make the most of it are two different things altogether.

If you’ve been wondering how you’d integrate texting into your communication strategy, I will break it down for you in this lesson.

Churches too often look at fundraising only as a means to making money to accomplish their agendas and pay their staff, so much so that they neglect to integrate fundraising into their plan as a whole.

Churches that do incorporate fundraising and development into their organizational strategy are the ones that end up being successful, however. Why? Because fundraising makes your organization stronger and eventually high functioning.

So often in churches we believe focusing on tithing is the only way to increase giving. And while tithing is important, what I have found is that the more you can get the member engaged and active the more they will give.

I'll explain it all below.

When you rotate the dial on the radio on your way home from work, turn on your television to watch the local news in the morning, or open your local paper to scope out the yard sales in town over the weekend, you’re bound to be exposed to traditional advertising.

These advertisements are an integral part of your daily routine. The average person listens to 112 minutes of radio and watches nearly 5 hours of television per day. About half of those same consumers use video streaming like Netflix and online radio like Spotify. The ways in which we listen, watch, and read are changing, but in many ways, they’re still the same.

That’s why it’s important to combine traditional advertising methods, such as print, radio, and television, with the digital advertising that defines our world today.

The idea of negotiating can be intimidating. As consumers, we have been trained to pay the price marked on goods or services without question. If we feel the price is too high, we abandon the sale and look for cheaper options.

It’s an option that seems to work for us. But it could work better. We don’t always realize we have the option to negotiate a lower price. To get the lowest price out of a transaction, you need to follow some rules that aren’t always easy.

It is simply impossible to become a great leader without being a great communicator. I hope you noticed the previous sentence didn't refer to being a great talker - big difference. The key to becoming a skillful communicator is rarely found in what has been taught in the world of academia. From our earliest days in the classroom we are trained to focus on enunciation, vocabulary, presence, delivery, grammar, syntax and the like. In other words, we are taught to focus on ourselves. While I don't mean to belittle these things as they're important to learn, it's the more subtle elements of communication rarely taught in the classroom (the elements that focus on others), which leaders desperately need to learn.

According to Google, “Every month, more than 1 billion people watch more than 6 billion hours of YouTube video.” With such a large audience spending so much time on one platform, it’s no wonder that YouTube is becoming the preferred place to advertise for many businesses. From easily accessible statistics to a proven influence on purchasing behavior, discover these five reasons why your business can benefit from YouTube advertising.

Some are born great, some achieve greatness, and some hire public relations teams.

Everyone seems to know the term public relations (PR), but not everyone understands what it means. Though many organizations understand that public relation is a great way to build their marketing approach and upgrade their online reputation, very few know much about what PR involves, or why few companies invest so much of their time and efforts to stay at top of the stack.

The harsh truth is: stories are shared because audiences find them interesting, not because they belong to a brand. And probably, a brands’ biggest challenge is how to get the attention, the time and captivate today’s dispersive audiences.

But the solution isn’t simply giving up on communication that’s intrusive, such as advertising, to invest in branded content storytelling because if there isn’t a great idea and talent behind it, forms and techniques become useless.

And above all, in my opinion, the brand story must have three essential drivers: relevance, truth and meaning. And should be always people-oriented, not product-oriented.

There is no better approach to solving challenges than the famous saying "two heads are better than one."

Whether creating internal partnerships between colleagues or departments, to larger partnerships between churches, harnessing the strengths and abilities of others from different corners of your ecosystem is one of the most strategic ways for churches to scale their innovation and solve complex challenges.

In today's fast-paced environment, a "do-it-alone" approach is not the best strategy for growth.

The Psychology of a Call to Action that Converts

Having people read your content is great. But however many readers you get, it won’t help your church if none of those readers go on to take any action.

You need your words to inspire people beyond reading. Whether you are writing a blog post or crafting a tweet, there will be a desired outcome.

When you really look at a call to action, a lot of psychology is at play. Good salespeople have always employed psychological techniques, the environment needs to be geared towards driving those conversions.

When visitors arrive at your website, they will literally (and most of the time, subconsciously) scan the page for cues as to what the website is about and how they should interact with it. By engineering this space in such a way that only some actions and resources are available, you can reduce the possible actions your user can take to encourage favorable outcomes.

Call To Action Definition

A call to action is designed to inspire a desired outcome in your readers. It can take various forms, from text to an image to a button. The action that the user takes can be quite varied too, and will depend on the nature of your business. A user might be making a purchase, downloading software, subscribing to a newsletter, signing up for a free trial, or contacting sales.

Here’s the best call to action definition I can give: an element on a web page that makes the visitor do something.

How do you encourage the user to act? There are a variety of techniques, all designed to subtly convince the person to convert.

Prime the user with repeated phrases

Similarly, words that were used in PPC adverts can be repeated landing page copy and call to actions for the same effect. Words that were used in a tweet or social media post can be repeated in the same way.

The psychological effects of ‘priming’ happen outside our conscious mind, but can have a powerful effect. The principle involves increasing someone’s sensitivity to a particular stimulus through previous exposure. With the phrase repeated several times on the journey, by the time the user reaches the call to action they are primed to click on it already.

Soft vs aggressive

You want to encourage people to take the action, but at the same time, you don’t want to be too pushy or salesy. The same rules apply to content marketing: you need to know your audience. You need to have empathy for your reader. Make it enticing and useful, rather than beating them into submission.

At the same time, creating a vague, soft call to action is unlikely to get anyone to convert. It’s about creating the right balance so that a user doesn’t feel like they are being strong-armed into an action, but being persuasive enough to make sure they do take that action.

Best practices

A history of trial and error, web psychology and testing has meant that there is now a fairly established list of qualities that are common in the best call to actions.

A FOMO (Fear of Missing Out) Call to ActionYou will find the majority of call to actions that you see across the web include most of the following principles:

• Visually striking

• Short punchy copy

• Easy to understand

• Action-oriented

• The result of clicking is obvious

• Compelling reason to click

• A designed button that stands out from the rest of the page in color and design

Despite a wide variety of text on call to actions, it is rare that you find a call to action that will not fall into one of the following four categories. Each one appeals to different psychological tricks to boost their persuasiveness.

Create FOMO

Fear of Missing Out is a powerful motivator. It plays on the fear that others are getting something that you are missing out on. This can also take the form of encouraging the user to respond NOW.

• Download now

• Order today

• Only a limited number available. Buy now

• Sale! Get your discount while stocks last!

Remove the risk

By adding a trial or a discount deal you remove some of the objections a user may have. This reduces the perceived risk to the user. Hopefully they’ll think ‘there’s no harm in trying it’.

• Try it for free

• 14 day free trial. No credit card required.

• Free for 30 days

• Create your free-forever account

• Spotify CTA

Emphasize the benefits

Some emphasize what a good time you’ll be having once you’ve purchased/signed up. You can just imagine yourself having a much better and easier life once you’ve clicked that button.

• Start receiving the benefits today

• Experience the benefit today

• Buy today, and get a free product

• Get your free gift

The soft sell

A simple, factual approach. While these CTAs don’t use the same tricks as above, they will be relying on earlier persuasion. You will also often notice these type of CTAs on more established brands. In these cases other motivators, such as conformity, will already be at play.

Apple's soft sell CTA

• Learn more

• Join our mailing list

• Talk to us

• Find out more

Understanding how to leverage Facebook Ads is becoming a staple part of almost every social media strategy. And if you want to get your posts seen on Facebook, it’s becoming more and more likely that you’ll have to pay for reach with Facebook Ads.

Paid advertising on Facebook seems to be one of the most immediate ways to impact the reach of your content. Though it’s not without its questions. How well does it work? What kind of engagement do you get?

Churches have so much to offer the people of this world. You have been given a mission by Christ to spread the Gospel message to everyone. Deliberate and intentional marketing is an important way to connect with people and share your message with them. This is how you communicate with the public. You’ll share why your church exists and tell them why they should care about your organization. Most churches only focus on getting the word out internally in the hopes that "their people" will do the rest. It's a bad idea.

Want to know the benefits of Facebook advertising?

This list of Facebook advertising benefits will blow your mind. You will be thankful you read this.

This is your warning to do something about your advertising strategy to acquire customers. You are making a huge mistake if you are not leveraging all of the benefits of Facebook advertising. If you’re already convinced you need Facebook advertising for your church.

You are losing the opportunity for growth every day if your church is not advertising on Facebook.