Church Marketing 101: Promoting Your Vision

Churches often find themselves (sometimes suddenly) poised for exponential growth, but unprepared organizationally and lacking a clear message. We work with churches and organizations in this position often, and recommend a clear, step-by-step approach to effectively communicate your core message to your key audiences. Your end goal? Marketing that’s clear, concise, compelling, and consistent.

1. The Brain Dump: Establish a written profile of your church. Before you can market and accommodate growth, you have to decide what you exist to say: What is your church’s mission? How are you particularly affecting change in your city, community, and beyond? Open a blank page, and jot out your thoughts. Start with our guide to 20 Branding Questions.
2. The Brand Guide: Assemble a digital toolkit. A shared, written guide to your church’s mission, vision, values, and brand is key to voicing a consistent marketing message in any organization–including a church. Your staff and key stakeholders should be equipped with a clear and comprehensive outline of how to use your brand elements (logo, font, color), your key messaging (mission statement, value proposition, etc.), and your core collateral (frequently used photos, videos, etc.)
3. The Launchpad: Build a website that serves as a home base. We’re way past the days where organizations could get away without a website. This is the first place your audience will look to discover who you are and why they should care. If you don’t have the resources to build an extensive site, start with a microsite to get your core message, key information (like service times), and any calls-to-action out there–and then build on that in the future.
4. The Execution: Create several campaigns & experiment. Once your digital launchpad is prepped and ready, implement your new brand guide and messaging by experimenting with a few different marketing campaign types at first:
   1. Social Media: Craft an initial 10–20 key posts based off of your core messaging, and roll these out at key times in the week. (Think: When do people begin thinking about what church they’ll visit on Sunday? What upcoming events do you have to market?)
      1. Facebook
      2. Twitter
      3. Periscope / Meerkat
      4. Instagram
      5. Snapchat
   2. Posters and Inviter Cards: Use your logo and brand elements to create a simple, minimal poster and leave-behind cards to put in public spaces like nearby coffee shops, community centers, street corners, bodegas, etc. Consider partnering with a small business you frequent in the area, and negotiate a mutually beneficial marketing partnership or promo campaign; perhaps they can include your promo prints in their shop, and you feature their coffee in your church office.
   3. MailChimp: In your initial website, include an email opt-in form to begin organically growing your contact list. Send out a monthly or bi-weekly newsletter to this growing audience to spread the word about your services or new initiatives.
5. The Improvement: Track your results
   1. Use your powers of observation: what seems to be resonating the most?
   2. Use Connect Cards to poll your audience on where they heard about you.
   3. Use Web analytics
      1. Google Analytics
      2. Crazy Egg
      3. HotJar
   4. Social Analytics: Use the built-in analytics in each of your church’s social channels to get a sense of the content with the most engagement.