Community bulletin boards can be a really inexpensive and effective way to spread the word about your church and expand your marketing presence past the digital world.
Growing churches are positioned wonderfully for scaling and publicity, but are often working against small budgets and nimble teams. In addition to common marketing channels like social media, email campaigns, and free digital marketing, physical publicity in your community is a great way to attract attention to your growing church. Community bulletin boards can be a really inexpensive and effective way to spread the word about your church and expand your marketing presence past the digital world. Hundreds of people walk by these boards every day and few people really take the opportunity for exposure.
HOW TO DO IT RIGHT:
We’ve found it useful to make a list of places that have bulletin boards and then send a team out every month or two to check on them and put up new posters as needed. You will have to keep an eye on the board or inquire with management to figure out when the board gets cleared. National stores usually clear the board at the beginning of the month while universities usually clear every semester. It is helpful for this to be a part of the larger strategy of your street team.
- Hit the street. Start by doing a little bit of research. Drive or walk around your area and look for establishments with community bulletin boards.
- Record key places on a custom Google map. Google maps has a great service for creating personal maps. This is an easy way to document where you want to post in the future. Moving forward, you can share this custom map with new members of your team or friends that want to help you out.
- Design a killer poster or ad that is sized appropriately. In my experience, better-designed posters stay up longer. People are not as eager to tear them down. (Once we had a local university put one of our ads behind a locked glass bulletin board because they really loved the design. This poster stayed up in a high traffic area for the whole school year). Make sure you design a promo piece that’s appropriately sized; posters that take over the whole board at a local coffee shop often get taken down faster than others that are size appropriate. Start with 6×9″and test what works best for your audience: it is big enough to be seen, but small enough to leave room for other ads.
- Bring your own adhesives. Every board is different and you should be ready for all of them. Create a kit consisting of Gorilla Tape (for walls with no boards), flat thumbtacks (these are harder for others to steal and use for their own posters), magnets (for magnetic bulletin boards like Starbucks). Have a kit and be ready for anything.
- Build a routine for checking and reapplying your promo. You will always have to check your spots and put new material up. Build it into your routine or set up a system to take turns making rounds.
- BONUS: Pin up a couple of cool stickers for extra measure. Stickers go quickly.
Below is a list of places that are known to have community bulletin boards.
GENERAL
- Coffee shops
- Book stores
- Shops near universities & colleges (The more they target college students, the more likely it is that they will have a board or wall of some kind)
- Music or record stores
- Break rooms (Have your people take a posters to hang up in their break room)
- University common areas (At our local university there are about 60 places to post)
- Grocery stores (Usually in the entry area)
START WITH THESE NATIONAL CHAINS
- Starbucks
- Caribou Coffee
- Barnes & Noble
- Qdoba
- Panera Bread
