When I attended seminary, I never attended a class on marketing. Yet, despite that absence in my graduate education, I\u2019m called on to do it every Sunday for my church. So like any good life-long learner, I\u2019ve read countless marketing books and attended seminars to determine who best to market our church and get the people in the pew to participate in the life of the church.<\/p>\n
What I\u2019ve realized in the last twenty years of doing this work, is that if you can answer three simple questions, marketing can be quite easy. These three clarifying questions will help you point you in the right direction and eliminate needless headaches for you and your church. Here they are\u2026<\/p>\n
Do you know who your audience is?<\/strong><\/p>\n Your initial reaction may be \u201cOf course, I know who my audience is! I see them every Sunday and I can name every single one of them.\u201d However, there\u2019s a big difference between knowing the names of the people who make up your church and knowing who they are. For example:<\/p>\n Of course, that\u2019s assuming you\u2019re marketing to the people in your church. You\u2019ll also want to be able to answer these questions for people who live in your community but don\u2019t attend your church.<\/p>\n These are the types of questions you need to answer about the audience you\u2019re marketing to. The answers to these questions will help frame everything from the tone of voice, the aesthetics, and feel of your marketing. This will also ensure that the marketing hits the audience where they are.<\/p>\n To be clear, we\u2019re not advocating for bending of scripture or the gospel to culture, but we\u2019re looking to think as Paul admonishes us in 1 Corinthians 9:22 to \u201cbecome all things to all people.\u201d<\/p>\n Do you know what you\u2019re asking them to do?<\/strong><\/p>\n This is one of the easiest questions that churches overlook. Do you have a clear idea of what you want people to do? Yes, you want them to register for your event, but have you made it clear how to do it? Often, we\u2019re clear with what we want people to do (join a small group, go on a mission trip, become a volunteer), but too often we leave out the \u201chow\u201d part of our request.<\/p>\n This results in people having a desire to do what we ask, but being confused about the process. This confusion then leads to doubt, which will inevitably lead to people not acting, and instead result in failure.<\/p>\n Make sure you clearly spell out not only what you want people to do, but also how they can do it. Anything you can do to demystify the process will help your audience do what you want them to do.<\/p>\n Will you know if they\u2019ve done it?<\/strong><\/p>\n This will seem like a no-brainer, but you would be surprised at the number of times a church asks their congregants to do something but doesn\u2019t evaluate if people have actually done it. Without a clear way for you to tell if your marketing is working, you won\u2019t have the ability to pivot and change what\u2019s not resonating with your audience.<\/p>\n By clarifying the effectiveness of your marketing, you\u2019ll be able to build feedback loops that not only help with your current marketing efforts, but also help you shape future endeavors.<\/p>\n That\u2019s it. Those are the three questions you need to ask. Ask those three questions and you\u2019ll create an effective way to market to your church and your community.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"When I attended seminary, I never attended a class on marketing. Yet, despite that absence in my graduate education, I\u2019m called on to do it every Sunday for my church. So like any good life-long learner, I\u2019ve read countless marketing books and attended seminars to determine who best to market our church and get the…","protected":false},"author":8044,"featured_media":770793,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"publish_to_discourse":"0","publish_post_category":"1","wpdc_auto_publish_overridden":"","wpdc_topic_tags":"","wpdc_pin_topic":"","wpdc_pin_until":"","discourse_post_id":"","discourse_permalink":"","wpdc_publishing_response":"","wpdc_publishing_error":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[193,1,183,179,175,177,180,196],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-770788","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-administration-and-finance","category-church-answers","category-communications","category-first-impressions","category-grow","category-lead","category-outreach-and-evangelism","category-staff-and-organizational-issues"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n\n