Church Marketing 101, Part 8

This chapter of Church Marketing 101 probably packs more concepts than every chapter of the book thus far; “wow” concepts at that! What I gleaned the most from this chapter, though, was the idea that a church needs to determine who they are, who they are trying to reach, and then consistently and repeatedly communicate that with their ‘audience’ through quality media (logos, catch phrases, type sets, speaking, websites, graphic design, music, etc…). This will help me as I am restructuring a church that has long been in decline. What I struggle with, however, is the idea of a target audience. In a perfect world, a church could reach every people group, but maybe that’s not possible in our multi faceted Western Culture. One thing I have learned from marketing is that usually a company will target a young adult audience and by doing that, they reach the masses. I’m trying to see if that works for a church a well.

3 Responsesto “Church Marketing 101, Part 8”

1. Church Marketing expert Ant Hodges says:

   July 3, 2010 at 1:32 am

   My thoughts… hope they help

   If I could give you one piece of advice… don’t target just a young adult audience. They need older and younger people in the church to grow with.

   This is the challenge with churches. Age is not a barrier to relationships as in the world. As a 29 year old married man with kids, I have friends and relationships with older widows, younger single men and everything in between. If your church markets to one specific ‘target audience’ in terms of age, you will be seen as a church who only caters for one part of the community.

   I have helped many churches understand the need for multi level parts to their communication and it works best for churches to be communicating about how they can help, not who they want to attract.

   The church I belong to changed it’s name recently as they thought, as well as a huge amount of prophetic from God, that the word ‘Family’ in the name of the church alienated others. We had very few singles in the church. They were not interested so much in a family church as they had no family of their own to bring. This is just one example.

   Another way of defining a ‘target audience’ is really about geography. Limit where you marketing and comms goes to your own community, even just your suburb not the whole city. Build locally and think bigger. Having this attitude will help build a stronger local base from all ages and walks of life to receive people and send people from.

   One final thought for you is to think about all the ministries of the church having their own marketing and comms. A toddler group needs to ‘market’ to mums and carers. A youth group needs to ‘market’ to young people. A 60+ luncheon group needs to ‘market’ to people aged 60+ – but as a church you need to find a way to tap into all these areas, nit just one!
2. Anthony says:

   July 3, 2010 at 10:00 am

   I’m not planning on only targeting a young adult audience per say, I’m just exploring different marketing and promotional ideas- thinking that when you market to a young audience, the results trickle-up to older generations, while if you market to an older audience, it won’t trickle down to a younger audience. I like your statement about marketing to subgroups within the church though, but it’s hard to do that on a large scale to the city around your church. Good conversation…
3. Church Marketing expert Ant Hodges says:

   July 4, 2010 at 7:45 am

   I see what you mean here. But still, I think that aiming at on target audience in the hope that things will trickle up maybe more ‘spin’ marketing as you are marketing to them in the hope of something more… using them in that effect.

   Looking at community needs working with different ministries marketing their events and how they can help, I think is much more up front about why they are marketing or putting out any level of communication.

   Dealing with it all on a large scale I guess can be tricky, because of the multifaceted nature of different groups and their very different ministries.

   In my view start with one leader/elder to oversea a core team of three or four. These three or four will oversea the different areas of Building Communications, Print Communications, Web Communications / Multimedia Communications. I go into a lot more detail in my book and my consultancy services, but essentially each aspect is set out like this:

   Building Comms – Noticeboards, exhibition stands, poster displays, arrangements for a table of flyers, signage and general look and feel of the church building for public events.

   Print Comms – All printed media (to ensure he right standards of print quality, right stock paper, print buying etc), including invites, flyers, posters, business cards etc

   Web Comms – Everything that goes on your website, out through social media, email ‘marketing’ to the congregation etc.

   Multimedia Comms – Audio, Video, Podcasting, CD/DVD duplication, projector visuals, preaching graphics, powerpoint templates for all groups.

   Essentially what happens here is that you get these people together, produce some standard documentation about what people should look to produce work to, timescales for turn around (For example the preaching graphics needed for Sunday morning need to be done and agreed by the Friday prior, therefore the title of the message, theme and scripture need to be with the designer by at least the Tuesday), but most importantly A CALENDAR OF REQUIRED MARKETING AND COMMS FOR THE NEXT 12 MONTHS.

   With this core team and oversight, you can then call a meeting for all those interested (designers, web coders, writers… or just the willing) plus all the leads of each ministry. During this meeting set out how you want to put strategy together for the effective communication, inside and outside of the church, and then get each ministry to put together their 12 month plan of marketing and comms, with all the things they will need.

   There is a bit more to it but the basics are there. Once you have your team in place, your ministries or groups advised that they are overseeing it all, and they need to get organised, you some how loose the need for people to create their own peach photocopied leaflet with some clipart at the top. It sets the expectation of how you want to be seen and give strategy to how you will be seen.

   I am planning an oversight team webinar for the end of July in preparation for the book launch in August. Be sure to keep a eye on the webinar dates on the right hand side of my home page if you are interested in logging in to one of them.

   Hope this helps.
4. Island Parish | Blog | Church Marketing to One Target Audience says:

   September 5, 2010 at 3:43 pm

   [...] is reading a book called Church Marketing 101 and said this about chapter 8: [link] “This chapter of Church Marketing 101 probably packs more concepts than every chapter of the [...]