Question

Topic: Advertising/PR

I Need Ideas On How To Promote A Church For Growth In Membership.

Posted by Anonymous on 2/5/2004 at 1:05 AM ET 250 Points
I need ideas on how to promote a small Church in a rapidly growing city (between 5 and 7 percent annual population growth) in the Southwestern United States. The Church wants to double in size over the next 12 months (from 120 to 240 adult members, which may not seem like much but would likely result in an increase in income of about 100,000 dollars.) in a market which is resistant to religious ideas. The Church has poor brand recognition and a tight budget. It is currently working on redesigning its website and has dabbled in direct mail with limited success.
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  • Posted by Blaine Wilkerson on 2/5/2004 at 1:13 AM Member
    I reccommend:

    I like https://www.brandchannel.com . Click on "directory" to get a nice list of resourses.

    Another quantitative search tool is:

    https://searchengineformarketers.com.

    It has links to almost every aspect of marketing you can imagine.

    Good Luck!
  • Posted by Blaine Wilkerson on 2/5/2004 at 1:25 AM Member
    Another alternative would be an email newsletter.

    An excellent service can be found at: https://www.pepperblue.com

    They specialize in formatting your newsletter/email campaigns to best suit your needs.

    Also, you may want to consider a "member" survey for ideas or a community survey online. My firm can help you with this.

    Perhaps my best answer...which may or maynot be within the realms of your church's beliefs, is the famous "Prayer of Jabez":

    "Our Lord and Father,

    We ask of you this day to bless us INDEED!!

    And EXPAND OUR TERRITORIES in order to better serve you.

    Keep you hand with us to guide us, provide knowledge, wisdom and strength throughout our endeavors...

    ...and keep us from evil so we may not cause pain or inflict any harm"

    This is not a "cheap ploy" since you are a church...it is something I firmly believe in and practice everyday.....It works.

    GOD will be the best resource of all!
  • Posted by Blaine Wilkerson on 2/5/2004 at 1:35 AM Member
    Furthermore, again based on the church's structure and denomination, you may consider following the footsteps of some of the "New Life" style churches that have live bands, and fun, hip, and up-to-date, classes and sermons targeted at today's youth.

    There is religious resistance everywhere you go. In my city, a few churches opened up recently providing live bands that play popular christian comtemporary and rock music as opposed to a choir (or in combination with the choir). They utilize TV monitors for people in the back to see better and have a plethora of groups that hit on current topics such as drug use, divorce, single mothers, etc.

    Try contacting "Life Church" for more info. They have to hire local Police to direct raffic every Sunday!!!!
  • Posted by ReadCopy on 2/5/2004 at 4:58 AM Member
    Wow, nothing like religion to get lots of replies! Can't wait for a question on political campaigns :-)

    Anyway, you are a kind of Charity, I see nothing wrong in looking to large commercial organisation to support you.
    Also (and I have used this), talk to a local printers, or graphics studio and ask if they can contribute their time free to the church for artist support and printing (businesses usually agree for a mention alongside church publications).

    Also if you have rooms that you hire out, or halls or grounds, consider getting big business to sponsor the room/hall/grounds .. would actually suggest you start getting bookings for your new McDonalds Hall for kids parties, but you get the general idea.

    And it all helps
  • Posted by ReadCopy on 2/5/2004 at 5:02 AM Member
    On the local businesses theme ....

    ... get businesses / local people to provide "Promises" then auction them off.

    Example: A local window clearer will donate the cleaning of someone windows FREE for a month! Not much for him to give away.
    Local residents can then bid for the "Promise", all bids rasied go to Church funds.

    Good Luck (or should that be God Luck?)

  • Posted by Pepper Blue on 2/5/2004 at 3:08 PM Accepted
    Wow, great answers, let me add onto them.

    You definitely need to survey your members. What are their wants and needs? What value do they find, or want to find in your church? How did they find out about it?

    You want to do this survey right the first time, so I would encourage talking to somebody like Jett's company to see how they can help.

    You and everybody responsible for recruiting, which is probably all members of the church, need to know very clearly what your value proposition is and be able to explain it succinctly to prospective members.

    You should do a SWOT analysis. If you need help to get going with this, post it to the MarketingProfs Experts group.

    Combine all these and develop your strategy. Again, we can all give you answers and what directions to take.

    Paramount is to always be in contact with your members. Since it is unlikely that they all attend a service each and every week, you need to keep them all in the loop and involved.

    Hardcopy church bulletins can serve this purpose, but an interactive e-newsletter is much better and more efficient.

    You can provide articles and links based off of what member’s wants and needs are and you can measure responses to your call to actions allowing you to continuously improve the content of the newsletter.

    You can increase cash flow by selling sponsorship links to members who are business owners.

    Provide "Forward to a Friend" links and take advantage of the "Network Effect".

    Insert a signup box on the website which will take people to a signup page where they can enter in their personal information (voluntary and involuntary) and areas of interest. This provides extremely valuable data.

    Best of all, there are many flavors of email marketing available for all budgets and it especially suitable for non-profits because your members/subscribers will most likely give you a high degree of permission and will look forward to and read your newsletters.

    Hope this helps.

  • Posted on 2/8/2004 at 11:13 PM Member
    Hi, I think something you want to accomplish is pretty easy with the help of God. Remember that in these type of things God is the main goal, and the salvation of many souls.

    I would suggest you to emphasize on people attending the church that there is no better way than letting people see with their own eyes how properous a church is other than giving a good testimony.

    I attend to a church that is applying the G12 model in which consist of one person leading 12, and so on. In that way, you start first with 12, then those twuelves with 144, 1728,....
    You can find the model, and how it works in the following page:
    https://www.g12harvest.org/
  • Posted on 2/8/2004 at 11:29 PM Member
    I just want to clarify that my church is new to this model, and has not gained the double but since it adopted that model, it has increased in the last two months by 14% approximately.

    I would also suggest the same thing the others suggested, like advertise in a local newspaper. You could even distribute flyers, or brochures of who you are, and remember to provide people good bases from the Bible telling them what is in it for them, or put it simplier what benefit they will gain. If your target market is adults, then it will be a great idea to portray in the communication medias you use, testimonials, or sermons directed to parents that are overwhelmed by so many ethical problems, and problems with their kids.

    Something that come to my mind, is that you could even try to convince a celebrity of your community to collaborate or even attend your church. What about your mayor? Any famous spoken person you can come up?
    I hope it has been helpful.
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