Unity Church Marketing

About 12-14 years ago, I took it upon myself to learn HTML and how to create websites. I had a very basic approach when I was looking for new clients at the time. My “marketing instincts” (kind of a laugh looking back) was to only call on companies that were currently advertising. If you didn’t advertise, I wasn’t going to call you to try to convince you that to expand your business you needed to promote yourself on the net.

Because if I sold you on that premise, I then had to educate you on why you needed a web presence. And that was too much to overcome for a 2 person shop and still eat.

You Either Get It Or You Don’t

So, I came to the point of “you get it or you don’t”. I wasn’t going to argue with you about why you needed to have more than a bricks and mortar approach to selling your products/services. If you knew enough to advertise in some sort of publication, then I had a reasonable chance of you buying into the idea that the web was going to be big.

Churches and Web Presence are very similar! Did you ever wonder why some churches thrive while other flounder? A lot of that resides in the fact that the churches who flounder usually do so as a result of poor marketing. Let’s face it, if you have a great minister who delivers a thought provoking message each week and no one knows about it, the church isn’t likely to grow. With that said, let’s take a moment to review the top five of the most popular marketing mistakes churches trying promote themselves.

Keep these points in mind before starting your next marketing campaign and you’re sure to see much better results.

1. Diluted branding because of scattered efforts I recently attended a church that claims to be the “Church of Love In Action” as well as “The Peace Church” and still another slogan on their website. This mistake is often made by those who attempt to be all things to all people. And the result is they aren’t very good at any of them. At that point, the message they are trying to deliver is mixed at best. The brand is confused. How does this happen? They put a one time ad in the local paper. They start a campaign to grow the church without seeing if the congregation really wants to grow. They hold an event that is totally un-related to church in an effort to reach out into the community. Determine what you want your brand to be. When that objective is agreed upon, make sure that everyone is working toward that end.

2. What Gets Measured Gets Managed – Ignoring statistics Medal of Freedom winner Dr. Peter Drucker coined the phrase “What Gets Measured Gets Managed” I believe his statement is life-and-death true for churches as well as businesses.

And it sounds so simple to execute. Measure the important stuff, then manage the important stuff. In any marketing campaign, it is essential that you regularly measure results. It is critical in your success to know and understand which components of your marketing are working for you. And maybe even more importantly, which ones are not. By measuring regularly, you can make better (and hopefully quicker) decisions to cut out ineffective marketing efforts and focus more on those that work.

3. Tweaking too many things at once Unlike others who claim “if it isn’t broke, don’t fix it”, I believe that marketing can always be improved upon. So don’t be fearful to try things. It goes hand in hand with my “what gets measured” mantra. Just don’t try a bunch different things all at once. If you do that, it is unlikely that you are going to know which aspect of the changes made really worked and which ones came up short. Test changes, but don’t make wholesale changes. And be sure that you have given the changes time to take hold. Otherwise, your brand is going to get confusing to prospective visitors (as well as your current congregation).

4. Is your organization in alignment? I have seen more than a few churches where the minister came in and said “I heard that this church has been successful doing “XXX”. And I have designed/purchased flyers and we are kicking it off this Sunday” Don’t be tied down to a date if you aren’t ready. And don’t try to ram a campaign down the congregation’s throat. There is an art to delivering a Sunday message. Use some of those same skills in getting buy in from the congregation. Once you have buy in from the congregation, make sure that all of the ministries efforts are synergistic in achieving the common goal.

5. Going it alone is a lonely business With practically every aspect of business, it’s all about who you know. By creating a strong, positive relationship with others, you can help spread the word about what each of you are offering. I have seen a reluctance of churches to come together on an event. Not sure why that is. But the end result hurts the individual church brand as well as whole brand for all churches. Building relationships with sister churches or other area churches helps your promotion efforts.