Marketing

I’m a big proponent of doing quality, targeted advertising. Obviously the best (and most effective) invitation to church is always personal. However, I believe marketing can help enhance the efforts of our church body by making our name known in the community.

Lately I’ve received a number of inquiries about how/why we do marketing.  Here’s some thoughts for churches…

1)      Determine who you’re trying to reach.  When we do advertising pieces we are always focused on the non-churched person in our community.  Use language that they speak. Avoid “churchy” terms.

2)      Be specific.  Determine what you are seeking to communicate.  We always brand a message series and focus on that. If you’re trying to reach those who don’t attend church, I believe you will be more effective with a series that hits a felt need, versus saying “look how great our church is”.  Most church marketing is done to compare why “our church” is a better choice than “the other” churches. Non-Christians aren’t choosing, they’ve already said no to church.  Advertising should touch their heart and compel them to be at your church this weekend for this message.

3)      Use a professional designer.  I know there’s someone in your church who has Photoshop and will do it for free, don’t do it.  We now have the luxury of having a full-time designer in house. However, before that, we used a professional designer who worked for our printing company. Doing it together with the printing, they would charge us about $150 for the design work.

4)      Get second opinions.  Take your piece and have others look at it.  At PVC I have a marketing focus group that examines the pieces to provide feedback. I would highly encourage you to have some non-Christian friends look at the piece to see if it would catch their attention.  Note: if you’re afraid to do this, you shouldn’t waste the money on the advertising.

5)      Pray over them.  We believe each mailer/door hanger/invite card has a divine appointment attached to it, so we pray that God would use them in a big way.