A Simple Primer on Church Marketing

Using Church Marketing To Reach More People

You’re ready to start marketing your church. You’ve set up your website and a few social media accounts. You’ve put a new coffee pot in the foyer to welcome all the new faces you expect to see this Sunday. You’re ready to do this.

But a question remains: how do you put all these things together (minus the coffee pot)? How do you hook up your website, social media channels, email marketing, postcards, etc. in a way that captures people’s interest and converts it into visits to your church?

.In this primer, we’ll show you how to think through a simple strategy for church marketing. We won’t drill into all the complexities of Facebook or Google advertising (another blog for another day). But, we will show you how to develop a classic “hub and spoke” model of advertising that leads people to your site and, ultimately, your church.

Church Marketing Strategy Begins With Church Culture

First things first, all church marketing starts with church culture. Marketing and mission go hand-in-hand. If your people are sold out for the Great Commission (Matt 28:18-20), then they’ll welcome the opportunity to reach out through marketing to gather in a greater harvest. If they’re not, then they won’t.

This is about more than just buy-in. Church marketing is a group project. If you want your marketing to succeed, you’ll need to recruit the help of willing congregants to spread the word.

With that in mind, check out our article on church marketing for churches who don’t want to market before you turn the dial all the way up on advertising your church.

The Church Website: Your Primary Marketing Tool

Nowadays, the church website is just as important as your church sign. Without it, you may as well not exist. In case you think that’s an overstatement, about 80% of church visitors go to a church’s website before they visit the church. And just under 50% of them will judge your church based on its site. In their minds, bad design = bad church.

The first thing to do, then, is to ensure you’ve got a presentable web presence. You don’t need to spring for an expensive, professionally-designed site just yet. Something on Squarespace or WordPress can take you a long way.

What does your website need to provide? Here are 10 basics:

1. Name

2. Location

3. Service Times

4. Description of Your Worship Service (i.e., a “What to Expect” page)

5. An About/What We Believe Page

6. Pictures

7. Staff Profiles

8. Sermon Audio/Video

9. Ministry Information

10. Online Giving

One note about design: your site’s branding ought to match your church. If you’re a warm and cozy, traditional church, then an edgy website will communicate a look and feel that doesn’t match who you are. If visitors come, they’ll feel a bit of a culture shock. 

We all want to be as inclusive as possible, but you don’t want to make people feel as though they’ve been baited and switched. For that reason, do your best to ensure your site matches your church.

Social Media

It’s one thing to build a website and hope people will visit. It’s quite another to drive traffic toward your site. That’s where social media comes in.

Above, we mentioned a “hub-and-spoke” model of church marketing. This approach to digital marketing (church or otherwise) plays on the image of a bike wheel:

The hub lies at the center of the wheel, of course, and the spokes connect it to the rim and tire. In a hub-and-spoke approach to marketing, the hub is your church site and all the spokes are the various channels or avenues that connect the outer world to the hub.

With that basic framework in mind, we’re ready to start thinking about social media.

When it comes to social media for churches, there are many options to choose from:

• YouTube

• Twitter

• Facebook

• TikTok

• Instagram

Each social networking platform has its own platform and rules of engagement to be learned over time. Within the framework of your overall strategy, though, these basic rules and objectives will help you make the most out of your social media accounts:

Be social. Churches that put marketing on blast and send out a different promotion every couple of hours get ignored. The best way to “market” on social media is to engage people in real conversation, create connections, and earn trust.

Provide value. Don’t just talk about your church and what you’re doing. Provide items that will bless your friends/followers: Scripture verses, song recordings, sermon clips, articles, etc. Encourage people to share these with others. This both provides value and increases attention and connection.

Point people to your site. Make sure your spokes connect back to the hub as much as possible. That means sharing your web address in your profiles and tying as much of the content you can to your site.

Budget your time. Set aside a few dedicated moments each day to check your social media accounts. Without healthy boundaries, you may get sucked into an unproductive black hole of endless scrolling.

Don’t Forget to Market Your Church the Old-Fashioned Way

In the age of websites and social networking, the most neglected spokes on the wheel are the analog methods of marketing that used to be the church’s bread and butter:

• Events

• Road signs

• Billboards

• Bus benches

• Postcards

• Flyers

Be sure to include a handful of these analog methods alongside your digital marketing efforts. Not everyone is on the internet. And, even if they are, tangible marketing materials tend to have a longer shelf life and a more significant impact than an ephemeral tweet.

As with social media, remember to connect the spokes to the hub. Use your offline marketing to drive potential visitors to your online presence so that they can engage with your content and learn more about your church. 

Conclusion: Putting the Marker to the Board

Church marketing strategy doesn’t have to be difficult. You can take a few moments today to draw a circle on a whiteboard, write your church’s web address in the middle, and scheme about the various spokes that can connect that site to the outer rim that is your community. You’ll be surprised at just how much you can come up with.

From there, it’s just a matter of prioritizing your methods, building incrementally, and watching your progress to see which approaches bear fruit and which ones don’t. Some spokes will be weaker than others. That’s fine; when one spoke gets out of whack, either straighten it out or replace it with new ones until you find something that works.

Church marketing can be a lot of fun when we remember to treat it as a component of the Great Commission. There are people out there, and God has blessed church leaders with a host of creative ways to reach them. Now’s your chance to dive in, by God’s grace, and seek the lost wherever they might be found—online and off.