Follow Cory Miller

Search CCP

Archive for Church Marketing

An open letter to pastors and ministry leaders:

For almost two decades, I have helped churches across the US and Canada with communications consulting and training. I work with churches that have incredibly effective communications, and others that struggle to publish the sermon notes each week. From this experience, I have discovered one easy, free technique that is guaranteed to improve the quality and effectiveness of your church communications. Here it is:

Give your communications team at least two weeks lead time.

That’s the distinguishing factor between churches with great communications, and churches with poor communications. Teams that regularly get to work on promotions at least two weeks in advance almost always have better results. The number of people on your staff or the amount of money in your budget doesn’t affect quality as much as lead time. A mediocre volunteer with two weeks lead time can outperform a talented artist who is only given a couple hours.

With two weeks of lead time a creative person can do incredible work, but even if your team isn’t super creative, with two weeks lead time they can research other churches and steal good ideas from them. Even in the commercial world, many of the best marketing campaigns are “borrowed” from others and reskinned for a new client.

With two weeks of lead time your communications team can collect all the details and creative elements they need to properly promote the event. They have time to find great stock photos (often free), instead of using old, dated clip art. They can dig up photos from last year’s event – which are often the best way to visually tell the story. They have time to get a writer to craft some catchy copy and titles.

With two weeks of lead time they can brainstorm new and creative ways to promote your event. They can play with other ideas – signs, banners, postcards, email, social media graphics. These are all inexpensive and highly effective, but take time to do properly.

With two weeks of lead time they can prepare multiple communications resources. Not just a bulletin announcement, but also some nice posters, a story on the website, and event announcement and photos on the Facebook page. By using multiple media you reach more people, and repetition makes the message stick better than one impression. Most of these aren’t expensive, and none of these require extreme creative talent. They just take time.

If you come in on Thursday afternoon and need a new promotion piece for the weekend, you have already seriously limited the effectiveness of the promotion. I’m sure your team will do their best, but many of their best options are already impossible.

I challenge you to try this test:

Pick an event at least three weeks away. Spend a week locking down all the details you can (you can let your communications team listen in, they may have good ideas). Then brief them on the event – purpose, audience, details, theme, etc. (We have a worksheet you can use to make sure you have all the details they need.) Now give them two weeks to brainstorm, research and develop some effective ways to promote your event. I think you will be amazed at the results.

The church is tasked with communicating the most important message in the world. It seems that we should do everything possible to communicate that message as effectively as possible.

Terrell Sanders

Terrell is president of Main Street Enterprises, a web development and consulting firm that specializes in church communications. He is also founder of MinistryCOM.org, a free resource site for church communications professionals. He can be reached at tsanders@MainStreetOpen.com.

Comments (0)

You don’t want to miss MinistryCOM 2010 in Dallas on Oct. 20-22. It’s put on by our friends at Main Street Enterprises and I’ve attended before (and hope to do so again in 2010).

They sent us a special discount code for earlybird MinistryCOM registrations. The next 50 registrations that use the discount code ‘SM0912‘ will get a $45 discount per attendee. That gets the price down to $250 per person. Offer expires 12/31/09.

Register for MinistryCOM 2010 here

Categories : Church Marketing
Comments (0)

My good friend Michael Buckingham wrote an interesting post and open letter to Rick Warren about his latest book design contest for designers.   By the responses in comments, I would say that Michael has hit a nerve!  I dig his passion and can see a valid point being a designer myself, but I also see the other side of the coin and the opportunity for design recognition.

If you wanna read the article, visit Church Marketing Sucks, but please remember that as Christians we should strive to be Christ-like in our actions and responses.

Twitter is an amazing tool that continues to explode and gain a more mainstream attraction.  The unusual thing Branding Shed has discovered is that Twitter is mostly used by people over the age of 30 and not the younger crowd one would imagine.  With so many people jumping into the “Twittersphere” it is essential the churches who have not already done so to get Twittering!

Here are five great Twitter ideas you can use for your church communication efforts:

  1. Celebrations: Every time a person dedicates their life to Jesus, gets married in the church, or does something awesome you can tell the world and you church members about it!
  2. Prayer: While you may want to be careful on what details you provide, you can ask your Twitter followers to pray for a specific need or person — or just offer a short daily prayer people can read and feel energized by.
  3. Events: You can easily keep your congregation or church members informed of planned gatherings (or even spontaneous get together’s) by sending Twitter updates — or why not use it to invite people to church in a non-threatening way?
  4. Sermons or Message: Why not drop a link into your conversation and let people know you have a new sermon or message uploaded so they can listen or watch if they missed it?
  5. Community Dialogue: People in your community will probably be on Twitter and you can begin conversations on pressing needs in your town, schools, or other churches.  You can discuss social issues to religion to sports…all great things for building trust and building your church “brand”.

The truth is your church will need to start taking risks and using tools such as Facebook, Blogs, and Twitter to establish connection points with the people you want to reach or help.  Just don’t let it take a back seat to personal attention and care as these will/should always be the staple in creating strong relationships in a church!

So what are you waiting for?  Go get started on Twitter today!

Please feel free to follow James Dalman on Twitter (http://twitter.com/jamesdalman)

You can also download my FREE ROCKIN’ TWITTER BIRD ICONS to plug into your site.

Twitter is an awesome tool!

It allows us to communicate in a way that is totally different from traditional websites, blogs, and e-mails.  You can tie in Twitter with your FaceBook account, send voice mesages to Twitter using your phone, TwitPic your photos, and even synch it with your Google iCalendar. The applications are many and you should consider using it for your church or ministry.

Anthony Coppedge (whom I’d love to meet and have missed at a few conferences) launched a website called Twitter for Churches (www.twitterforchurches.com) and offers a PDF book called “The Reason Your Church MUST Twitter” for only $5.00!  Having read Anthony’s posts in the past, I think this is going to be a great read and recommend checking out his new website.

Twitter could help your ministry to communicate more efficiently or carry on conversations with people in your community.  Don’t miss the boat.

Church Communication Pro is a blog and website dedicated to helping churches with church media, church marketing and church branding resources. We strive to keep pastors and their teams updated with the most effective methodologies and tools for church communication efforts.