Ministry Marketing CoachMinistry Branding and Marketing that Works

Marketing is all around us. Organizations that traditionally ignored marketing, in recent days, have become active marketers. Now instead of marketing being the exclusive domain of companies that sell goods and services to consumers—doctors, lawyers, social services, charities, educational entities and now even religious organizations are getting into the act of marketing.

Marketing began to change in the 1970’s when Phillip Kotler (and others like Levy, Zaltman and Shapiro; see Strategic Marketing for Nonprofit Organizations, Andreasen and Kotler), began to adapt the marketing concept to the nonprofit sector. He began a revolution by turning marketing into being about much more than just products and profits. He defined marketing as a social activity that attempts to influence people.

“Social marketing is the use of marketing principles and techniques to influence a target audience to voluntarily accept, reject, modify, or abandon a behavior for the benefit of individuals, groups, or society as a whole” (Kotler, Social Marketing, 5)

This definition is not exactly everything we need for ministry marketing, but we get closer to what we need with social marketing than with other definitions. Other definitions I have seen focus more on marketing as the “management of perception” (Reising, Church Marketing 101, 23) or marketing as directing the “flow of goods and services from the producer to the consumer” (Barna, Marketing the Church, 41) and “the management of an organization’s exchanges with its various constituents” (Stevens, et al, Concise Encyclopedia of Church and Religious Organization Marketing, 76).

I don’t dislike these definitions, but I feel they only tell a part of the story about what marketing has to offer ministry. My goal is for us all to be a part of a new definition of marketing, one that is shaping as we speak, specifically detailing what ministry marketing is all about. I believe the social marketing definition comes closest because it is more Missional in its approach. We are not there yet, in my opinion—at least I am not there yet. :)

Ministry marketing would improve greatly if we understood how perception works with people. Every church I know has services and, yes even goods, it exchanges with the public. But, on the deeper level, ministry marketing is more than just the sum total of the relationships and exchanges in a church. It is not just about the way people think about the church or how many join, donate, or buy, etc. At times, ministry marketing moves beyond that, into making impact that cannot be reflected in the responses of people to the church program. We all want to impact our culture in such a way that Christ’s influence is felt. We desire to see society change as we seek to be salt and light to our generation. We want sinners to come to Jesus!

Somewhere we need to come up with the definition that describes our goal to transform the world with the love of God. I don’t want to see more people going to a particular church, if that means people moving from one church to another. I want to see the Kingdom of Heaven growing, with new people coming to trust in Christ. In some cases, the minister doesn’t care what people’s perceptions are, he has the calling to be faithful to God’s word. The gospel is not true because people respond to it. It is true because God is true! There may come a day when people don’t respond much at all—but we will not stop working to bring the gospel’s influence on society. There is a prophetic side to what we are trying to accomplish.

It is great fun and feels spiritually uplifting to see more people than ever before respond to a church. But more than that, it is greater to lay your head on your pillow knowing you have done all you can to be faithful to the calling God has given you. I think that needs to also be translated into how we do marketing and how we do our thinking about how we do it. What we do impacts others around us in the Kingdom of Heaven. When we “get there” with the ministry marketing definition we will have an approach that glorifies Christ more than anything else. We will build up the body of Christ.

Don’t Dis Your Sister Church

I have noticed that in the ministry marketing world there are two types of people: marketers who have discovered ministry and ministers who have discovered marketing (I am the latter). Many of the marketing people who come from the secular marketing world with experience have a lot of insights into how to use media and how to package ideas and products. But, in many cases, they tend to make the church marketing resemble product marketing. Secular marketing approaches can work for the short term, but they are not usually targeted at social change, so the impact may not be what marketing people are thinking it will be in the end.

In the end, what is produced yields results, yes—but what about the lasting impact on the culture and society? I fear this approach will also cause a church to more reflect the worst of our culture and society. The impact will be not only in the way the church presents itself in the world, but also how the church relates to other churches. We see it happening already. Churches that grow at the expense of other churches are great at getting “market share”, that is, an ever greater share of all the people who already go to church, going to their church. Ministry marketers from the secular marketing world know how to do this well. But the end doesn’t justify the means in the Kingdom of Heaven. We are ministers after all!

What about the big picture?

Positioning (we will define more later) is, in part the art of managing perception. Market share and profits are metrics for measuring progress in secular marketing. But what is positioning for the church world? What is the metric for measuring success? As a ministry marketing coach, you will struggle with this one for a long time. What is a “sale” in the church world? I believe in future posts we will see more clearly—let’s keep moving.

People will transfer from church to church, you can’t stop that. (Or can you?) Who is thinking about the big picture with where all our marketing is leading in terms of total impact? This is something a missionary thinks about everyday. Should we not be all working together so that a greater share of all people are exposed to the message of the gospel? Good ministry marketing should strive to build-up all churches. Yet, when I see churches positioning other churches as “hypocritical, boring, asking for money all the time, etc” they may think they are doing a service to their church’s marketing, but they are hurting it.

Yes, many churches don’t have it together and are boring and ask for money too much. Let’s set an example for them of a better way. There is not a church in the world that is “hypocrite free”. If your church is not any of these things, just be good about it. Don’t position your church against other churches, position your church’s message against the real competition, the things that are keeping people from church.

When churches position other churches by playing to the perception of unchurched people that other churches are bad, they actually do more than make people think different about their church. Only so many people respond to that type of church mud-slinging. Many more see the promotional materials from that church and have excuses put in their mouths for why they don’t attend any church.

For example, consider this analogy. When students attend college, they may assume binge-drinking is the norm on campus. If they think that, when they see a gathering of students drinking, they think, “There goes some of that normative college binge-drinking behavior”. In short, they would have their suspicions confirmed. But if media were developed to help students know that only a small percentage of college students are binge-drinkers, and that such drinking is not normative they would likely “see” the gathering of students differently. They would think, “Oh, there is one of those gatherings of the minority of students who binge-drink—stay away from that. I want to be normal!” If the media campaign also “packaged” alternative, constructive behaviors for college students, you would see a change in campus life. Social Marketing.

In the same way, messages about how “other” churches are “boring, greedy, etc” unlike your church, only help confirm the suspicions of people who don’t go to church and helps justify their behavior of not visiting a church near them. They may think that since the majority of churches are bad, what is the point of trying? We need to be looking for an approach to ministry marketing that is compatible with the Bible verses about how we are all members of one another

“And if one member suffers, all the members suffer with it; if one member is honored, all the members rejoice with it.” 1 Corinthians 12:26

In light of this verse, when you dishonor another Christian church, you dishonor your own. We will contunue defining marketing, then head into strategic planning.

Happy Thanksgiving Day!