Ministry Marketing CoachMinistry Branding and Marketing that Works

There is a crazy perception out there that by developing targeted ministries for the unchurched and promoting them to the unchurched you can reach them. Hogwash!

Let me help you put this wackiness to rest by making two points. One, the unchurched don’t really exist as a group.  Two, you can’t really reach people based on something they are not. Does that sound provocative? Don’t worry there is method in my madness.

Two principles for using demographics in ministry: 

1. You can reach effectively people based on what they do, what they think and what they are.
2. Your ability to reach people will be directly proportional to your understanding of the segments to which they perceive themselves belong.

The Unchurched Don’t Really Exist as a Group.

When you think about the term “unchurched”, remember that the category unchurched is really just a shorthand way, from the perspective of the ministry leader/researcher, to think about the people “out there” in the community who don’t go to church. People in your community don’t consciously consider themselves as being a part of this grouping and therefore do not literally exist. “Unchurched” is a handy note taker’s heading for me to use to segment people I want to learn about. But it is not a true segment of the marketplace.

Think of it this way. I could set out to study “the people in my neighborhood”. I know who I am talking about when I am studying them, but “my neighborhood” is really a state of mind—my mind. As far as the individuals in my neighborhood are concerned, I am a part of “their” neighborhood. The perceptions are miles apart.

Imagine I used my research to market my message in my neighborhood. “Dear Neighbors of me, I am so glad to finally be talking to you! I know you notice me. How’s it going? Anyway, as we all know, people who live in my neighborhood want….”

It would be silly. The world doesn’t revolve around me. I know that. There is still the dream. :)

But church marketers don’t seem to get it—that is exactly how they market themselves. The problem starts with fallacious thinking and ends up expressed in silly self-talking marketing promotions.

People in the world don’t spend much time thinking about your church, or the things of faith that matter to you. That’s why ministry leaders need to make sure to take the focus off of themselves and their own communication needs when researching the people they want to reach.

The truth is the only thing that brings me together with the people I want to reach are what I have in common with them, or what they know they have in common with me (or each other).

Many times church leaders, especially church planters, get trapped in this fallacy of thinking that just because they notice certain perceptions or behaviors in people in their community, the people in the community will have similar perceptions about themselves.

As they study and develop ministry communication plans, they tend to reflect their own thinking back to themselves in the way they do their outreach and marketing. When they do ministry promotions, they are talking to themselves in the public forum and they don’t realize it.
Sometimes church marketers communicating in the public forum seem like the smelly crazy guy in the park who is talking to himself pushing a shopping cart full of his own baggage. Then, they wonder why the people they see don’t respond. Hello?

Please, No Mo’ POMO!

I’ll give you an example; I see many churches wanting to reach out to the “Emergent Generation” or postmodern crowd. You can read all kinds of books and attend workshops on this topic. Church planters read books, blog, chat, and research their target to the hilt.

Then, they set out to reach these people with edgy websites, and other promotional resources filled with angst-ridden copy that is designed to appeal to the emergent person. “Are you sick of fake religion? Do you want to get real?”

Meanwhile, go to the local mall (or other public place) next time it is crowded with people and see if they will let you make an announcement, “Attention shoppers, will all the emergent and postmodern people please report to the information booth?”

Within minutes all you would have show up at the information booth would be a couple of hold-out Hippies and several over-cappuccino’ed, goatee-laden ordained guys carrying their Macintoshes.

Postmodern/Emergent people don’t exist really. The terms are shorthand tools for ministry people to talk about how we have cloistered ourselves into Christian ghettos of our own making for the last 30 years and only recently realized the worldview changed on us while we were at our Christian bookstores, conferences and concerts.

You Can’t Reach People Based on Who They Are Not

When people start looking at segmentation, too often they focus on what is different about people. They see one group has these characteristics and another has another and they call it segmentation. In our logic we think, “Unchurched people are different from us, so let’s learn about them” Thus we have the unchurched “segment”.

But you can’t reach people based on who they are not—unchurched. You need to understand who they are. Once you do, you will find your ability to reach people is enhanced immensely.

I have conducted a lot of research on unchurched people in my ministry. Besides my work in overseas missions, I lead market research in the state of Oklahoma for my denomination. In 2004 we conducted 15 separate sample surveys and hosted 3 focus groups of people who are unchurched in our state. What I found was shocking-unchurched people are just like me—except, they don’t go to church. Duh!

I think I expected them to be hard to reach, hard to understand and hard to talk to. In fact, while sitting behind the mirror in one of the focus group sessions, I felt an almost irresistible urge to jump through the glass and talk to the unchurched. They are easy to talk to as individuals. They are not as cynical (in Oklahoma) as I thought they would be. You could hang out with them and everything! And further, they are far more reachable than anyone could have imagined.

I knew all this from talking to people in my everyday routine, but somehow I had a mental block from thinking of unchurched people as “The Unchurched”.

All that is needed is for me, the ministry marketer, to understand them and speak to them in ways that connect with them. In most cases, that only means, me taking the focus off me and putting it on meeting them at the point of their needs.

To find out what people feel their needs are, understand more about their activities, interests and opinions. Activities are things like where they work; what their hobbies are, where they go for entertainment, etc. Interests are things that matter to people like their family ties, what they eat, health, relationships, financial matters, sports, and anything else that affects their life. Opinions are the things that cause people to act, they produce motives. Understand what people think about social issues, what products they like; their politics; their prejudices, and more.
Here are ways to find viable segments

I like the book “Lifestyle Market Segmentation” by Dennis Cahill. Below I am adapting a few ideas from his book for our discussion.

1. Find groups of people with similar behaviors.

Identify things that people like to do. Sports, hobbies, socials, clubs, community groups, are a few ideas. There are as many things people do as there are people and every one of those things is a potential bridge you can use to start a relationship.

2. What do people consider themselves to be members of right now?

Are they police, fire fighters, parents of teens, hikers? Cowboy churches are big in Oklahoma. Whatever people see themselves to be connected to causes them to group together. You can reach people by understanding what groups people consider themselves in.

3. Are they reachable?

Sure you may find information that leads you to believe people are postmodern in their worldview, but how can you buy a mailing list to reach young and emergent people looking for real meaning in their life? You need segments that are based on groups of people you can get names and address for.

4. Is dedicating an entire ministry to the segment feasible?

I am concerned that church leaders are missing the boat on the older generation. One objection they have to reaching out to them is they don’t think older adult ministry is a feasible segment to use build a church for the long run. (Is that crass thinking, or is it just me?) The top churches in the spotlight today are largely focused on the younger generation of Caucasians coming up. I think they will be shocked to find that this segment is much smaller than the huge Boomer generation that starts turning 65 in 2011. The American Anglo population is dwindling and I am concerned evangelicals are over-focused on Anglos, when they should become more responsive to the actual demographic trends in our country.

5. Are the segments large enough to be reached?

Sure you may find a way to segment the mailing list to identify all the hunchback leprechauns of your city, but really since they are such a small group maybe you can target a ministry for them and not an entire church plant. They may think you are only after their lucky charms anyway!

So You Can Reach the Unchurched!

You can reach unchurched people, but you need to take yourself out of the picture and really learn to think from the perspective of the people you want to reach. Spend less time thinking about what you want them to think, do and be until you understand what they do, what they think and what they are. Then with your understanding of them you can develop meaningful segments and develop great ministry outreach.