In my experience, churches tend to practice all the elements of the Marketing Mix (see this free PowerPoint presenation with my “Marketing Basics”) separately in silos. They do not integrate programming into their marketing planning. I have seen churches put together major promotional events, where their location wasn’t prepared at all for response.
The parking lot was jammed, people crowded the halls, and everyone felt amazed that the church could have such an impact. Then a week later, nobody from the week before came back. What’s up with that? Lack of understanding the Marketing Mix, that’s what!
Honestly, if most churches had just a 2% response rate to everything they promoted and managed to keep the people they reached, the churches would not be able to handle the number of people. We would not have the church growth problems we have now.
Large churches have trouble with marketing just like little churches. Most of them have better programming and planning. But the elements of marketing are often managed in silos; children’s programming is not developed in concert with adult ministry, issues about location only come up when the adult ministry “needs childcare”. Who knows what the youth guys are doing!
Large staff churches crank out programming by the ton and (if they aren’t each doing their own promotional strategies) hand off promotion to someone who knows how to use a Mac, but hasn’t a clue about ministry. Sometimes the silos in a big church can get very dysfunctional and even work against each other.
In small churches, the planning may be done by the limited staff. But all the elements of the Marketing Mix are not considered together either. Programming is often based on what is available from the bookstore or denominational office. So these churches suffer from ineffective marketing because much of the Marketing Mix is planned remotely by people in other places who don’t know anything about the particular church, or her situation.
The reason churches experience ineffective marketing is they are operating a parade, with no Grand Marshal to pull it all together. The Grand Marshal is not a person, it is the marketing plan.
Planning all the elements of the Marketing Mix, involves developing programs based on having a clearly defined mission, knowing who your target audiences are, understanding their needs, so you can link your message to solutions that have life-application to unchurched people.
Then you are able to select proper media and line-up your marketing activities to attract people. In your planning, you plan for follow-up and are ready to receive and retain the people you attract.
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