Ministry Marketing CoachMinistry Branding and Marketing that Works

After you have firmly committed to a people-oriented (not programmatic) approach to your outreach, it’s time to start putting purpose into your ministry marketing. A lot of ministries have promotional events to reach out to people but fail to leverage their outreach to any beneficial ends. One preacher asked, “How many fish fries does it take to win the men of our community? We have been doing this kind of thing for years and nothing is changed” His point is, people stage church events and yet somehow still fail to benefit from them in outreach results.

No doubt your church has staged an event or two that drew a crowd before. Each year, churches host activities that get people in the door but they don’t get results from the events. But if you determine why you do what you do, before you do it, you can prepare to make a meaningful connection with the people you reach and help your ministry grow.

What People Need is More Purpose Driving their Marketing (to Coin a Phrase)

One church had a nationally recognized secular (yet believing) speaker in their church. They promoted the event and it was, by all accounts and accepted conventions, a huge success. The place was slammed with people. Scores of people even had to park on the grass—it was the biggest event in a decade at the church.

Yet, looking closer, though the place was filled with people, the church failed to capitalize on the outreach for ministry purposes. They had nothing to give to help the new people understand how to plug into the church. They barely had the time to present the gospel message.  The greeters were overwhelmed with new faces and could not make any introductions. Nobody stayed for small groups because they were too busy waiting in line to get an autograph from the celebrity. The church event turned into a huge anonymous public event that just happened to be at the church. The next week the church was in the same shape it was before the major event. (Only they had a lot less money in the bank.)

The problem is not getting people in the door. You can always pull out all the stops and attract a crowd to your building. But knowing why you wanted the crowd in the first place, that is another story. Some ministries feel if they can just keep a constant flow of new people coming into their front door, everything will take care of itself. They hope they will build a big church by leveraging the law of large numbers and the fact that they are big will somehow prove they have a great ministry. Bigger isn’t always better.

It’s not the front door, it is the back door that matters!

I disagree with the thinking behind the mantra, “It is easier to build a crowd into a core, than a core into a crowd.” While it might be true in principle, the churches that adopt this approach usually filter people through their front doors and out their back doors in an unhealthy manner. So many churches think they are doing outreach, when they are really just shifting people from one church to another anyway (church growth seminars and workshops not withstanding).

That approach is a little too Machiavellian for my tastes. The ends don’t justify the means. And if churches keep trying to fill their congregations by the law of large numbers, they will eventually inoculate their community to the gospel. People will come and go thinking they know what the gospel is, when all they really encountered is the “dog and pony show” of a church bent on building a large attendance. I don’t see God getting glory out of that.

The problem in church ministry outreach today isn’t so much the front door, it is the back door. How does your church meaningfully connect to people?  When your promotions are events that don’t connect you to people, they become mere programs. The church above had a successful event from the program point-of-view. But from a ministry point-of-view, they failed to make connections with people.

Good, healthy churches don’t just get new people in the door. They get people to stay through meaningful ministry. The church with the really great ministry people love and grow from is the one that really will last. The one with a new show every week, that church will be gone one day as fast as it appeared on the scene. At any moment another shallow church with better production values will come on the scene and the unredeemed, inoculated people who attend will change to that church.

Why Do We Do What We Do?

You can help your ministry grow in a healthy way. You can build-in the follow-up and close your back door by setting goals for your outreach. What response do you want from people who come to your event, or are touched by your promotion? What do you want from your promotions anyway?

• People visiting an event at you church?
• Hits on your website?
• Members in your Facebook group, or MySpace page?
• Public Relations in the local media?
• People knowing about where you are located?
• Introducing your new church plant?
• People ordering free materials (like a Bible, or book)?

By establishing purpose for your marketing promotions, you are helping yourself plan to be more effective. After people make a connection to you via some promotion, what are your goals for what to do with that attention?

The best goals are related to finding ways to identify new people who have yet to understand the gospel so that your church can minister to them in ways that help them find salvation in Christ and grow as followers through thorough dicsipleship. The church that does this is healthy, no matter what size it is. Make your goals clear to you and the people in your ministry team so people know what you are trying to accomplish.

Here are a few goals you might have for your events to get people into your ministry of making disciples:

• To get the names and addresses of (X number of ) new families so you can make a follow-up contact by (prescribed amount of time).
• Bridge people in one ministry to another ministry in the church (i.e.: VBS finds parents for adult parent’s classes, getting people in the celebration service to try a small group, youth who attend fun excursion trip learn about and attend youth group and make friends with another youth who attends)
• Raise awareness about social services your church provides to the community getting (X number) of new inquiries
• Enroll or sign up (X number) of people for a program or to receive the newsletter that has content written with their spiritual needs in mind (and not just a bunch of wordy church announcements).
• Assess the responsiveness of outreach in a particular part of town or among a segment of people
• You can make more goals…

Some Ideas for Purposeful Planning

Revisiting the church above, they could have set goals for their celebrity outreach that helped them accomplish their ministry goals (beyond the goal of just getting people in the pews). It wouldn’t be hard to benefit from the event with a little forethought and planning.

• The celebrity’s presentation would be a crowd-building event that introduced a larger number of people to the church, the staff, members, and the location of the facilities. From the platform and in smaller social/refreshment gathering points in the building.
• Media releases could have been used to get PR from the church into the local media.
• They could have determined to identify (X number) of new families in the service to reach out to for the next two weeks by offering a free audio CD or DVD copy of the presentation.
• Each guest who came in the door could have received a card or brochure about the church with a response card people can use to sign up for a particular ministry or other offer.
• The small group leaders of the church could have then made a follow-up contact (within two weeks) and invited the new people to an already planned guest friendly event that could introduce people to members of the small group.
• The prayer ministry could have been involved in praying for the new families
• A brief survey could have identified needs and ideas for outreach ideas

Bottom line: Before you spend a lot of money and time on an event, spend a good deal of time praying and brainstorming about what you will do to follow-up. Put purpose behind what you do in outreach and plan ahead. Move beyond planning event after event with no solid plans for follow-up. Don’t expect things to work out in the mix of large numbers. Get organized. Get real.