Church marketing is crucial to church growth in this day and age. However, not all churches are optimizing this strategy or are making one marketing mistake after another that render their efforts ineffective.
Do you want to see if your church might be making these marketing mistakes that could stop it from growing? Here are the top three church marketing mistakes that churches make and how to fix them:
1. Your Church Leaders Don’t Understand How Marketing Works
Imagine if your church’s staff hadn’t studied theology and disagreed with what they knew. No good would come.
It’s how church marketing works. Do your pastors and leaders all understand marketing? Have you developed a marketing plan to increase your church?
Without this information, people talk to each other about growth. One pastor feels marketing is done on Facebook, and another during community events. Older pastors assume marketing is done with mailings or bulletins, whereas newer pastors think it’s online.
Everyone has these preconceptions and uses “marketing” when they mean something else. A good understanding of church marketing can clear up all these misunderstandings.
Solution: When your leadership team has the same marketing philosophy, they can conduct constructive, growth-driving dialogues. Moreover, your team should know their role in the marketing strategy.
2. Church Leaders Unconsciously Avoid Marketing Because It Feels Too Corporate
As church leaders, it’s never about making money. It’s always about getting people to know Jesus. However, even Jesus was out where the people were so He could get His message about the kingdom across. Whether one-on-one or with the multitudes, Jesus was present.
That’s what marketing does. It brings your church presence right where the people are. We cannot have a “build it, and they’ll come” attitude in reaching out to people because most of them won’t even care to see a church unless something entices them to go.
And the church is a corporate body, as well as Christ’s body. We don’t need to avoid marketing because it makes the church feel like a business. It is because we are about our Father’s business, right? And His business is to get people saved, healed, and delivered.
Investing in church marketing helps you carry out the Father’s business in this digital age more effectively. You’ll optimize strategies that build a following and eventually grow our community.
You’ll know when to invest more money if you know which of your marketing efforts do the following.
- What marketing generates a profit?
- How do you attract customers?
- What makes people return to churches? (so you can grow their faith).
Solution: Your team needs business knowledge to see numbers objectively. To help your church develop, your team must understand the distinction between business and ministry and how business strategy affects church growth.
Your church will be poised to grow when your team feels comfortable discussing marketing techniques (profitable and practical).
3. Your Church Staff Believes Marketing Is a Specialist Role
If your church is like most, there are probably one or two people hiding in the basement who are experts in marketing, technology, and communication. This is rarely a good way to thrive.
In a good marketing plan, everyone on your team has a part to play. Your staff marketers should be like a conductor, and the rest of your staff should be like different instruments in an orchestra. Your marketing “experts” make sure that everyone knows what part they play in the overall marketing plan for the church. The pastors and leaders need to recognize this gift and be humble enough to accept recommendations that could help the church take flight.
Solution: Everyone on your church staff is a marketer, and your staff marketer ensures that everyone works together to reach a specific goal.
Conclusion
Church marketing needs to be specific for your church, relevant to your audience, and effective to be a worthwhile endeavor. Don’t just go into church marketing to modernize your church’s outreach efforts, but to seriously meet the needs of people, connect with them where they are, and provide meaningful experiences that make them come back for more.
If you’re a pastor and need help growing your church, we at ChurchCandy provide advertising for churches that can increase your church presence and conversions. Book an appointment with our team now and learn more about our process and determine whether it is right for you and your ministry.