Effective church marketing strategies that attract visitors

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A central part of your church’s mission is to reach and connect with more people. But oftentimes churches struggle to do this, leaving pastors to ask themselves, “How can people become part of our church if they don’t know about us?” While it may seem like a surprising concept at first, learning how to market your church can be incredibly effective for helping new people find and interact with your community! 

For some church leaders, the word “marketing” may bring to mind advertising executives trying to push people into buying a product or service. However, church marketing entails something entirely different. 

Marketing your church is believing that your message is worth telling, and then sharing it with the world through a variety of communication channels. Being intentional about church marketing begins the process of introducing yourself to new people, inviting them to be part of your community, and making more and better disciples. 

Let’s take a look at six simple church marketing strategies that you can start using today.

1. Get to know your audience

One of the wonderful aspects of a church community is the diversity of the people who are part of it. Identifying and understanding the people who make up your audience will help your church’s marketing reach and engage them as effectively as possible. Some of the groups that make up your audience include:

• Church members—Your congregation is a great place to start understanding your audience. Did they hear about your church through your website, social media channels, a church event, or from a friend? They are the most likely to answer a survey and share how they found your church, and what keeps them coming back. 
• Regular attendees—Similar to your church members, regular attendees can help you gain a good perspective of how people in your community see your church. Asking them about their experience with your church will give you insights into the audience you will be marketing to. 
• Visitors—One of the best ways to understand your audience is by connecting with your visitors. Church connection cards can help you discover more about them, including how they heard about your church and their needs. 
• Online audience—Providing digital connection cards for your online audience helps you discover who is visiting your church’s website and using your mobile app. Your social media pages can also allow you to see who is following you online and engaging with your content. 
• Local community—Who are the people in your neighborhood? What are their demographics, like ethnicity, age, and income? What needs do they have? You can use tools like the US Census Bureau’s website to gain these insights into the people living around your church. 

With this information, you’re ready to organize your audience into segments and create specific marketing aimed at each. For example, you will want to communicate differently with junior high students than with retirement-aged adults. Making sure the right people get the right message will help people want to hear more from your church.

2. Set & monitor your church’s marketing goals

Now that you have a deeper understanding of your audience, you can establish your church’s marketing goals. You can use these to measure the success of your marketing campaigns, such as:

• Gain social media followers
• Attract first-time visitors
• Increase media plays on your website and mobile app
• Grow youth group attendance

After you’ve identified your objectives, you can establish specific and measurable goals. For example, if your objective is marketing your church for growth, you can measure the number of new church website visitors, first-time in-person visitors, added church members, and so on. 

Make sure you monitor these numbers each month to judge the effectiveness of your marketing campaigns. Some campaigns will provide immediate results, while others take more time. Try running different campaigns for at least two or three months. Then analyze the results to see which messaging is best resonating with your audience and which campaigns are providing the best results for your church.

3. Create a brand guide

Every church has their own unique brand, even if they’re not actively trying to build one. Ask people in your neighborhood what they know about your church, what your church stands for, and what your church is known for—that’s your brand! By building a strong brand, people will be able to:

• Identify and remember your church
• Understand and embrace your mission
• Connect with your church’s culture
• Engage more often with your church

In order to ensure that your marketing truly reflects your church, it is important to establish a church brand guide. This document will establish acceptable practices for using visual elements (like church logos, colors, graphics, etc.), as well as messaging elements (mission statement, slogans, tone and voice, etc.) in any of your church communications. Learn more about how to create a church brand guide.

4. Create your church’s marketing calendar

Create a marketing calendar that maps out your church’s communications during the major events throughout the calendar year, including:

• Major Christian holidays such as Easter, Advent, and Christmas 
• Non-holiday related events like church anniversaries, mission trips, and pastor appreciation day
• Seasonal events such as summer camps, school holidays, and end-of-year fundraising campaigns

Planning ahead will help you better anticipate upcoming church events, inspire marketing ideas, coordinate marketing campaigns, and even make your marketing initiatives more productive. For best results, you should start marketing for these events several months in advance!

5. Select your marketing channels

Churches today can choose from a broad range of marketing channels. From old school printed materials to digital marketing through email, websites, and more, churches can easily share their stories around the world. These marketing channels can be divided into three categories—traditional advertising, digital advertising, and content marketing. 

Traditional church advertising

Traditional marketing practices push their message to the broadest audience possible through advertisements. Here are some examples:

• TV and radio ads
• Press releases
• Church signs & billboards
• Printed brochures & flyers
• Direct mail

As you can imagine, these marketing channels come at a cost and require someone with advertising knowledge. And because they target a wider audience, they can also become quite expensive. But when done correctly, traditional advertising includes some powerful tools for increasing brand recognition and raising awareness about your church. Even so, traditional advertising lacks many of the advantages of newer digital tactics. 

Digital church advertising

Rather than broadly promoting your church to the general public, digital marketing channels help you connect with people who are looking for a church. The most popular channels for digital advertising include search engines (e.g., Google) and social media (e.g., Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and Twitter).

Digital advertising through these channels allows you to focus your marketing efforts on a specific group of people. You can choose these groups based on where they live, who they follow on social media, the websites they visit, their ages, and many other demographics. Another benefit is that these channels are generally more affordable, when compared with traditional advertising—which is especially important for churches with smaller marketing budgets. 

Digital content marketing

If you’re wondering how to market your church for free, content marketing is the best option. Instead of creating ads, you can draw people to your church by creating content to help people engage and connect with your church. There are many channels you can use, including your church’s:

• Website
• Mobile app
• Media pages, like videos & podcasts
• Social media
• Email 

By adding your original content to these channels, people will begin to engage with your church and create a connection. Let’s take a deeper look at ideas for creating and sharing content to help market your church.

6. Create & share more content

Odds are that your church is already a content creator. Think about all of the events that happen at your church throughout the year: 

• Christmas, Easter, & other holiday celebrations
• Vacation Bible school
• Weekly services
• Mission trips
• Weddings
• And so much more every week! 

Learn to turn these events into moving stories and share them as online content with your church community. The types of content you can create are endless, including sermon videos, daily devotionals, Bible studies, blog articles, event calendars, Bible reading plans, sermon notes, social media posts, and much more!

The more meaningful content you create and share, the more people who identify with your vision will want to follow you. Be sure to share across multiple channels for maximum reach, including your website, mobile app, social media, and media pages. 

People are looking for engaging video and audio content, so be sure to share your sermon videos, podcasts, and other church media. Subsplash Media is an amazing media tool that publishes your content to your website, mobile app, and podcast with one click of a button. 

Use your social media to create compelling stories and messages to your audience. Encourage your followers to promote your church by word-of-mouth and sharing social media posts. Ask them to share their own personal stories and testimonies of being part of your church on their social media. With today’s social networks, you can quickly amplify interest and increase the number of your followers.

While you might not see results as rapidly as paid advertising, consistently making and sharing content can bring big marketing results over time. In fact, regularly adding content will also increase your ranking with search engines, helping your church be found more easily by a wider audience.

Next steps

When done correctly, marketing your church draws people by raising awareness and creating interest in becoming part of your church’s community. It also works much easier when you have the right tools in place for engaging your audience.

Over 14,000 churches and organizations use The Ultimate Engagement Platform™ to easily reach their audience, connect with them, and keep them engaged. The powerful, easy-to-use tools on this all-in-one solution include mobile apps for churches, websites, live streaming, online giving, church communication tools, and media hosting and delivery. The Subsplash Platform allows you to manage all of your content in one place and share it worldwide! 

Ready to see how Subsplash can help expand your reach with the best church engagement tools? [.blog-contact-cta]Let’s chat![.blog-contact-cta] 

Already a Subsplash client? Log in to your Subsplash Dashboard to schedule a call with your Client Success Manager, and learn how to easily and effectively communicate with your audience!

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