Marketing Strategies for Churches

Creating a marketing strategy for your church may seem overwhelming. It can be stressful figuring out the best ways to grow your congregation and retain members. However, it doesn’t have to be. With the right people, creative ideas, and a marketing strategy, you will be able to see growth in your church sooner than you think. It is important to know about different church marketing strategies, why marketing is important, and the best ways to start.

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Why Marketing is Important for Churches

Marketing as a word that churches will often shy away from, because they don’t want to be seen as “selling” Christianity. However, effective marketing of your church doesn’t have to be manipulative or peddling. If you’re seeking new ways to add members to your church, marketing strategies are a powerful tool that can help. Within the context of faith, marketing can help you communicate a clear message to the right people, connecting your church and who it serves. The best way is to think of church marketing is as a tool that helps get interested visitors in the door. Later on in their journeys, people will make choices through faith and salvation as they learn, worship, and connect with God. When you advertise your church, you’re offering people a place to explore a need they already have, it’s their choice whether or not to respond.

Marketing for Your Church

Over the past 20 years, the percentage of Americans who don’t identify with any religion has grown from 8% in 1998-2000, 13% in 2008-2010, and 21% over the past three years. This being said, the average number of religious Americans who belong to a church has fallen to 60%. Having an effective marketing strategy will allow you to reach those interested in your church or your ministry. One of the best ways to do this is through using social media. In 2021, there are millions of users on major social media platforms. This provides your church to find their audience and begin growing your congregation. Social media is an extremely poor part of marketing, however it is not the only way. Using social media in conjunction with a website or blog will allow your contact to reach a larger audience.

Elements of Effective Church Marketing

There are three elements of effective church marketing. The first is to build a dynamic church marketing team. It is unrealistic to expect one person to take on the task of marketing your church alone. The second is to create a marketing strategy. The success of your marketing effort relies heavily on creating a strategic plan in advance. Your plan should include a budget, a calendar, and tools. You want to make sure that you have a complete vision of how you want to reach your goals before you get started. The third is to make a lasting impression. After you’ve followed your marketing plan, it’s time to make a great first impression of the new visitors who will be coming to your events and services. The way you treat guests on their first official visit will have a significant impact on their future decisions to attend your church.

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Church Marketing Ideas

Now that you have a basic understanding of the elements of effective church marketing, here are some ideas of different marketing tools. Creating marketing strategies can be overwhelming at first, but use the ideas to inspire you. Whether you choose to use one of these ideas, or combine a few different ones, each of these will help in your efforts to market your church.

Website Design

Creating a website is like creating a homebase for your audience to find all of your information. No matter your social media accounts or blogs, your website will allow your audience to see the full picture of your church in ministry. It is extremely important to make sure that your website is user-friendly, aesthetically pleasing, and up-to-date. If you have a website with old information and old pictures, your audience will be unable to see the present full picture of your church. It is truly important to ensure that you are capturing the right audience for the ministry that you have in the present day. After you create a website, it is important to build off of that foundation. Any other marketing that you do, you want to make sure it aligns with the website that you have created.

Search engine optimization (SEO) is the process of increasing traffic to your website from search engines. This is done by making sure your website has the right keywords so that it ranks higher on Google search results. You don’t need a Google or marketing expert to do this for you, instead you can use Google free keyword planner to help you with your surgeon finding the right keywords. This will help you find keywords that are most relevant to your church for you including your marketing strategy. Once you have your keywords, you can then include them where they would be relevant throughout your site.

Newsletters

Once you’ve started to attract more members of the community or congregation, this isn’t where your marketing efforts should end. In order to make sure that your church members are engaged, keep visitors coming back, and keep the congregation interested in what you’re doing, it’s important to have a newsletter. This can include any and all information that you want, and is a great way of keeping hold of attention. Even though your newsletter should mostly be at church related news, you can also choose to include puzzles, crosswords, etc. This traditional marketing strategy can help retain all members who prefer newspapers and newsletters over online platforms. As well as a paper newsletter, you should also put a digital version either on your website or on your social media, so everyone knows what’s going on within your church.

marketing for churches

Mobile App

A church app is a great way to give churchgoers the chance to sign up for events, see what team members are up to, and get alerts to post and push notifications. You don’t have to hire a designer at a cost of thousands of dollars to your very own church app. You can create a church app through different websites. These also can be found through a simple Google search, and will allow your more tech-savvy church members to have a complete view of your church and content right from their phone.

Social Media

Social media is more important than ever, and Facebook is one of the biggest social media platforms currently. 79% of online Americans are on Facebook. Creating a business page for your church is a great way to keep your followers and members up to date, as well as begin to engage in social media. From there, you can look at the other platforms, and find which ones are most useful for you. It is extremely important to find a platform that not only will reach your target audience, also be most useful for you. You don’t want to include a social media platform that isn’t the best suited for your goals. When it comes to creating marketing strategy, you want to make sure that you are working effectively.

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Traditional Advertising

We are currently living in a digital world, there’s no need to give up on traditional advertising. There are still plenty of great church advertising ideas. Even though platforms like Facebook are a great way to attract new members, older members of the community aren’t as easy to target online. This is where traditional advertising comes into your marketing strategy. One awesome way to reach the other communities through ads and local newspapers. Community events like jumbo sales or afternoon tees help promote church growth. Make sure to post about events on your websites and other online platforms that attract church visitors of all ages.

Church SEO

How does your church rank on search engines? Churches can benefit from local SEO. When someone moves to a new area, they might find a new church by word of mouth, but some might go searching for churches online. For example, someone might search “Sunday services near me” and find your church on Google maps. This is where optimizing your website and improving your church SEO matters. You claim your Google My Business page. We can give you more church SEO tips to help you rank higher on Google.

Create a Church Marketing Plan With SEO Design Chicago

SEO Design Chicago offers church marketing services. From performing keyword research to optimizing your site and creating social media posts asking your congregants “what’s your favorite Bible verse?”, our team is ready to help you fill your pews every Sunday.

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