As I was driving around today, I noticed a hand-made poster sign stuck in the ground beside the road that read something like, "Free Ride to Church. We'll Pick You Up."  And, the poster listed a telephone number to call for a ride.

This is a simple, yet incredibly effective marketing iniative.  By offering free rides with the increase in gas prices, you are eliminating another excuse for lack of attendance.  Also, some individuals/families might not even have transportation.  This is a great way for churches to minister and serve their local communities.

For small churches, your members and regular attendees are already coming to church; so, why not call and ask them to pick up someone on their way?  For larger churches, you can, perhaps, provide a van service.

How cheap and easy is it to make some home-made posters with the church's phone number and hang them up all over town (on telephone posts, shopping centers, grocery stores, public libraries, restaurants, bars (hey, bring 'em to church even if they're hung over), stick 'em in the ground)?

Poster board = $.50 - $.75 per sheet
A few markers = $2 - $3
Salvation, Discipleship, & Relationships = Priceless

Churches without marketing budgets have NO EXCUSE for not reaching their communities.

Today, I read an article on Slate, "How we read online," by Michael Agger.   The article reports a study performed by Jakob Nielsen who is a usability expert and discusses topics such as eye-tracking research, web design errors, and banner blindness.

Jakob's study makes some good points on presentation.  While I don't agree with all of his beliefs, overall, Jakob's suggestions are worth noting.

Additionally, I inform clients all of the time about the importance of eye-tracking.  In print media, the eyes are limited to the page's edges.  On the web, however, if the page is not designed properly, then a visitor's attention could be hard to keep and diverted quite easily.  Good web designers are typically able to draw the attention of visitors to certain aspects of pages and "encourage" specific navigational routes to increase the chances of conversion - or, simply, getting information about the user by them completing a form or something of that nature.

Quality does matter, especially if your site is one-in-a-million.  How does your site stand out? What kind of impact does your site make?

Please don't be offended; no attack is meant.  I just want to pose a question, "Are church bulletins really that necessary?"  I mean, let's think about it...

First, everyone has to coordinate information - the teaching pastor, the worship pastor, whoever compiles and edits announcements.  Don't forget there's the typing, the printing, the folding, and collating of inserts.  Is it just me, or does it seem a waste of natural, financial and human resources?  Couldn't (and shouldn't) the Church be more productive with its resources?  Again, please don't hear me as being negative; accept this as constructive criticism.  Remember, my purpose for this blog is to get you to think of strategies for expanding your reach and increasing your impact.  So, if there was a better way than printing bulletins, would you do it? More...

Search engines determine relevance based on a point system.  Depending on specific factors, your web site can acquire a higher score.  The point system is also known as "weight."  While it is not the only factor, the greatest points are awarded for a specific domain name that matches the search term.  For example, let's say I searched for "fried chicken in cumming." If there existed (there may be, I'm not sure) a web site located at "www.friedchickencumming.com" or "www.cummingfriedchicken.com," then the web site would be awarded a large amount of points and would be considered to have a lot of "weight." More...

SCENARIO:  The day has come for your youth group's final and biggest fundraiser before their mission trip - a community-wide car wash.  For the past month, the youth have canvassed the community with flyers; you posted ads in the papers and on the radio.  A lot of time and money have gone into preparation and getting the word out to your community.

 The morning of, you wake up only to find overcast skies.  You quickly turn on the Weather Channel to find that there is a great chance of rain.  You think to yourself, perhaps this will be no big deal.  You provide the soap and God will provide the water.  There has to be a few people who wouldn't mind getting their cars washed no matter what the drying conditions are.  Besides, this could be a little fun for the youth as well.  As you're getting dressed, you hear a siren on your TV followed by tornado warnings for your county and you begin to hear thundering.  Now, it seems the car wash has been 'washed out.'

You proceed calling the youth to tell them to meet at the church; the group has to come up with a backup fundraising plan and QUICK.  With the car wash, you had the luxury of time for advertising.  However, the mission trip is only a few weeks away and time is now of the essence. 

QUESTION:  No matter what event you choose, HOW DO YOU GET THE WORD OUT QUICKLY?
More...

I heard an ad on the radio today that Six Flags is offering student prices on tickets bought online. Smart move. 

How many people visit their web site?  An estimated 1.8 million compared to 500,000 only 5 months ago.  Only an estimated 32% are regular visitors and, furthermore, only an estimated 21% of their traffic visits their ticketing system.¹

How much did their web site cost?  I'm sure a lot cheaper than staff salaries and associated expenses that are incurred with workers in the ticket offices.  Their expenses are also reduced by encouraging families to print tickets from their home computers and consume their own ink and pay for their own paper.

Smart marketing is greater reach with less expense.  What ways can your church reduce overhead and increase reach? Think about it.

1. http://www.quantcast.com/sixflags.com

One of the preliminary questions that I ask when developing a marketing campaign for an organization is, "Who is your targeted audience?"  If this question is asked to a secular corporation, 9 times out of 10, they, immediately, are able to identify their targeted market.  Unfortunately, however, this is not true with churches.  With the general exception of recent church plants, most seasoned churches are lost when trying to identify the audience they are trying to reach.  Newer church plants are started to reach a specific people group - the target audience is the reason for the plant itself.  In other words, if the audience didn't exist to begin with, the church plant would have never been established.  Older churches have the aging mindset, "To simply exist will attract visitors."  And, I do mean "aging" - not derogatory, but classification under an old marketing model. These seasoned churches are now diminishing in congregation size and community impact to newer, more rapid growing churches.  This is especially true concerning the protestant churches that were planted, beginning with the years of the Industrial Revolution up to the mid-1900s, in the North-Central and New England states.  As factory development continued to rise, missionary agencies such as the Southern Baptist Convention, sent missionaries to these northern states with hopes of converting Irish Catholics. Today the northern protestant churches are loosing its membership due to various factors such as increases in migration to southern states, the Catholic church fighting to regain appeal, loss of community amongst believers (largely due to the Internet-accessible church), older members are dying, or, simply, individuals losing an overall interest in religion. More...