Last week we asked who does the marketing work in your church and in 63% of churches it’s the staff. Not a big shock there, but what’s interesting is that only 24% of churches have staff members specially trained to do communications work, and I suspect that number is high given the nature of our audience.
39% of churches have staff members doing the marketing that were hired to do something else. Thus we have associate pastors and youth pastors and church secretaries also trying to do the mammoth job of marketing. More power to ’em, but it’s a wonder they can stay on top of it all.
23% of churches have volunteers doing the marketing, which raises the old ‘volunteers should quit’ can of worms. 5% of churches have an outside company doing the majority of the marketing (as if there were any doubt, this confirms for me that the church marketing business is not a road to riches).
Finally, 10% of churches have nobody doing the marketing and communications. I find that hard to believe. What church doesn’t have a bulletin? Somebody had to put that thing together. More likely this is reflecting the churches that don’t appear to promote anything they do, and that’s not good either.
This week’s poll asks if you would attend a church communications conference.
Michael
October 31, 2005
Some interesting numbers. The first one that jumps out is that 10% of the churches think that they aren’t doing any marketing. I know where they are, one church I work with didn’t think they did any marketing, once they realized much of what they did was indeed marketing but not effective communications and have began the process to change that, they’ve seen better response to many of their outreaches.
While I agree with Kevin that church marketing companies aren’t going to get rich (nor should that be the motivation) I certainly see the need. God created the youth pastor to be a youth pastor…when he is designing a flyer for the next winter camp he’s not spending time in his true calling with kids. Is this really the best use of his time?
Church Web Adviser
January 11, 2006
Free help to more effectively reach your church’s Web site goals
The other day, I posted a portion of the results from a survey we ran which shows that most churches are at least trying to target a specific audience with their site. A recent poll taken by Church Marketing Sucks