Church Marketing Sucks

If you weren’t at our weekly Twitter #cmschat last week you missed an awesome hour where we shared tips and ideas for promoting upcoming Easter services (see the transcript). We wanted to cover as many communication channels as possible, so we’ve got the full range of options.

Here are some of the tips and ideas. You will notice they are short and sweet as we were, after all, on Twitter.

In Services/At Church

• Frequently in the lead up, remind your congregation to invite friends and family.
• Give them the tools (e.g., invites) to take away so they don’t forget to invite friends.
• Do it early and often. Do it actively and passively.
• Use storytelling to promote the why, not just the what.
• Audiences connect with the purpose behind the service and motivates them to give out invites to friends.
• Visual marketing through posters (in foyer) as well as video trailers.
• Short dramatic/skit on stage to engage the idea.
• Mail out the postcards to the community as well as the personal invite.

Social Media

• Create organic Easter video on Facebook as the reach explodes.
• Create a photo booth as a social invite that people can share from the Facebook page and tag their friends.
• Start an Instagram comp to encourage others to repost a pic and tag 10 friends you would like to invite and win something.
• Make sure you have photos or videos. Higher engagement.
• Do an Easter photo countdown challenge where people have to take a photo and use a unique hashtag (here’s an example from Christmas).
• Create a landing page with graphics for people to share from a central point (here’s a generic social media kit from NewSpring). Also email the church the link.

Email

• Use email to boost your key Easter social media posts. Invite your congregation to share the post with those they want to invite.
• Keep the emails short and direct to the message.
• Create personal email e-vites (examples from Harvest & Eagle Brook).
• Create a squeeze page to build an email list.

Outdoor/Radio/PR

• Create a large banner for the church building. Let the building become the billboard!
• If you do a drama, offer media interviews with local cast. Local papers love those stories. It is a great way of authentically reaching your audience without being pushy.
• Movie theater advertisements

Want more inspiration and ideas? Visit our weekly Twitter chat, #cmschat, to learn from others and connect with other church communication pros from around the world. The chat is every Thursday at 9 p.m. ET.

Thanks to everyone who joined last week’s chat and shared their ideas!

Go questions, queries or Easter ideas? Drop a comment below.