Effective Church Communications

Effective Church Communications provides Timeless Strategy and Biblical Inspiration to help churches create communications that fully fulfill the Great Commission

Effective Church Communications provides Timeless Strategy and a Biblical Perspective to help churches create communications that fully fulfill the Great Commission. Our tools constantly change; our task doesn’t; Effective Church Communications can help.

What Tesla can teach us about successful church marketing

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What Tesla has to teach the church about advertising
Yes, a Tesla is a great-looking car, but did you know they outsell EVERY other luxury car brand WITHOUT any advertising? The church can learn something from how they do it.

Did you know that Tesla sells more luxury cars than any other company?
I think the challenge of that question is so important, I did both a blog and article on it. Below is the podcast and then the continuation of the blog:

I was surprised when I read that statistic, but even more interested when I read how they did it. Let me share the terlerati.com comment on it, a chart that illustrates their success, and then I'll talk about how this inspired me about discipleship and church marketing. Then I've got some spiritual challenges for you and then at the end of this some practical tools you can use to put into practice to make your seasonal marketing more successful than ever.

Quickly, name one advertisement you’ve seen recently from Tesla Motors themselves? OK, name any advertisement you’ve seen from the company, ever? Tesla’s marketing strategy is as disruptive as its business model. It lets you and I advertise for them, for free. . . . . Tesla does not spend millions of dollars in a traditional ad campaign. They let you and me discuss it, rave about it, hate on it, or rejoice in the spirit of going electric in a Tesla, be the catalyst to a viral and brilliant marketing campaign. At the end of the day, Tesla advertising is free.

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Let’s get real—don’t default to Magical Thinking when planning your seasonal outreach

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We know that nothing happens by magic in the church, but we can unthinkingly fall into magical thinking when we plan for seasonal events, but magical thinking alone won't accomplish the results we pray for.

You might protest you would NEVER count on magic to do anything in the church and mean it. But unfortunately, the communication actions in many churches tell a different story because. . . . .

Magical thinking takes place when you assume that simply by doing certain things, you will get the results you want without actually doing the hard work you need to do to get them.

This often happens in the planning and work that goes into the season or holiday celebrations at your church. Below are FIVE ways Magical Thinking can defeat the fantastic opportunities the holidays give us to invite and get people involved in the church and ultimately to meet Jesus. Holidays work so well as outreach to unchurched people because though few people today respond to the invitation "Want to come to church with me?" few people will turn down an invitation to a FREE party that has food and fun stuff for kids.

Holidays offer churches a great opportunity, but to make the most of them, you need to be aware of and correct the following FIVE destructive ways of Magical Thinking.

Magical Thinking # 1: By hosting your holiday or seasonal event people will think your church is great, wonderful, and cares about the community

Whether it is an Easter-Egg Extravaganza, a Trunk or Treat, Thanksgiving Community Meal, or Christmas Caroling and Chocolate—the first thought of people in your community when they see an advertisement of the event is probably not about your church.

The people in your community care most about themselves and their families. Their thinking when they see or come to your event is something like "Wow, this looks like a fun thing for the kids." "Hey, it's free and looks like fun and our family needs a night out."

They are probably not thinking: "Oh isn't First Church a loving church that cares about community outreach and to show the love of Jesus is the sponsor for this event." Even more than your intended audience not knowing WHY you are doing this, unless you consistently and graciously remind them that your church is putting on the event, chances are they won't even remember that your church was the sponsoring group for the event.  [Read more...]

For seasonal and special event success: plan beyond a great invitation

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An invitation to an event at your church is simply the start of a relationship with someone who doesn't know Jesus. Plan from before you send it out to do more to make sure visitors connect.

When a church holds a seasonal or special event, initially we want to get lots of people to attend. But for a church that isn’t enough because we must always keep in mind that we are not just there to celebrate the various holidays, but to reach out to the community with the goals of helping unchurched people make a connection with the church, begin to come on a regular basis, come to know Jesus as Savior, and grow to Christian maturity.

We don't want to be satisfied with merely creating a great invitation and even with a great turn out at the event because as anyone who is involved in special events knows, attendance on the following Sundays, even if the seasonal celebration itself has a huge attendance, is almost always less than hoped for.

The problem is never because of the event itself—churches have figured out how to put on great events. Solving this problem is more complex than many churches realize but before we talk about solutions. . . .

First, a story that illustrates the importance of more than an invitation to events

This is a true story. Though the specific event discussed is Easter, the lessons learned from it apply to Fall, Christmas, and every other outreach event in the church. Here is what happened: [Read more...]

TEMPLATES—what makes the ECC church communication templates unique and how to modify them

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One of the SQUARE Christmas Business Card size templates available in our Christmas Template set, not only does the video show this one and many others, but how to get it professionally printed.

I may have tried to accomplish too much in one video, but it's hard to express how excited I am about the TEMPLATES we have for Christmas this year. I'm not only excited about all the new designs and templates, but I'm also excited about how they fit together in an overall ministry plan.

That is one of the things that makes the templates from Effective Church Communications unique—they are part of our overall goal of fully fulfilling the Great Commission, of intentionally helping people from outside the church and progressively enabling them become mature disciples. Your communications are a key part of this process and that's why we have templates not only for invitation cards and postcards, but motivational handouts and prayer lists for church members, Christmas letters to print for your congregation, seasonal connection and prayer cards, plus follow-up materials. (you can see a preview of all in the video below)

If you are going to make the most of your seasonal outreach you need to do communications BEFORE, DURING and AFTER your event. We will be highlighting and giving you specific strategies to do this with the various communication pieces, but this video gives you an overview of how it all works.

In addition to an overview and ministry explanation you have two options for how to use the Templates

The Templates from Effective Church Communications are all in PDF format, so you can simply download and print if you need something in a hurry.

In addition, the Templates are in MS Publisher format and are very simple to modify. I chose MS Publisher instead of Photoshop or InDesign or other fancy expensive program because that's what many churches use and it is the easiest and least expensive to use. In addition, you can do great designs with it. It is never the program, but the person who makes a successful, effective communication and if you use this set and the process recommended it will make your Christmas outreach VERY effective.

One more fun thing in the video is I show you how easy it is to get the templates printed with www.overnightprints.com. You can of course print them in the church office, but if you want a full-bleed glossy invitation card or postcard, after checking out a number of the online services, I really like how simple it is to get things done with Overnight Prints and I demonstrate this for you on the video. (I'll be doing others on this process.....like I said, a little too much here, but I was having so much fun with it and it turned out so well, I had to share it!)

One more thing that makes the Templates from Effective Church Communications unique

In addition to the typical templates use of graphics in the Templates, ECC also has TEXT TEMPLATES. There are a number of things I've written, longer pieces that you can use in either the templates as they've been given to you or you can pull them out and use them in your social media, websites, newsletters, whatever you want. Because I wrote them and retain all rights to them, I grant them to you to use however you'd like.

For Christmas, our piece Hark the Herald Angels Sing, but why? is a good example of this. It can be used as a Christmas letter, handout for Christmas events, and in many other ways. CLICK HERE to learn more about it.

Enough talking about the video, here is it:

 

To access all the Templates in the video and many more, you must sign up for Membership in Effective Church Communications. Right now we have a special price of only $59 a year! CLICK HERE to find out more and sign up.