Evangelism & Outreach | Effective Church Communications

Marketing is not inherently evil–and why content makes all the difference

19 June, 2018 By Yvon Prehn Leave a Comment

You don't have to do crazy things to involve people in ministry and church activities.

Marketing is not inherently evil any more than talking is inherently evil. The content makes all the difference.

We can talk in a way that exaggerates, misleads, and is obnoxious or we can talk in a way that is gentle, kind, and informative.

This morning I received two emails that illustrated this difference and I want to share them here and then comment on their implications from them ministry marketing in our churches.

Editorial clarification: I published this initially a couple of years ago and just found it again and thought it might be useful as so much marketing on the web continues to be of the overly pushy, loud, in-your-face type. This isn't necessary and we shouldn't copy it. I don't know if the obnoxious site still exists, but Lightstock still does wonderful work, check them out.

Here is a short video of both video links and after the video, my commentary on them. Please remember Effective Church Communications does not take advertising or take part in affiliate programs. If I like or dislike something it is my opinion related to ministry usefulness, not to any monetary agenda. Check out the video below and then read the commentary:

A tacky and obnoxious marketing example

The link below is an example of the now overly popular squeeze or landing page. If you are not familiar with these communication tools, here is a good definition:

Landing page is pretty much synonymous with sales letter. It's a hard sell page that pitches a product with several calls to action.

from: http://www.sitepoint.com/forums/showthread.phpf?857520-Squeeze-page-vs-landing-page

The link here is attempting to sell some software that will automatically link content on your websites to various social media sites. There are many problems with this approach including that though automatic linking to social sites can be useful. I use a tool that links the headlines of the articles on this website I write to my Twitter account (http://www.twitter.com/yvonprehn) but that tool is free and bundled in WordPress, the system I use to build my website. Given the skimming nature of Twitter (and I don't check it often and seldom interact through it), I feel like this is an honest representation of the level of involvement I want with it and feel is useful for the ministry at present.

In addition, the basic premise of the pitch for this product is faulty—automatic links, if solely used, come across as phony, automatic links and they often don't make sense.

People aren't stupid and Google isn't stupid. Automatic spamming of anything no matter how efficient, isn't a useful communication tool.

A tasteful and helpful advertisement

This example is from http://www.lightstock.com. I don't have the link to the specific ad because that came to me via email (that's why I did the video above) but here is what I like about this advertisement:

No hype, it simply presents what the company has to offer
It is beautiful and restful to look at
It makes the product offerings clear and links to the products if you want more
It both has material that is free and material for sale
It respects the viewer—if their product is something the viewer wants, he or she will click-through and buy. If not, they have given the viewer a few minutes of visual inspiration.

If you didn't look at the video, please do visit their site http://www.lightstock.com and take advantage of their free weekly images and video clips.

Ministry communication implications

When you want people to attend an event at your church or take part in any ministry opportunity, don’t feel like you have to pressure them or hard sell them.

Be clear, be concise, be kind, be complete in your message. Do the best you can to tell about the ministry truly and from a Biblical perspective. Having done that, get your message out in as many channels as you can, as many times as you can and trust the Lord to speak to the people He wants to draw to your church.

Church Invitation Cards, business cards with an eternity-altering purpose

13 May, 2018 By Yvon Prehn Leave a Comment

Free church invitation. — Make up cards like this for your church members to invite others to church. Links to a FREE copy of this one and others is at the end of the article.

How do you get unchurched people into your church?

Despite all the high-tech and expensive advertising methods available today, one method remains the most effective way to get new people to come to your and that is a personal invitation. Your members inviting their friends to church beats any advertising campaign at any cost.

While it is sometimes sadly true that once someone becomes converted, they soon have few friends who are not believers, no one totally withdraws from the world. Most people still work at secular jobs. Everyone has many contacts a week with people in the business community: the waitress or waiter at the coffee shop, the Starbucks employees, the clerks at various stores, the person standing next to them in lines at the grocery store, airports, or the driver’s license bureau, the person sitting next to them on the bus or subway.Continue Reading

Is your church marketing failing because of the lack discipleship in your church?

12 April, 2018 By Yvon Prehn Leave a Comment

Our personal discipleship and effective church outreach — Could our main challenge to effective church outreach be the person in the mirror?

The goal and North Star of Effective Church Communications is to "Fully fulfill the Great Commission" which means helping people to not only come to know Jesus as Savior but to grow to mature disciples. And though that is our goal, the following, incredibly challenging article, thoughtfully links the lack of success in our church communications to the lack of discipleship in our lives.

Following is a key quote from it and click the link below to read the entire article:

To put it simply, we don’t have a marketing problem, we have a sales force problem. Study after study reveals American Christians simply don’t believe in our product anymore. Can we turn it around? We believe we can, but not until we get serious about living the kind of life that astonishes the surrounding world. Remember in the gospels how people were “astonished” at the message of Jesus? But 2,000 years later, how many people are astonished at our message or our lives today?

8 Ways for Christians to Regain Credibility

The most important content for your website or church bulletin–salvation in Jesus

12 April, 2018 By Yvon Prehn Leave a Comment

Don't make it hard to find the good news about Jesus on your website. — We never know when or where people will want to find out about Jesus--we shouldn't make it hard to find or understand if they search our website or church bulletin for it.

What is the most important message of your church? Obviously the answer to that is that the message of Gospel—of forgiveness of sins and eternal life in Jesus.

But do people know that after visiting your church or your church website? Stop a minute and think about it. When people spend an hour with you in person or online did you share with them:

great music?
inspired preaching?
information about activities for the family?
special events invitations?
small group, recovery or other ministry opportunities?

You probably did and these are all good things, but did you share the most important thing? Do they know that your church can help them find salvation in Jesus? Did you mention that at all in your sermon? Is it even hinted at in your bulletin or website? Or in anything your church communicates in print or online?

I'm not writing this to make you feel guilty--but a few years ago when I was collecting samples for an e-book, Gospel Presentations in Church Bulletins, which you can download a FREE copy of below, I was surprised at how many (by far the majority) of both church bulletins and websites do not tell people how to get saved. Somehow the most important thing we are about gets lost in all the things that fill the life of a church. Please don't think I'm saying that any of these activities in church or during the week are bad, but as the subtitle of the e-book says:

What does it profit a person to have clear directions to the potluck, but lose their own soul?

Recently I've been looking at church websites and sadly the same thing—a lack of a clear gospel presentation is characteristic of many. In response I found the book and a short video I did on it. Though a little outdated (and some of the print quality isn't the best in the book), I think the information is very valuable.