MarketingWeek.com, a marketing group from England just published an article on their Five Trends that they believe will reshape media in the coming year. Amid rather obvious ones like e-commerce will grow, so will video, and Instagram is becoming more useful than Facebook for marketing, were two interesting quotes with implications for church communications and marketing in the coming year. Below are the quotes, my comments, and implication and ideas for church communications that were inspired by them:
First QUOTE:
Consumers will call brands out if they think they are driving them to a social platform just to transact.
Darren Campbell, Dr Martens
IMPLICATIONS & IDEAS:
When a church uses social media in their outreach, how does it come across to people outside the church (assuming they see it)?
This quote got me wondering how much of what churches put out there comes across as simply selling something— “Come to this event!, Bring your Kids HERE!!, Don’t miss out on this!!!
We may protest that we aren’t asking them to spend money (not yet, they must become more involved to be approached with that), but we are asking them to spend time and attention in exchange for our message. We want them to buy into what we are selling.
The bottom line is that is what we want, for them to buy into what we are selling—we want them to come to know Jesus as Savior, have their sins forgiven and live a life serving him. But what if our audience has no idea this is of benefit to them? Or why they should even come to a place that has a pre-packaged life-plan for them to accept?
