Lessons from Madison Avenue: Common Miscues in Church Marketing
by Chad Hall

In the mid-1990s a tech company (to protect the guilty we won’t be specific about which company) produced a wonderful new small consumer product. Their product had twice the features of the closest competitor’s and because of their production capabilities this tech company could price it well under what the competitor charged. They did the math: low price plus great features would equal world domination! But they were wrong. The unintended message they sent was that something was wrong with the switch. Potential customers asked, “Since it promises so much and costs so little, what’s wrong with it?” The company spent the next two years trying to convince their customers that the product was excellent despite its low price.

That little story resembles a scenario that plays out in many congregations. Churches across America have an image problem, not a product problem. Through our marketing (intended and unintended), we send out messages to our communities that keep people away from the gospel. That’s the bad news.

The good news (at least when it comes to marketing) is that most of our blunders can be overcome with some simple awareness and behavior modification. Here are five common marketing miscues and how your church can avoid them.

1. You talkin’ to me?
Roadside church signs are a plague on the landscape of America. You know the ones I’m talking about – the ones with the changeable letters and the clever little sayings such as “You just think it’s hot here!” or “Don’t make me come down there. – God” or “This church is prayer-conditioned.” Maybe you like those signs. I do not.

Clever sayings on roadside church signs highlight the chief marketing miscue made by many churches: presenting a message in a way that mis-communicates with the intended audience. It’s like the auto lot billboard that proclaims, “We speak Spanish!” That’s nice, but you might want to go with, “¡Se hable Español!” The same is true for churches who want to communicate “We want you to join us,” but whose audience hears, “Stay away, because we say silly things that only we like or understand.”

If you are trying to communicate with the unchurched, then all of your outbound messages (those intended for the unchurched) should be sent through the seeker filter. If a seeker (someone who does not yet believe the Bible, or that there is a God, or that church is a positive thing) receives your message, will that seeker be more or less inclined to enter into a relationship with your community of faith? Too often, the very things we think will compel a seeker to visit our church do the opposite simply because we don’t take into account that they are outsiders hearing an insider’s message.

For instance, when you say, “Grace Church is a family” a seeker is likely to think, “I’m not about to crash a family reunion, I’d better stay away.” What makes sense to your members and other churched people is totally foreign to seekers. Yet, it is to seekers that most marketing is aimed.

2. Fuzzy RSVP
A while back my daughter received an invitation to a kid’s birthday party. It was one of those fill-in-the-blank numbers that you buy by the dozen and just add your own specs to. The problem was that the blanks were accidentally left blank before the card was put into the envelope. So the invitation arrived to my house lacking some pretty vital information. After reading the card, I knew there was some festive celebration going to happen. The Sponge Bob theme hinted that the party was likely for a child and the return address hinted at who might be throwing it. But I didn’t know the details of where, for whom, or when. I threw it away.

Many churches send out vague messages that are intended to bring people to church but which have no hook. Effective marketing gets people to take action. In contrast, poor marketing demonstrates a lack of clarity as to what are you inviting people to do.

It may be nice that your church is friendly, has great coffee, and worships the God of the universe, but that message does not compel anyone to action. A better message would include an invitation to a specific event on a specific day, at a specific time, that will a specific experience. The reader of a vague message can respond with, “That’s nice.” The reader of a specific invitation must respond with either “I will go” or “I will not go.” Great marketing pushes people to make a decision.

Many new churches use the power of invitation with great effectiveness. They understand that their launch service is an event to which they can invite the entire community. But the same is true for established churches as well. The key is to create events in the life of the church that have some appeal to the community and then to invite people to the event. Rather than ask, “Will you come to Fifth Avenue Presbyterian Church sometime?” you ask, “Will you come a Labor Day Party on September 1st at 5 PM in the parking lot of Fifth Avenue Presbyterian Church where you will get free hot dogs, your kids can play games, and everyone will have great time?” One invitation is fuzzy, the other is clear.

3. You’re so negative!
One of the fundamental laws of marketing is that negatives negate. The whole goal of marketing is to help the potential customer envision a more positive future that is the result of his interaction with your product. For a church, the goal is to help a seeker imagine a better life that is the result of his encounter with your community of faith. But here’s the glitch: you do not point people toward a more positive future by using negative messages.

Take direct mail cards as an example. Many of the mass-produced card designs are sort of quirky. They poke negative fun at “long-faced religion,” “boring sermons,” “greedy preachers” and such. Churches who use these cards intend to communicate that they are different from most peoples’ notions of church. But the unintended consequence of negative ads is that you give people negative feelings in general and actually take them further away from a more positive future that is the result of a relationship with your community of faith.

While negative ads are great attention grabbers, they are not nearly as effective at moving people toward the goal as are well-thought messages that clearly communicate the benefits your church offers listeners. Rather than use the double-negative (“we don’t do bad things”), use single positives (“we offer this good thing”).

4. You talk too much!
Today’s world is filled with noise, confusion, and competing messages. Your church wants to cut through the clutter and create within the listener a desire to act. But oftentimes a church’s message is actually its own cluttered mess of competing messages. The listener gets confused as to:

• who the church is (a community relief organization, a social gathering place, a celebrator of the arts, a place for kids, a sports league),
• what it is that the church wants them to do (come to AWANA, worship on Sundays, build a Habitat House, give money to the food pantry, join them on a trip to Branson, Missouri),
• what they’ll get from the church (a ticket to heaven, lots of friends, deeper understanding of life and my place in it, some good BBQ at reasonable price).

Professional marketers have dubbed this tendency “line extension.” In simple terms it is the mistaken notion that… if people buy Coke, then they’ll also want to buy Vanilla Coke, …if old people buy Coke, so will young people, …if Coke is good, new Coke will be better and more people will buy it. Wrong, wrong, wrong. Great marketers know that less is more. By offering one or two great options, you are more likely to convince the consumer to act. And the more times a person hears a similar message from or about your church, the more impact the message will begin to have.

When marketing (whether by TV, direct mail, billboard, or even word of mouth), make sure you are communicating a clear and distinct message. At Connection Church, we constantly communicate one message: you will enjoy our worship service. That is what we want you to hear, that is what we want you to act on, and that is what we provide when you show up. We don’t confuse her by telling her about our worship service and our spiritual growth groups and our deep appreciation for church history and our Bible-based messages and our super-witty pastor. She will find out all about those other things once she shows up to our enjoyable worship service a few times.

5. Do Nothing
The sad truth is that most churches don’t market themselves poorly – they don’t market themselves at all! Some feel they cannot afford it, not realizing how very affordable it is and that it is a missions endeavor. Many pastors and church leaders know little about marketing and chose not to venture into uncharted waters. Still others feel it won’t be worth their time.
In reality, all churches do market themselves. Any message communicated is marketing: your building, your yellow page ad, your sign, and your member’s loud gossip at the super market. The choice to make is whether you will be careless or careful with your marketing messages.
Human hearts are created for God and for community, and this is what the church offers. How sad then that many of us fail to get the good news across to the lost and dying in our communities.

Getting Started
Any church can move toward more effectively presenting their message. Here are some starting points:

1. Build a marketing team. Get four or five people and share the ideas in this article. After that, as group read an accessible book on marketing such as The 22 Immutable Laws of Marketing (no, it’s not a Maxwell book – it is written by Al Ries and Jack Trout). Get everyone on the same page and start talking through how the concepts apply to your church.

2. Do some research. As a team, discuss who your target is and what the traits and habits of people in that target are. At the same time, do a deep discovery of the strengths of your church. Then explore where your strengths meet your target’s needs.

3. Be honest. Remember, marketing is a trust-building experience, so be honest about your church’s ability to meet needs. You will do far more harm than good if you send out false messages. For example, if you don’t have great childcare, don’t say you do – even if that’s what people say they want. It is far better to be honest and less appealing than to make an appeal based on a lie that will break trust.

4. Develop a strategy. No marketing is slightly better than bad marketing. But only slightly. By developing a strategy you increase the odds that your marketing will be successful. To help you develop the strategy, answer these questions:

• Who is our target? (seekers, drop outs, once-a-monthers).
• What specifically is the step we want them to take? (come to worship on June 15th, visit us online, come to our Easter Egg Hunt).
• How will we communicate with them? (word of mouth, flyers, direct mail, TV)
• Who can help us think through these questions more effectively?

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