Speaker 0 00:00:00 Without a doubt. One of the hardest things I've ever done in my life was planting a church because church planting is hard. And one of the biggest challenges that most church planters have is building a crowd one today's episode. We're going to talk about the ways that we recommend church plants build that crowd by presenting the ultimate church plant marketing plan. We hope this conversation helps your church reach more people and grow. This is the reach right podcast. You're listening to the read-write podcast. The show dedicated to helping pastors and church leaders reach people the right way, hosted by me, Thomas Costello. And with me as always is my cohost Ian Hyatt. We're here to help your church see more visitors and grow
Speaker 0 00:01:04 Hey guys, welcome to the reach, right. Podcast episode number 87. I am your host Thomas Costello. And with me as always is my cohost
Speaker 3 00:01:13 Ian Hyatt. Hey, yeah. As always someone the other day said that I saw you were a guest on that podcast. And I said, well, yeah, I'm a guest
Speaker 0 00:01:21 Every week, every single week. We, uh, we get to spend time together on this. And I've got a good conversation here today. We're going to be talking about building the ultimate church plant marketing plan. A this is a conversation we get to have every once in a while. Uh, we work with a lot of church plants and, uh, we get to kind of coach some of them through this, uh, our services. We offer some of these things at reach, right? Most of them we don't at the same time. So, uh, just today, we're going to be talking about some of the ways that we consult or coach churches on how to do outreach, how to do marketing, uh, to do a successful church plant. Now I was talking with my, uh, with my church, not a church plant. I was talking with my church this, this week though, we were talking about how, the way that we marketed, uh, churches and church plants, uh, 20 years ago is 100% different from the way that we do it today.
Speaker 0 00:02:16 Uh, so it is like, there is nothing that my church did when it started that we would still recommend doing now. Um, because that was back in the days of doing yellow page ads and, uh, doing, um, door to door, doing doors, I guess you could still do door to door stuff, perhaps. Uh, but, uh, mailers, those kinds of things were big. Uh, you and I, we know that our Tanner's indoor Haggerty absolutely as kind of that door to door stuff, but the, um, you, you and I, we worked for years for a company that got its start doing television commercials for churches, uh, which, um, we don't recommend necessarily that you do, uh, television commercials for churches. Uh, but if you really do want to do television for commercial for your church, we still have the rights to some of those television commercials. I don't really recommend them, but I guess for some churches, they still do like to do those kinds of things. So yeah. Hit us up if you want to buy some rights or be able to broadcast some television commercials against our recommendation, we'll put that up here. Right. So anyway, uh, but it is totally changed. Uh, and it has even changed from when you and I planted a church. You and I planted a church in 2007, we started one and some of these things are really different, uh, even from what we did then. Right? Yeah.
Speaker 3 00:03:34 Some are different and some still hold true. We're not that old yet. That's good.
Speaker 0 00:03:39 Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. So, uh, so I think, I hope this is helpful. I think this could be helpful to any church, whether you're a church planter or not. I think really these things are great for existing churches as well. Uh, almost everything on here are things that you can and probably should be doing if you're an existing church. But I think especially for plants, uh, what we try to do is even an order of what we would do. Thing one all the way until the end. This is the order of how we would do marketing. If we were starting a church from scratch right now, the first thing we would do. So I'll go ahead and kick us off. The first thing you should do is you should get yourself a logo, uh, before you do anything else, uh, your church, this is going to be something you're going to use on everything else you do in marketing.
Speaker 0 00:04:22 Uh, so the first thing I would do, if I was starting a church is getting a logo. Um, it's gonna, you're gonna put it on all of the other items that we talk about here. Uh, you're going to use it everywhere and it is going to be that identifier that everybody is going to need to see. Uh, so, um, logos there's, they come in all different shapes, our prices and price points and, uh, detail work. You could go on to fiber and have someone give them, you know, five to $50 to make a logo for you. Right? You could go on to 99 designs and you could do a design contest to get a logo. We do logo design and branding work at reach, right? Uh, there's other companies out there that offer logo design, where people pay tens of thousands of dollars for logo design.
Speaker 0 00:05:08 So there's everything there. There's all kinds of price points for this. I think you just have to take a look at your budget as a church plant, figure out where it kind of lines up for a lot of church plants. It's going to be that 99 designs or that Fiverr approach. Um, I've seen some people get really good results with those sites and, you know, you don't have the full scale branding package with that, but, you know, you could probably get by on some of that, I will say this though. It is something that you don't want to be changing this every, every two years or something, your, your logo, you get it going and you want it to be the same logo for, you know, the next 15 years, ideally that it would have a long lifespan because changing a logo is rebuilding your brand in a lot of ways. So I think that's think about it.
Speaker 3 00:05:55 Think about if Nike removed the swoosh or apple, you know, made it an orange or something instead. So, you know, and, and, and you hit, you hit it on the head. I mean, it, you know, even though trends change and those things, I mean, think about that, that swoosh has been timeless, you know, for Nike, uh, and same thing. It's just, you don't want people. I think we saw this a little while back some data that said that logos are 10 times more likely to be remembered than any other graphic marketing stuff that you do. And, and if you think about that, you know, if you get a new logo, I mean, it's almost kind of like starting your church over in a way, uh, not totally, but it starting all the way over as far as being remembered in that identity, big recognizable, they that's it. So, yeah, they're very important. You don't want to, I tell churches this all the time that we understand when a church is starting out, they're on a budget, you know, some churches have bigger budgets than others starting out. Um, and they're at a different financial place, but I would say you still don't, you don't want to play this too cheap for sure. Totally.
Speaker 0 00:07:00 Yeah. Yeah. And so I, I think that that's, you know, you could really make your own decision based on your church's price point. We try to, with our product, we try to price it kind of right in the middle of that happy medium between the 99 designs, you know, cheap price and then the $10,000, you know, full service. But you, you probably want to do some concepts and revisions and, you know, have some things to bounce off. You probably want a lot of the branding pieces that go with it, uh, because that's all stuff we're going to talk about here in just a second. But yeah, don't skimp on this, I think is the main thing. And don't try to get ahead of yourself. Don't, don't rush to other elements or, you know, don't hit other parts that we're gonna talk about in this plan until you have this logo done, you probably don't have any business doing a lot of the other stuff we're going to be talking about here today. So yeah, once you get that,
Speaker 3 00:07:45 Absolutely next one's built a website. Um, yeah, I mean, that's, this is the closest thing. Your church will have to a location until you launch as a new church. Uh, and also it is where, um, for years now, pre pandemic and, and even further back where 85% of people will end up before they physically attend a church. What most people are doing now is they're Googling everything from their phones. Uh, and Google is actually looking to drive traffic to the website first and foremost. Um, and, and even if someone finds you hears about you through word of mouth or whatever, they're going to still end up going to the website, you know, almost 90% of the time. So I've had so many churches that tell, you know, they, they, we of course do church web design here at reach, right. Have done it, uh, really well for a long time and have a lot of churches that come our way in there. Hey, Ian, we're launching, uh, in, in a few weeks we need a website. I'm like, man, we should have, we should have talked to you about, you know, almost a year ago. Yeah. About a year ago, because this is something that you want well up in advance before you launch for people to learn more about you find out what your vision is all about and your launch date and everything.
Speaker 0 00:08:58 Yeah. I think you said it right. That is the closest thing you have to a Sunday morning experience a campus, a place to gather until you have that actual, uh, that regular meeting place that you're going to there. So, uh, it is the place like you're saying with where vision statements and calls to action, and it's where you get people to kind of become a part of the community and things on there. So yeah, it really, this again is it's second for a reason, you, you need it to be after your logo because your logo and colors and all that stuff need to be branded onto your website. So that's important, but it is important that before you do all of these other things, we're going to talk about that you have something to drive people to every other bit of marketing needs to push people to somewhere.
Speaker 0 00:09:42 And when you're starting a church, you don't have a Sunday morning service to say, go to this or show up at nine or whatever it would be. You have a website to push them to. So, um, this is something you need to be doing before you touch any other, other parts that are on here. So yeah, I think that's right. Yep. Next step. Once you did the next one. Yeah. Yeah. You need to set up your socials. Uh, that's the part, number two is getting your social media channels dialed in. Um, we are very flexible on which social channels churches use. Um, I think we have kind of a internal ranking of, of ones that we find to be most useful or at least most widely used, but a couple of pieces of advice on this is that when you set up your socials and again, you want to set them up with your brand.
Speaker 0 00:10:26 So your logo and those things, your colors are all set up properly on there. And then everything you're putting onto your social channels is pushing people back to your website and connecting them on there and building further connection and the content that's on there. But when it comes to which social channels people use, uh, I think it really is a personal preference or whatever your church's best at whatever you as a leader is best at. So, um, I think that for most churches, if you're just kind of getting into this and you're kind of even on all social channels and I've had to just choose a couple, I would say Facebook, Instagram, YouTube. Those would be the ones that I think are the most important. And YouTube is important to realize that is a sh a social channel that is still something that has lots of interaction because video, it's a video based social channel where people comment, give feedback, subscribe to one another. It really has all the makings of a social media platform there. So, yeah, but those are the three that I think would be the most useful. Um, you know, there's so many others and I'm sure churches wanting to do we get on Tik TOK? Do we get on Snapchat? Do we get on Twitter? Do we use the, is LinkedIn important for us? Should we have a Pinterest account? All those different? I was
Speaker 3 00:11:39 Thinking Pinterest. I was like, you're going to still say Pinterest. That's still
Speaker 0 00:11:42 Around. My wife still uses Pinterest all the time. She's on Pinterest a lot. Yeah. So recipes, I think I signed up for an account at one point I went on at once and I was there literally wasn't anything that interested me on there. Uh, so I moved on from that, that was the end of my time there. So, um, but all of those all could be useful. You know, if you are a pastor, uh, who makes a dance, uh, 32nd dance videos to Hillsong songs or something like that, or you do oceans moves and, and it just kind of, uh, uh, millions of people like it, you have every right and should get your Tik TOK account set up right away and start using that. My guess is most of our audience isn't in that category. Yeah. So I really think just because there is a social platform that a lot of people use, it doesn't necessarily mean that your church needs to have a presence on there. And everything seems to show that you are better off having a great presence on a channel or two. And instead of having a crummy presence on 11 different social channels, I think that's the big advice we'd have for our church.
Speaker 3 00:12:53 Just that is a really good point for sure. Find out what's best for you, your, your people that we'll be launching with you more importantly, I think, with what you can manage and based on who you're targeting. Right. So, um, but, um, yeah, so that's good. Well, good. Yeah. Okay. I'll get the next one. This is a big one that I think a lot of people don't think about is start creating content. There's been a saying in marketing and the web world for awhile, that content is king. Um, and, uh, it still is. Content is a very broad and vast thing too. So this could be a video promo, uh, for your launch. Of course, I think a video first, I mean the more video you can do the better. And I think that's fresh on church's minds now because the pandemic forced churches into doing live streaming and thinking about video more, even though this was already vital and video was still something that every church should do before, even the pandemic of course, years prior to the pandemic.
Speaker 3 00:13:52 So, but video people are visual. They want to see they're, they're watching video all day long on social media online anyway. So let's, you know, create this content. And it's more than that too. It could be graphics could be blog posts, all of those things, and they can go to find out what you're best suited to do right out of the gate. Um, but yeah, start getting that content out there. That's what people are going to see. And that's what they're going to, that they're going to remember you by and grab, hold of, to take a next step. So yeah.
Speaker 0 00:14:20 Yeah. I th I think this is something that is missed by so many churches, is that we, we think that if we build it, they will come. If we put together a Facebook page and an Instagram page, and we have a website with a logo on it, then people will start getting on it. And the truth is, is that once someone's gone onto your website, one time they could learn everything and have no real need to go back there unless you're creating new content that they need to be seeing on there. So I think you hit it right. I think blog posts are vastly. Um, I think especially for a church plant, usually a church plant you're really tied to a specific area or community that God has given you a heart for. And so creating content around the, what makes that area special, what other organizations are doing a great job in your area, why you're called to do what you're called to do in that specific region.
Speaker 0 00:15:13 I think that kind of content is really valuable. I do agree with you that video content, uh, is, uh, is really probably one of the most valuable, it's really easy to be repurposed, but if you really, I think sometimes we miss the value of content creation, uh, on, in a digital platform. So again, these are talking about blog posts, graphics, um, you know, posts on your social media, video content, those kinds of things, anything is all, that's all content, but it is so important because really we, we have a bigger reach with these tools than we do in normal Sunday morning experiences. For most of us, I've said this before, is that I wrote a blog post when I was pastoring a church in Madison, Wisconsin. It was called four reasons why you should never share that post that says, share this if you love Jesus.
Speaker 0 00:16:04 Oh yeah. Okay. So I have had, it's not even my website anymore, so I don't own kind of the way that we do it is that still lives on that church's website. I'm not the pastor of that church anymore, but yeah, there've been over a million hits on that one post in its life span. It's been like, I dunno, like, uh, nine years now, since I've written it there's been over a million, 1 million hits. So it's crazy me too, to know that, like my life's message, like the most important thing I've done in my life is write that one blog post.
Speaker 3 00:16:37 I don't see as many of those come my way now. Thankfully they share this. If you loved it, you've you've, I think God's used you to minimize that a little bit. Donna.
Speaker 0 00:16:46 I just used that post and it's impacted millions of people. I always felt that my ministry would be fine, but how many people I led to Jesus or like how many people that I, uh, I walked with at our church and, you know, the hundreds of people that I would preach to on a Sunday morning, not by the million people that I reached through that post, that was kind of a little bit silly, poking fun. It was a serious topic at the same time, but all that to say, you can have an enormous reach online and not every post is going to do that. I wrote one post. And the average post that we do here has a couple of thousand hits on it. And it's over the first year of its life, but still that's a huge reach. I mean, that's more than the vast majority of churches are preaching to pastors are preaching to on a normal Sunday.
Speaker 0 00:17:34 So it's a huge opportunity. That's just blog posts. There's you, you see YouTube videos that have tens of thousands of views. And I think most pastors have the ability if they apply themselves to make that kind of content. Now that doesn't happen over. I will say that too, is that your first YouTube video, isn't going to reach 45,000 people on YouTube. You're going to reach like three and it's going to be your mom and your wife three times or something like that. It's going to be, you know, a small audience, but you know, it's these small steps that continue to grow and have more and more reach and have a bigger impact. So start creating content. The other nice thing about it too, is it keeps on going. It keeps on, uh, it's like, it's not just a one-time event. It's content that, that post I mentioned before, it still gets hundreds of hits a day of people reading this content that's on there.
Speaker 0 00:18:27 So it really is something that is a huge opportunity that churches need to be investing in. Yeah. Next one is that it's important that you create your Google business profile. Um, this sounds like it's really okay. That's not a hard thing to do. Uh, it used to be something called Google my business. They recently changed a few weeks ago to Google business profile. So we want to make sure we give you the right name on that. So when you search it, I'm sure if you search Google, my business, it'll come up still, but it's now called the Google business profile. And what this is, this is, uh, Google's attempt to connect your church, uh, and its physical location. If you have one connecting it to their map system. So it's not, it's different from organic searching when someone looks for a church and it shows, uh, uh, the list of websites, it shows like it's, what's called the map pack.
Speaker 0 00:19:19 When someone first gets onto a search, they put in churches near me. It's usually those first three results that show right in the map and those church locations. And that's driven by your Google business profile and how well that set up. So getting that dialed in, getting a claim to first of all, with a good name. Now, if you're a church plant that doesn't yet have a location, if you suspect you'll be in a location and it's pretty sure, but you're not actually meeting yet. That's fine. You can set it up as being there. Our church that I pastored most recently, we met in a community center and I just chose one end of the community center as kind of our pin on the Google map as where our church met. I don't think it makes sense to have your church office there certainly don't put your house as the place where your Google business profile is going to, but put it at that, at that actual, at the location where you plan to meet. So if it's a school or a rec center or something like that, get it pegged on there and you can start to make those kinds of connections, but, uh, really important to do that. Uh, getting photos in there, getting your office hours, service times, if you have them yet getting all that information dialed in, that's going to help your ranking when people look for churches near them and get you onto that map pack. So really an important step, right?
Speaker 3 00:20:31 Yeah. And I th one little thing I'll add to that. You covered mostly everything there on it, but, uh, I think what we've seen a lot of churches do is they get the Google business profile set up, but they don't follow all of the steps. Uh, you know, that, you know, there's, there's a lot to get optimized in there if you will, and, and steps to take, uh, with photos and even, uh, I think at one point we, you mentioned a video promo can be in there as well. Uh, and there's just a lot of different stuff you can do that I think is missed. So do it in detail or get help to do it in detail. Yeah,
Speaker 0 00:21:04 Absolutely retry it. We'd be happy to help you get that stuff dialed in. And there's many other things you can do to improve your rank there. And that falls into the category of what's called local SEO or local search engine optimization. Uh, we have churches with that all the time, but yeah, this is something that just claiming it, getting it ready and doing your best to optimize it, that will make some kind of a difference so that hopefully people searching for you within a mile or something might wind up seeing your church there. So it's a good step to take.
Speaker 3 00:21:33 Good. Awesome. I'll get the next one. And we've talked about this one, uh, over and over again. It's something that we help churches with here at reach, right. But it is also something that a church can just claim and manage on their own if they're able to. Uh, and that's used the Google grant, um, we've, we've talked, uh, about this till we're blue in the face, but it's something that we want churches to know about. Uh, that's just free money for the taking out their Google Gibbs 5 0 1 C3. Now that's one important thing to mention that your church is, since we're talking about starting churches, a lot of churches start before becoming a 5 0 1 C3 recognized with the IRS. You, you want to take that step and if you did that, uh, and you have a website, um, those are Google's two requirements. If you have those things in place, uh, they will give you up to $10,000 a month in Google ads to use.
Speaker 3 00:22:28 And that is not an exaggeration. They really do give this grant. Um, this is a big part of Google's brand and one of their ways of giving back to organizations in communities that they kind of give back to their communities. So, um, it's been out there for well over seven years. Um, I don't even remember the, the date that it actually started, but I know how long we've been helping churches with it. But at the same time, um, 10,000, you heard right. It's out there. These are Google ads. So the, these would be online ads. Um, very similar to what we just talked about with the map pack, when someone does a search for churches near me or churches, uh, in this city or my city, you know, churches in Austin, that's where I'm at. So if someone does churches in Austin, yes, these would be ads that, um, come up, usually above the Google map pack, um, there, but, or sometimes below.
Speaker 3 00:23:23 Um, and so very similar to, you know, SEO and getting your Google business profile. But where are, these are a little bit different too. This can also be if someone is looking for hope for my life or spiritual answers or, um, uh, maybe they are looking for a new church, new church startups, or, um, you know, uh, dynamic preaching. We can go on and on, um, think of this as a way to be a little more broad, um, with your reach online and, and broadly kind of, uh, reaching people that are making different kinds of searches. Yeah.
Speaker 0 00:23:59 Yeah. I think this is a, such a no brainer, uh, is that you, if you have your 5 0 1 C3, uh, and I'll, I'll clarify that is that if you're planning a church with a denomination, a lot of times you won't have your own 5 0 1 C3, but you will come under your denominational or your region's 5 0 1 C3. That's fine. Uh, you can get approved on that. There's another step you have to get in there to make a Google recognize that, but it's definitely something you can do. Um, but this is just if you have those things in place, which most church plants, at some point will you just need to do this, it's something that's, it really is a free $10,000 every month in Google ads. You know what? I pay $10,000 a month for this probably not, but I think it's worth a lot more than $0 and the effort it takes to go out there and get it.
Speaker 0 00:24:50 Now, I will say that it is not, I would not call it easy to spend $10,000 of Google's money every month. I think you need, uh, it's not just a, uh, turn it on. And then you get $10,000. If there's not going to be that many people looking for, uh, churches in Nantucket, uh, that's just not going to happen that often. So, um, you really have to be creative with some of the ads that you're creating. You mentioned things like need-based ads, so ads around marriage and parenting and divorce and financial challenges and all these things. They all make sense so long as you, your church is ready to offer answers for these kinds of areas. And we know we have the best answer in Jesus Christ for every single one of those kinds of situations, but all that to say, I think that it is, um, go ahead and get it.
Speaker 0 00:25:43 Every church plant should get it, give it a try. I think that most churches will find that they are able to spend a hundred or $200 of Google's money every month. If they just take an ad or two around finding churches near them. I think the real opportunity is when you branch out from there and make, uh, dozens, if not hundreds of ads targeting thousands of different keywords around all kinds of topics that churches can help their community with, uh, another service that we help churches with. But, uh, I think that the main thing you need to take away from today is that it's something you should claim get it. And then in the future, when you're ready, it'll be really easy to start. Uh, if you wanted to bring someone on to help you with that, you can definitely do that, but it's a no brainer to go out and claim that it costs you zero to do it.
Speaker 3 00:26:30 For sure. For
Speaker 0 00:26:31 Sure. Awesome. Uh, am I up, I guess, yeah. I'm, run targeted emphasis on the targeted run, targeted Facebook ads. Um, if we were creating a marketing plan for churches, I think the first place that I would spend money on actual getting, uh, eyes onto our information would be on Facebook. Uh, and the reason for that is that the targeting tools on Facebook, uh, and when I say Facebook, I mean Facebook and Instagram, because it's the exact same, same parent company of Metta. Uh, and you use the same advertising platform to put ads on both. So the targeting tools on there are night and day better than any other opportunity that we have, uh, as, as, as churches to be able to reach people that are most likely to respond to the things that were out there. So now I give some pushback around this sometimes because people will say, well, you know, we don't want to just reach, uh, people that are likely to come.
Speaker 0 00:27:38 We want to reach people that don't know Jesus yet. And people that are like that. Jesus went to the least of these and people that were very unlikely. He went to Samaritans and, and he preached the gospel to them. And I, I totally, I could not agree more that being said. I think that it doesn't make sense on this particular platform. If you have in your mind that, you know, we're going to only target, uh, Muslims, uh, on our Facebook ads, because we want them to come to know Jesus. I think that will be dollars that you're, there's better ways to reach the Muslim community than trying to target them on Facebook and only showing your church ads to people that are in that place. So I think that it makes a lot of sense that you can use some of Facebook's targeting tools, not to target necessarily Christians.
Speaker 0 00:28:25 We don't want to build a church of all people that are already parts of other churches, but it is a good tool for you to chart, to target people that are very specific, the kind of people you feel like you'll best be able to reach. So if you're planting a church and you and I, we were in our twenties when we planted the church together, right? So late twenties, but you were very late twenties. Yeah. I was in my mid twenties. So when a year, one year for our listeners, that's two years right now, but that's okay. Who's counting any who we were in our twenties when we did this. And, um, as much as we loved, uh, uh, people of all ages and we would have gladly embraced and welcomed, uh, senior citizens that came to our church and all kinds of people, we held English services that were, it was almost all people that are in their twenties, maybe some in their thirties, but that's where everybody basically was in their life place.
Speaker 0 00:29:23 Lot of young kids, um, you know, that's kind of the position that we were. So it made sense for us as a church plant to know that the people that will have the easiest time fitting in will be English speakers, uh, who are probably within 10 years of the lead. You know, me in this case within my age, within 10 years of my age there. And we found that was the best way to do something like that, just because they'd be the most likely to respond the most likely to get connected and the best opportunities for us as a church there, we didn't, you know, only target people that identified as people that liked, uh, Hillsong music, something like that, what you can do, you can use those kinds of targeting tools. But I think we, I think using at least age and life place targets, I think that's really what's valuable.
Speaker 0 00:30:12 So yeah, you can target. Um, one of, some of their things are around parents. So if you feel like your church is going to be a great place for families to be, you can use some of Facebook targeting tools to, to target only parents of preschoolers. You see, this is our, this is our best opportunity is reaching families that have these kinds of needs. So parents of preschoolers, and then you could actually run specific ads on Facebook that aren't just generic, Hey, come out this Sunday. Or our grand opening is happening here, but you can do ads that are, Hey, are you looking for a place that, uh, is a great place for your family to be, and for young kids, and you can have ones that are really tailored and answer that exact need. That's so many parents of young kids are facing in their lives.
Speaker 0 00:30:56 So, um, doing targeted ads, it, what it, what it does though, it just saves you so much money is because you're not putting dollars into people that are unlikely to respond to your messages and unlikely to respond to your ads. But you're investing only in those that are most likely to respond to the ads that you're putting out there. So I hope that makes sense. I, again, I, I feel the confliction about it and it feels to me like, it's, you know, again, I want to reach everybody. I want to reach people that aren't, like I said, English speakers in there, not because we have anything against non English speakers, but just because our services were in English. And so he
Speaker 3 00:31:32 Didn't translate or anything, it would be,
Speaker 0 00:31:34 It'd be wasted on someone who only spoke Swahili. Right. So, uh, it would be something that would be, have a hard time reaching them and they probably wouldn't fit in very well if they couldn't understand anything. So, yeah.
Speaker 3 00:31:46 Yeah. Good. Well, I'll, I'll get the next one here. Um, cause you covered that very thoroughly. So I think that was good. Um, invest in signage. This is, you know, print is not totally dead signs, make sense. Uh, and, uh, and it brought back memories. You were talking about how we, uh, we planted a church. Well, uh, when we left your living room and decided we needed location, uh, we finally landed on a community center that was kind enough to give us a good setup there. Uh, but I remember I was our sign guy. We had this, a sign that we had to use with bungees, uh, in this pavilion type thing that D where people would see it from the road. I would go, what several hours, uh, earlier in the day before church and get our sign up that had our service time and website on it. And, uh, this worked, we had a woman come in from the said, she saw the, at, at the exact time, she was thinking of finding a new church and she came and she went to the website after, after that, and then got a feel for things and came and said, she, uh, found, uh, the church she had been looking for for years. And then we didn't see her next Sunday, but she did come, uh, that one Sunday and told us that it was the church, you know,
Speaker 0 00:33:00 That's okay. But super bowl party at my house too, that same lady, but that was about it. Yeah.
Speaker 3 00:33:04 That's why she didn't come back because she liked the church service, but came to the Superbowl party. And then that was it. So
Speaker 0 00:33:11 I like the, the jokes were being told there, the trash talk.
Speaker 3 00:33:15 Yeah. Getting back on, on subject though. Yeah. Not just a sign for the church out, like outside the church of where you're meeting, but other signage, you know, um, obviously, uh, especially actually I would say, yeah, if you're, if a lot of churches that don't have their own building and you should do these, even if you do have, you're fortunate enough as a church plant to have your own building. But if you don't signage is even more important for where people know where they need to enter in where the restrooms are, those types of things. I mean, this stuff we, people are already kind of apprehensive often when they're visiting a church for the first time, let's make everything clear and least amount of confusion as possible is a good thing. So,
Speaker 0 00:33:56 Yup. Nope. I couldn't agree more. I think just putting money into some of those signs, uh, I wouldn't spend the lion's share of your budget on it. Uh, but it's something that you can get some pretty economical signage nowadays. Some of those nice pop-up ones, if you're doing that portable church really makes a lot of sense to do some of that kind of stuff. So that's good. I'll wrap us up here. Last thing is, and this might surprise me what we say by some swag, uh, church plants, uh, would do very well to have some swag. And by that, I mean, things like t-shirts hats, uh, cups, pens, all kinds of things, water bottles, whatever you would do. Number one, they make great gifts when people come for the first time when you're first launching. I think having that, and then I don't know if you make them nice.
Speaker 0 00:34:43 I think people really would love to be able to promote a new church, especially people that are part of your core team. They love to wear a hat or a t-shirt that highlights that you have to have a good logo. You have to have a cool color palette, those kinds of things. Again, these kind of build on one another, right? I think anything you invest in there, if you can get, if you can give a t-shirt to someone and they'd be willing to wear it, uh, you know, once a month, that is so much a word of mouth advertising that's happening. Cause it's right there on their t-shirt. If it looks good and it makes someone say, Hey, what's that about? Or what is your shirt referring to? It just, it's a great conversation. Starter hats, those kinds of things, all really good ideas.
Speaker 3 00:35:20 I've seen new churches, like also a lot of church plants that are starting. And this is a great thing to do too, is they do outreaches or they're out in community parks and in water bottles and they've had their t-shirts on with a good logo in it. That stands out to me. You know, even if I have a church home, I'm like, well, okay, that's cool new church. They're out in the community they're meeting needs. And, uh, and it just makes you it's, it's one part of how to brand yourself. So that's good stuff. Yeah.
Speaker 0 00:35:46 I really think you you'll have a hard time seeing a better investment. Now, if you're going to, I think coffee mugs and those things, that's fine. But I think shirts and hats are great if people will actually wear, if they're good enough for someone to wear that, like the $10 or $15 you spend on a shirt. I mean, that is money well spent. If someone's going to wear that and go about their day and be out in town and making relationships, as long as they're not a jerk, I think that's going to be a really good investment. Don't give it to Jerry
Speaker 3 00:36:16 That's right. Make sure that people that have your schwag or are the upright, most coolest people possible. So yeah. That's exactly right. Anyway. Awesome.
Speaker 0 00:36:25 Cool. Anything else to add as we wrap up?
Speaker 3 00:36:28 No, I like it. I hopefully this was helpful and uh, yeah, we hope that, uh, this reaches, uh, aspiring church planters out there. So
Speaker 0 00:36:37 Yeah. Church planners and existing churches, if you miss that, then I know that most church plant or church existing churches, don't do all of these things here or, you know, it's, uh, like the logo thing I think is something that maybe you've been thinking, Hey, we've got to do that. Yeah. Yeah. It's a really important thing to do. Cause it, and everything else rests on that. So, uh, yeah, so hopefully it has been helpful if it has, uh, it would mean a lot to us. If you would rate, review, subscribe, like comment, do all of those things that you can do on whatever platform you're watching or listening to this. We really thank you guys for being a part of our reach, right family. And we'll catch you next week. Thanks for listening to the reach right podcast. We hope this episode will help you reach people the right way, looking for more resources for your church. Check us out
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