Episode Transcript
Speaker 0 00:00:00 Let's face it. A lot of the marketing tactics that we talk about are effective in suburban and urban communities, but a lot of times in rural places, it's a little harder to gain traction. Well, in this conversation we're to unpack some of the tips and tricks that we've learned to reach more people in small communities. Let's do this. You are listening to The Reach Right podcast, the show dedicated to helping your church reach more people and grow. Well, hey guys, I'm Thomas.
Speaker 2 00:00:31 And I'm Ian.
Speaker 0 00:00:32 And today we're talking about how to grow a rural church when marketing hasn't worked in the past. I think it should be a good conversation for us to have Ian. Yeah,
Speaker 2 00:00:41 It's a unique one. And you know, we hear this, I hear this pretty often. I've heard, I've heard of this challenge over the years cause we connect with all different kinds of churches and, you know, size churches, different and different cities, different parts of the country and world even sometimes. And uh, yeah, this question's been out there for a little while, so it's good. We're tackling it.
Speaker 0 00:01:00 It's it, yeah. It actually comes from a, a listener question. So let's start off with that. Why don't you, uh, why don't you give us that question? What, what are we asking? Yeah, it
Speaker 2 00:01:07 Was neat. Yeah, it was neat. We got this question. We've been struggling to grow our small rural church and the marketing we've been trying has not seemed to work well in our area. Uh, we're on a tight budget, so could you guys recommend some marketing ideas that might be more successful in connecting, uh, people with our, within our community? Yeah,
Speaker 0 00:01:29 Yeah. Yeah. I, I think it's a good one. Um, because like you were saying, we, we've heard this all the time and mm-hmm. <affirmative>, I will say that, you know, maybe when we are doing this podcast or creating the resources that we put out there, we don't typically have the very rural church in mind, uh, when we're doing it. And I do think that some of the things that work in New York City or in Los Angeles or even right, uh, in, you know, medium sized cities of Right. Madison, Wisconsin or Waco, Texas or something like that. Yeah. They are different from what works in places where, um, you know, there's a thousand people in your community and, uh, the next town over is, uh, 10 miles away. And so it's just Right. A different, different kinds of people and different strategies work in those kinds of areas.
Speaker 0 00:02:13 So I, I think it's a good conversation for us to have. Um, yeah. I, I have seen, like, one thing I'll just do as a, for instance, something that doesn't work, we talk about this a lot here, uh, is we talk about the Google grant, right? Yeah. So we've had challenges just to put 'em out there for churches Yeah. That are trying to reach, uh, just their community with the Google grant. For those of you that don't know the Google grant, it gives $10,000 a month and free ads to nonprofits and churches, uh, and you can use them, uh, to, you know, build your church and do those things. But if you are trying to only reach people within maybe say a, a 20 mile radius of your church mm-hmm. <affirmative>, and there's only about 5,000 people in that 20 mile radius. Right. Well, there's just not a big enough audience for that to work.
Speaker 0 00:02:59 Now, for rural churches that have a bigger mindset of maybe wanting to reach people all over the world, the grant can be helpful for that too. Yep. Uh, but if your goal is just to be a community church that focuses on, focuses on that range right there, that and other kinds of strategies just don't have the same kind of impact that they would when you have 10 million people within a 20 mile radius of your church. Uh, so course it's just a number of supply and demand kind of a thing there. So, uh, but we did come up with some ideas, I guess, uh, we can share with people, um, of things that we do see working. Uh, the first one is looking at community outreach programs. I think that'd be the be the first place to start. Um, these, I think the, the great thing about being in a small community is that there's nowhere near the level of competition, uh, from other nonprofits, other churches.
Speaker 0 00:03:51 I don't think of churches as like competition, but Right, right. You know, you get what I'm saying with that. It's like, there's not as many people trying to do this. You're the biggest show in town, if you will. Right? Yeah. Uh, if you are a church in a rural community here, so you, if someone isn't going to offer some of these community programs, no one is going to offer them. Uh, right. So, right. It's, uh, I think that's something that really works well, uh, in smaller towns, I think, because in most cases the land is affordable. You probably have a building, uh, right. And your building can be used for so many things that impact your community there. So I don't know as far as specifics, there's so many ways that you can go with this. Yeah. Um, we've, uh, I don't know. We, we've seen churches do laundry ministries.
Speaker 0 00:04:33 We've seen food drives. Uh, you know what I was thinking, I was just talking to my wife about this question this week too, uh, is like most of the small towns that we've been in, and we've lived in smaller places, voting took place in local churches. Yeah. Yeah. And it was kind of an interesting thing that like you go to a local church to cast your vote, so everybody has experience in this one place. Yeah. Which I don't know if that's the case for all kinds of small towns. I imagine in, in bigger cities, there's all kinds of people that have problems with this because Right, right. You know, it makes a, a Muslim people maybe, maybe they feel uncomfortable going into a Christian Church to cast their vote on something. I don't know. But I know that this is still the law in lots of places. And so, you know, that's an idea of a community outreach program. Yeah. So I don't know what else, Ian, what jumps out to you about this? Yeah,
Speaker 2 00:05:18 There's other things. I mean, food drives we've known about, I mean, clothing, donations, maybe it's a free workshop, you know, maybe it's a meeting, a need in the community, um, you know, we've heard of Yeah. Um, of course, uh, after school youth programs, maybe it's a, you know, those are education based, are just helping troubled teens. I mean, uh, you know, I think for those listening out there, they hopefully, each church that's in a rural area, they kind of know their community and they kind of know some of the needs that are, that are out there that they can meet. And I, I just liked what you said, well, first of all, we think every church should be doing outreach in their community. Right, of course. But, but, but I like what you said, you know, in a rural area, you have the opportunity to be that one church when someone thinks of, oh, wow, yeah, this church does a lot for our community. You are that one church if there's only a handful of other churches that are not doing these things. So I think that's the real, real opportunity there. And, and I think just thinking about the needs in your community and trying to forget how you can meet those is a great thing.
Speaker 0 00:06:19 Yeah. No, that's good stuff. Here's the next idea. Um, and this might sound strange, but I think that it is still worth it to focus on local seo, local search engine optimization, uh, even in a small place. And here's the reason why. In a big city, if you're trying to do local search engine optimization in Atlanta, it is so competitive. Right. And getting Google to recognize your church in a slew of literally like a thousand other churches, it really is a challenging place to do it. Whereas in a small community, yes, you have much few, uh, many fewer people searching for churches in your area. It is actually pretty easy for you to get that locked down to be the number one church when someone looks for churches near me or churches in my community. Those kinds of churches, uh, local SEO also has to do with some of these outreach programs we were talking about.
Speaker 0 00:07:11 So Right, right. If you were to, you know, focus on keywords like food outreach in my community mm-hmm. <affirmative> or afterschool programs in Yeah. Uh, near me or those kinds of terms, your church can show up for those kinds of search terms as well. So I think there's a lot of, uh, a lot of possibility when it comes to local seo, uh, in rural areas. And so Yep. What does it look like to do this? I think it's pretty simple. Yeah. Uh, it looks like you getting yourself on listing sites mm-hmm. <affirmative>, so you want to be on the big ones. Like, uh, Google My Business, which is now called Google Business Profile. Yeah. Uh, on Facebook, on Apple Maps, on things like MapQuest and every other listing site that's out there, bing searched, that kind of stuff. So you wanna get listed on all those.
Speaker 0 00:07:53 And then it comes down to asking people within your church community or people that have benefited from some of your outreach programs Yeah. Asking them to give you reviews mm-hmm. <affirmative>, uh, to getting those online. So that's one of the big factors that Google and other sites use when ranking, uh, which church or which organization's gonna come up when people do local searches there. So if your church has a few dozen reviews from people within inside your community, you'll almost certainly be the number one ranking when someone searches for churches near me in that community there. So I think it's a really, uh, untapped opportunity. Yeah. Uh, but the great thing is it shouldn't take you a lot of effort to get there. If you put in a few hours of work, you should be good to go for quite a while.
Speaker 2 00:08:36 Yeah. And I liked it, you said untapped because I think, um, and I know this just from communication with, uh, smaller churches in rural areas, um, that they don't need to do SEO because a, there's not as many churches here, so we we're pretty visible. But I, I think what, when you're saying it's untapped, that there's probably because of that mindset mm-hmm. <affirmative> not many churches doing it. So why wouldn't you want your church to be top of mind and be on top of these things and promoting events and having what you're doing more visible? Um, there's a big benefit in that.
Speaker 0 00:09:09 Yeah, no, absolutely. I, I think there's, there's this mindset, and maybe it's from city folk like ourselves here. I know you're in the Austin area. Yeah, I'm in Honolulu, which, uh, if you don't know, Honolulu is a concrete jungle here. There's skyscrapers everywhere. It's a big city. Yeah. Uh, but we have this idea that I've heard it people, people say before that farmers don't have phones, and that just couldn't be further from the truth. Right, right. Everybody, everybody has phones. Almost the entire country is covered by cell phone reception and Yep. Any place that people live, I mean, you're, you're almost certainly, uh, going to be using the internet and doing searches and living your life. And that actually brings me to the next one too. The next idea is utilize social media and local media. Uh, so both media options, but the idea that social media doesn't work in small towns couldn't be further from the truth.
Speaker 0 00:09:58 Uh, I think that it is absolutely just as important in small communities as it is in large ones because, uh, stuff actually is much more community and relationship oriented in smaller areas. You probably know everybody or you know, someone who knows every other person in your community. There's, I guess you'd call that three degrees of separation in your entire town there. And so by that, if you're using social media, you can reach almost your entire community with one share. They're one share away from, from reaching people there. So I think social media is a huge opportunity, but I have found that local media is also really great. So here I, we have kind of this little pocket here. I live in Hawaii, uh, and what always has floored me is when we, whenever we'd come back and, uh, you know, we'd be on the mainland for a while, come back to Hawaii, it was refreshing to be here because we're reminded of what a small pond we're in when we watch the local news here in Hawaii.
Speaker 0 00:10:55 Yeah. And it's like, it's, it's kind of, you know, it can be kind of cheesy sometimes, and it's hokey and there's sometimes mistakes and the people aren't as polished as the, the national broadcasters or maybe your Austin area news people. Right. You know, but here in Hawaii we have this more small pond mentality. Uh, and because of that, I think that a lot more people are like, the news is local. It's not this, we're not dominated by what's happening in Washington DC or what's happening in big cities. Like all of our news is hyper-local here. Yeah. So people pay more attention to it, which means there's more opportunity for churches if you can get any kind of a feature on Yeah. You know, you're probably not gonna have a local newscast there, but you probably have some kind of a local publication mm-hmm. <affirmative> a local newspaper, or used to be a newspaper that's now an online publication. But anything you can do to get featured on those kinds of things, that really goes a long way in small communities, I'd say.
Speaker 2 00:11:49 Yeah. Yeah. Again, cuz you're just gonna be, there's just an smaller pond, like you said. So, um, so I think that's a great opportunity and nothing much to add there. I'm actually excited about the next one, which I think is a good one that I think we're ending with here for the most part. So,
Speaker 0 00:12:04 Yeah. And I think we could say this last one to any, any church rural Yeah. Or urban or suburban. Uh, is that, uh, personal testimonies and personal invitation. Uh, that's really, that's always been the heartbeat of every church marketing course strategy of course, if you want to call it that. Um, I know it's sometimes it's distasteful to, to call it a marketing strategy, but I will say that as church leaders, like we set the tone for this. Yeah. So it's nice to think that like, if I just preach the gospel in my church and encourage people to read the Bible, then they will organically just learn to invite all their friends and our church will grow. And I, I would say that it is something that we need to be actually intentional about. Yep. In teaching people how to do this, how to share your testimony, how to give personal invites and giving them the tools and resources to do it.
Speaker 0 00:12:54 Yeah. So some of the things we think about is, um, you know, encouraging people in your church to be praying for someone specifically by name Yeah. That they can be inviting to church, that they can be inviting into a relationship with Jesus. And when you pray for someone specifically, it really ups the ante. And like, if you just say, Hey, let's all pray that God brings more people to our church, and then we can think of someone to invite. Well, it's kind of, it's not specific and you never really follow through on those things. Whereas if you ask everybody to, Hey, this week I want you to be thinking of someone specifically and pray for them every day by name, maybe write like it their name in your Bible. Yeah. Or in your journal, write that person's name. And then it becomes specific and we start to look for those kinds of opportunities. And that's, as church leaders, it's our job to, to set the tone for those kinds of things. So, I dunno, anything to add to that, Ian?
Speaker 2 00:13:43 Uh, yeah, a little. I I would just say too, one of the unfortunate things I've run into over the years of consulting so many churches is I've seen a, a lot of rural churches. Um, and, and most of those churches have been around for a long time, so often they can be mainline churches. I'm not picking on mainline churches. There's, uh, plenty of non-denominational other kinds of churches that make these mistakes too. But if it's, let's just say it's first Presbyterian, first Baptist, you know, and, um, yeah, you would think more there would be, it would be more down home and a lot more people would be inviting and relational. But a lot of those churches can tend to get, uh, internal thinking. You know, it's a, Betty Sue's always sat on that pew, I'm not gonna sit there. And that we have our potluck with, uh, bill and Ed and all of that, uh, every Sunday. And, and it's real easy to get internal and not get out there. I think that that's a trap that some smaller rural churches are just rural churches, um, fall into. So yeah, that's what I would add. Yeah.
Speaker 2 00:14:42 Don't let that be you
Speaker 0 00:14:44 <laugh>. Yeah. You gotta you gotta think outside of that. And I, I'll say that like in, in smaller churches in general, and I'd say a lot of times rural churches, this is definitely the case. You've been with these same people like you were saying for decades, and you know, everybody that comes there and they have assigned seats and that kind of stuff. But, uh, I, I'll say that I've noticed that there's not a lot of people planting churches in rural areas. Like it's something that all the church planting initiatives that I've ever seen are in either urban areas. Right. But even more so in suburban areas where there's lots of growth mm-hmm. <affirmative> where there's lots of money. Uh, and so, I don't know, just as, as a rural pastor, if you're listening to this, uh, I want to encourage you that we, I'm so thankful for your ministry.
Speaker 0 00:15:26 I think that that's something that is important. Absolutely. Pastoring in rural towns is a, a calling, it's a commitment. And, uh, I'm just thankful for people like you that are doing that. So thanks guys for, for doing that. And, uh, and listening to the Reach Right podcast here. Yes. Hey, we'd love to know if you are pastoring in a rural church, we'd love to know what is working for you. Um, how are you reaching people, how are you doing marketing? Let us know and share those in the comments there. Also, we want to answer more of these kinds of questions in the Reach Right podcast. So if you have a question, let us know in the comments down below. We may feature it in a future episode there. Yeah. So thanks for watching guys. Like, subscribe, do all those kinds of things and we'll see you next time. See ya.
