9 Ministry Marketing Ideas For a Solid Growth Strategy

July 12, 2022 00:28:53
9 Ministry Marketing Ideas For a Solid Growth Strategy
REACHRIGHT Podcast
9 Ministry Marketing Ideas For a Solid Growth Strategy

Jul 12 2022 | 00:28:53

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Show Notes

If you have a ministry or church ready to help change peoples’ lives, you first need to get them in the door. And these nine foundational ministry marketing ideas will help you do just that!

Unfortunately, if you build it, they may not come! You have to intentionally reach out with your message, connect with people, and draw them in.

So, how can you engage people through traditional and digital media? We’ll cover that question and more as we walk through your core strategy for ministry marketing.

9 Ministry Marketing Ideas

If you had unlimited time and resources, you could try every trick in the book. You could invest significant dollars in traditional media like radio, tv, and billboards and jump on every new and emerging social media platform that pops up.

But what’s ultimately worth your time? And what will build a solid marketing strategy that will outlast the trends? Here are nine foundational marketing strategies we think all ministries and churches need!

1. Word of Mouth

Nothing is more powerful than a personal recommendation. Word of mouth tops the list of most effective (and least expensive) ministry marketing ideas.

Before you try anything else, ensure that you firmly establish a “culture of invitation” in your church or ministry. Create a sense of ownership, community, and openness, so everyone involved feels equipped and empowered to invite.

And you need to make it easy for them to share clear information and digital and print tools.

2. Website

Your ministry website is most people’s first impression, so it needs to be top-notch.

Remember that your website isn’t an online brochure with every piece of information under the sun. Instead, it should serve a specific purpose: helping people find you and getting them to take the next step.

Regarding websites, SEO (search engine optimization) is key to having your site show up at the top of search engine results pages.

Here are a few key elements your site should have:

3. Blog

A blog is central to a solid marketing strategy for ministries. For one, it can improve your website SEO (as mentioned above).

A blog provides an easy way to share your message with a broad audience, connect with readers, and build relationships. And, perhaps most importantly, it provides quality content that can be shared by others, further extending your reach.

You can post prayer guides, devotionals, ministry updates, testimonies, resources, and more. Your blog writing can also be a source for social media content.

4. Email

Yes, it seems like people complain about getting too many emails these days, but email is still one of the most effective ministry marketing tools available.

Email connects you with interested people who have subscribed to your list. You can send them regular updates, announcements, event reminders, and more.

Some secrets for effective email marketing:

5. Text Messaging

Text messaging is one of the newer ministry marketing ideas for churches, but it’s a quick and easy way to stay in touch with people. Furthermore, stats show SMS has a 98% open rate compared to email!

You can text reminders, announcements, updates, or check in to see how someone is doing.

Most people have their phones with them at all times, so your message will be seen right away. This can result in higher open and read rates but also feel more invasive and personal. To avoid spamming people, make sure they opt-in to receive messages and be courteous about when and how you use text messaging.

6. Social Media

Whether you love social media, hate it, or have a volatile love-hate relationship with it, the reality is that billions of people are on social media daily. And you want to reach them!

Social media is continuously evolving. It can require a huge commitment of time and resources to stay on top of the trends. So make sure what you’re doing has a good return on investment.

To be effective on social media:

7. Traditional Media Ministry Marketing Ideas

Don’t forget about good old-fashioned print and broadcast media! Traditional media is still a great way to reach people who might not be active on social media or have internet access.

You can use traditional media to share your ministry’s story, promote events, or run ads. However, keep in mind that this can be costly, so you need a solid plan before committing.

Examples of traditional media include:

8. Print Materials (and QR Codes)

Although the world is digital, there’s still a place for print materials. Printed materials can be a great way to promote your ministry to put in peoples’ hands or if you’re exhibiting at an event or out in the community.

You can use good old-fashioned postcards, brochures, and flyers to share your contact information. Include QR codes that people can scan to be taken to your website or social media platforms.

Just make sure your print materials are high quality and eye-catching!

9. Community Involvement

Ministry marketing is all about reaching people, and one of the best ways to do that is to get active in your community. You want to make sure you partner with local organizations and get listed in local directories.

But, in addition, we don’t want to become so digital-dependent that we forget the value of being face-to-face with people!

You can look for opportunities to:

Final Thoughts

So there you have it! Nine ministry marketing ideas to help you grow your church. As you can see, some of these take more time and effort than others, but all of them are worth exploring. The most vital thing is to remember your purpose: stay focused on serving people and reaching them with your message!

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 0 00:00:00 Let's face it. There is no shortage of ways that churches can be doing outreach and marketing, but some ways are better than others. And in today's episode, we're gonna talk through the nine ways that your church should be doing ministry marketing in 2022. We hope this conversation helps your church reach more people and grow. This is the reach right podcast. You're listening to the reach, right 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 as my co-host Ian Hyat, we're here to help your church see more visitors and grow. Hey guys, welcome up to the reach right. Podcast episode number 106. I am your host Thomas Costello. And with me as always as my co-host Speaker 4 00:01:06 Ian Hyat what's up Thomas. Speaker 0 00:01:07 Hey, not much. You excited to talk today. We're gonna be talking about nine ministry marketing ideas for a solid growth strategy for your church. It should be a good conversation here today. Absolutely. Talk it through some of those kinds of ideas. This is what we do. We, yeah, eat, breathe, and sleep, church marketing, uh, ideas. And so this is, uh, second nature for us, but I think it's important for us to revisit some of these topics. Yeah. Because you know, we've been doing this for, oh, I don't even want to 15 years, I guess now helping churches do some of this stuff. And the things on this list are very different from what they were 15 years ago. Uh, yeah. The, the different topics we're gonna talk about today. And so these do change, uh, more often than we like to realize, I'd say, right. Do you agree? Speaker 4 00:01:50 I would agree. And yet we have some, some that are not different, some try and true ones. So we'll be going over. Some of those strategies too, Speaker 0 00:01:58 Are, are definitely tried and true. So yeah, let's hop into it then. So why don't you kick us off with the first one? What's the first, uh, ministry, uh, marketing idea that we have for people. It's Speaker 4 00:02:08 One that will never die, I guess, until the Lord comes back and that's word of mouth. Yeah. Um, and so, uh, definitely tried and true as I just said. And, uh, one that, of course we think we should, we should mention this first because we believe, and we have the conviction that we know that word of mouth evangelism and word of mouth invitations to church are not dead at all. As a matter of fact, we believe they're the most powerful, of course, a personal invitation. Um, you just simply inviting someone to, to church, uh, or to an event or to engage online or participate in something at, at the local church level is still very much so alive. We hope <laugh>, we know it, it, it is alive, but we want it to be alive at your church. Uh, and, uh, and so, yeah, uh, definitely this one's, uh, something that every church should be encouraging their members to do. And, and as a staff be doing as well. So yeah. What was the statistic? And in there a stat about isn't it 80 some odd, I feel like every stat we say is 80 something percent or every stat you read out there, but isn't it, 80 something percent of people would actually attend a church if they were just simply invited. I know there was a life Speaker 0 00:03:17 Way. I've that's that I've heard 85%. Uh, it was for Easter invites, uh, 85% of people would say yes to an Easter invite to church. I assume it's not that different for other days of the year. Yeah. But I think Easter specifically, people are willing to say yes to that. I think that well, word of mouth is tried and true and you know, I, I don't want it to sound like it's, uh, old hat or anything like that. Right. It's something that's still very important. There are a lot of modern ways that we can be doing that. So a lot of the other things we're gonna be talking about, uh, are an important way. If you're leading a church, giving people the tools and resources to be able to be more effective in 2022 to do word of mouth invites. Yeah. Doesn't necessarily have to come directly from somebody's mouth. Speaker 0 00:04:01 It could be in the form of a, a social media invite or an email or a text message that they send. Right. Or giving people the resources to do some of those kinds of things. Yeah. I think that's really valuable. Uh, so, um, something that just kind of that churches can be considering is how can we resource our people? It's I, I think every church wants to solve that problem of how do I get our members to invite their friends more invite their family? Well, it's still something we can be really intentional about. Right. And encourage the, the people within our churches to, to use resources. Again, maybe we, we craft certain social media posts for them that, uh, help them do those kinds of invites. Yeah. I think that's the kind of stuff we need to be thinking about. So, uh, I couldn't agree more though, Ian word of mouth, um, as, uh, uh, a business people, we, we get this feedback all the time as a company that helps churches do outreach and marketing, is that, well, that's really not something Jesus was concerned about. Speaker 0 00:04:55 He really was only about word of mouth and we should focus on that and we couldn't agree more like that's something that word of mouth absolutely is important. We're just trying to use the modern tools that are available to us to enhance the way we do word of mouth marketing. And that's it, get the word out there about churches there. Exactly. So I think that's really good stuff. So that's it. Next one also tried and true is your church website. Uh, it is more important. I start to hear from people now, or people kind of speculate that maybe with the rise of social media and other platforms that websites are dead, couldn't be further from the truth. Right. I think that social media and other areas of marketing have only emphasized that your website is more important than ever. Yeah. Uh, to me, the reason for this is because you own your church website is something that you actually have control over. Speaker 0 00:05:43 Uh, and if you are not already a little bit scared that some of these social media companies could maybe control or deemphasize your reach or do those things because of the kind of content you're putting out there, you probably haven't really been paying attention to what's going on. That is something that is a reality, uh, and the way that every single social platform works is that they give you a lot of reach when the platform first starts like, so right now, TikTok is the one. If your church is using TikTok, you probably find that you get a much larger reach on TikTok than you do on Instagram or on Facebook. Yeah. And that's because these younger platforms have really a lot more reach to be giving away. But what they're gonna do is slowly over time, they're gonna start to diminish your natural reach and make it so that you have to pay to have some reach. And it's something where you're gonna lose traction over time. So, uh, it is a foolish mistake to put all your eggs into those social media or other yeah. Alternative platforms that you don't own. And I think the website is tried and true. The one that you have that kind of control over. And the one that I think every church should be focusing on before they get too deep into some other areas. So what do you say, that's Speaker 4 00:06:55 It exactly what I would add to that too, is I think, and, and we mentioned that we have been consulting and helping churches with all this stuff for over 15 years. So we, you and I both were there at the time Facebook came on the scene and I mm-hmm <affirmative> do remember that. Uh, and I think as pastors, ministry leaders and just people in general, we tend to just jump from one bandwagon to another. But I remember when Facebook came out, a lot of pastors be like, oh no, I don't need a website. We're on Facebook now. Yeah. Uh, and, and, you know, they would forget that they, they do some things similarly, but they also have, um, two different purposes. I think we gotta remember that social media is social it's people engaging that, uh, people will find you for the first time, sometimes on social media, we know that mm-hmm <affirmative>, but most of the time it's someone who's already interested in following you, or, uh, keeping up to date with you or, or, you know, staying engaged with your content. Speaker 4 00:07:48 Whereas whatever one's doing now is they're Googling, uh, 85% of the time or more, you know, churches near me, churches in X, Y, Z city. Yeah. And we can't forget too, that Google's actually looking to send the traffic to a website bef before anything else, first and foremost, a website will have precedents, the Google map pack the listings of locations. There's a big website button right there. Uh, and that's again, where people who don't know you yet, they're gonna want to go get more information and feel more comfortable. So I would add that. Yeah. Um, Speaker 0 00:08:21 Nope. You're exactly right. Website is still your home base for all operations. When it comes to church marketing, you need to get that area. Right. And it is kind of the centerpiece, so yeah. Speaker 4 00:08:30 Yeah. Good about that. Next one is a blog, uh, blog blog at actually you first thought you might be thinking, well, that's kind of more internal, you know, that's for my people that maybe follow a pastor, maybe, you know, we know pastors have used blogs for online devotional, discipleship type things, maybe just, you know, modern, uh, uh, things going on in culture that, um, that, and, and grounding those things to what the Bible asked to say, or blah, blah, blah, the list goes on and on about things you can do, but we can't, you know, forget that it is a marketing tool. So if you, if you have a blog, uh, out there and attached to your website, you know, new visitors will get on there and you might actually have some content that was engaging to them that they can share with someone else. And so there's the viral nature of a blog is that it can be shared. And, uh, and it's a way for people to respond to you and even reach out. Uh, I know we hear from our blog from, uh, people that, you know, we've not yet engaged with in O over a zoom appointment or anything else, we get people responding to our blog. So Speaker 0 00:09:31 Yeah, every single day blocking is one of the best brand building activities that a church can take on. And that's the way I'd like to think of it is that people mistakenly think that when you start a blog, every like your first post, you're gonna get all these people are gonna share it. It's gonna go viral. And then immediately your church is gonna start to explode with new visitors. Yeah. I, I, I suppose that could be possible, uh, with a, uh, completely miraculous blogging approach and everything works really well, but in reality, blogging is the ultimate long game marketing strategy. Yeah. So it's something that if your church does consistently and does quality and puts in the effort behind it, you will see results over time. Yep. Here at reach. Right. We have been blogging every single week for six years now. Yeah. So we've been spend, we've been doing this, uh, over and over and over again. Speaker 0 00:10:26 And putting in the effort behind it has actually led to thousands of people every single day, finding our content and the exact same thing can happen for your church. There are so many things that you can be writing about. The scripture is a, a never ending, uh, trove of resources of things that you could be blogging and talking about. There are constant cultural issues that people within your church yeah. And outside of your church, both have questions about, so there are huge opportunities. I think out there, if you start a block now, I always tell people that when you do this, make sure you count the cost. It's something that it will take a lot of work. Your blog post should be a minimum of 800 to a thousand words. Each time you put out a new post there, you need to be doing it consistently. Speaker 0 00:11:11 Yeah. So I think that would be a minimum of every other week. Yeah. You could be creating new content on these kinds of platforms. I think ideally it would be once or twice per week would be even better. Uh, so, um, some of our advice though on that is get other people in your church involved with it, right. Build a blogging team of lots of people writing content. But if you consistently do this and you put out good quality content that is, uh, kind of matches what people are searching out there and what people are looking for, which is the kind of content you probably want to be making anyway, is stuff that people are wondering. Right. So if you consistently do that, you're going to see growth and traction, uh, and that will make your church website and your presence more yeah. Visible in your community and it'll lead to your church growing and see more visitors. So blogging is a great idea. Speaker 4 00:11:58 It's good. I can't remember. I can't, uh, uh, just forget about when blogs also came on the scene and pastors were jumping on, on the bandwagon with those, getting a blog set up, having that link to their website, but it was sad. I would see when you mentioned counting the cost and the time it takes, I would see one blog go up and then, then it'd be crickets and months. Yeah. And, uh, and then not another one. So definitely need to keep them regular. The Speaker 0 00:12:23 Average is as an encouragement to our audience out there, that the average number of blog posts that go on to a blog is four. Uh, so that's the, before it's retired and never gets updated again. So there's all those people that do one or two. And then there's people like reach right. That have done 600 different blog posts. Yeah. And you know, the average though is about four there, so yeah, don't beat yourself up. Um, it's something that, uh, if you've been in that place before, where you started a blog and never, you, you didn't count the cost and you never got past, uh, addition number four, don't beat yourself up. It's not too late to pick that up again. That that's good. It's a good thing. So next one up is email marketing. Uh, if a lot of times I find that churches, they reduce email to just something that we have to do. Speaker 0 00:13:07 Uh, and it's something that the lead pastor or the leadership of the church doesn't pay a lot of attention to. It's just kind of like an announcement update that goes out to our church. And, uh, you know, I think you're really missing a huge opportunity. Email is another one of those channels that as a church you get to own, this is that nobody has real control over your reach. Yeah. Uh, you actually have control of it when you're sending emails out to people there. So get a great broadcast email client, whether it's constant contact or MailChimp, or one of those, and start to think about how can I do weekly updates for people. And then here's the real key one is how are we emailing people that have expressed some kind of engagement in our church? Are we asking people that visit our website or our social media for their email address to join our email list so that we can start to communicate with them? Yeah. That's really where it's valuable because a repeat visitor on Instagram or on TikTok, it's really hard to get them. You don't have any control over whether some, whether you show up in someone's TikTok feed again. Right. Right. But you do have control if you get their email address, if you're able to proactively reach out to them and talk to them that way. So, uh, I think email is something that is not dead. It is just as valuable because you have that level of control over Speaker 4 00:14:23 It. Yeah. Yeah. And, and I'm glad that you touched on, you know, capturing someone's email address from your website or, or, um, just capturing email addresses, because that has been something we've seen an increase since the pandemic, when communication was accelerated based on the, the circumstances then. So, um, I've seen it a lot more on, um, church's websites seeing where they have, you know, sign up for updates or newsletter, um, all of that. So, um, it's been good to see churches up their game a bit there, so yeah. Yeah. Next one. I'll get here and this is not a tried and true. One, one that's a little bit newer. Um, but I think it's proving to be true as it's being tried and that's text messaging. So goods from email to text messaging is a newer ministry marketing idea, but it's crazy. We saw a stat that shows that a text message has a 90% open rate, uh, 98, 90 8% rather, uh, open rate. Speaker 4 00:15:18 So, uh, compared to email, that's huge. And so people, when, you know, they're used to texting back and forth for communication. When you get a text, you're gonna see it. You're gonna open it. Even if you click stop, if it is, there is some spaming, there is more spaming going on now with, uh, with texting, but less compared to email. And, and, uh, and I think it's just, it's something for reminders, announcements. It could be viewed as a little more personal, um, as well, mm-hmm, <affirmative>, uh, compared to email and, and that's, I think where you gotta be careful, would you agree? I mean, if, cuz it is personal, you want to be careful about how you text someone and how much and all of that. Uh, but it is, it is definitely more personable and people open 'em more. Speaker 0 00:16:01 Yeah. We just did a, uh, episode a few weeks ago about, uh, text messaging for churches. And we are strong believers in that there are some caveats on, on how you do it. But yeah, I was floored by that statistic that 98% of them are opened for some perspective. Uh, if you don't know a good email, open rate is 30% or so. So if 30% of your emails are opened, you're getting 98% of your text message messages that are opened up that's that's off the charts. Fantastic. That's crazy. Speaker 4 00:16:27 Yeah. Speaker 0 00:16:28 Um, and I think about my thing, like just this week I got this weird, I think years and years ago, Ian, you and I, we ordered some, uh, some like we did an order of like some jerseys from China. Uh, and we put in that order, there probably outing ourselves as, uh, as people that are ordering counterfeit goods here, but we ordered some football jerseys from China. We did like a mass order. And just this week I got a text message from them saying, Hey, we have these new jerseys in stock. And I'm like, I need to put an end to this. I've been getting these. They don't do it very often, but like every six months they'll send me a text message outta the blue, but you know what, I opened it. I still opened the, even though I knew it was spam, I still opened it and click on it and I responded stop Hopely that works. Speaker 0 00:17:10 And they don't just put me on even more lists because I did that there. But yeah, it, it is something that is really valuable now, how do churches use it again? I think when you get people's phone numbers, usually it's going to be, this is more in the assimilation process, which I think is still part of outreach and marketing. Yeah. Someone's been there for the first time. Right. That doesn't mean they're members of your church yet. Yeah. They may leave. Yeah. Text messaging is a really important way for you to start to build some of those relationships and any way you could make that, not just an automated text, but some kind of like a personal message where it feels like it's coming from the pastor or someone on the staff at the church. I think that goes a long way. So yeah, definitely something that's really valuable. Speaker 0 00:17:50 Uh, check out our episode about text messaging for churches. We did a deep dive into this for some ins and outs on that. So some more info there. Yeah. Uh, next one, uh, we have kind of touched on this a little bit, but we'll get into it. Social media is a very valuable marketing strategy for churches right now. I think that it is something that every church should be engaged in. Uh, I think that I wanna focus in this conversation cuz we've had many episodes on how to use social media and how to use specific channels. I think the emphasis I want to put on this one is on the social aspect of social media. Yeah. It needs to be something that you're engaged with social. Here's what I see a lot of churches doing is they'll use social media as a place to put announcements for their church. Speaker 0 00:18:36 Yeah. So here's, what's happening. Here's what's coming up and it's good. You should put, you should put your announcements on there, but if that's the only post that you put on there, it will lose its value. Yeah. And then the next level is that I see churches they'll start to put their announcements and then they'll also do things to just kind of engage with people. So they'll maybe have some fun conversations or a sermon clip or yeah. They'll ask people what their favorite ice cream flavor is and why some of those, and that's, that's even better. Sure. But I think where it really has to, you have to shine is in the social component, right. Where you're getting in there and dialoging with people on their comments and you're reaching out to other channels on social media and really engaging with people that way you need to have a dedicated champion in your church that does that. Because if that's, if the commenting and the social component is just left up to everybody, it's not gonna ever work out that way. So dedicate someone on your church staff and your, on your team there paid or not dedicate someone to being the one that's in charge with interaction to making social media social. I think that will go a long Speaker 4 00:19:41 Way. Yeah. It takes a little creativity and, and taking some initiative. One of the things I've actually always loved when churches do it with social media is like sharing a testimony someone's story, um, you know, story of how their life was changed, uh, there at the church or in some way, because the cool social aspect is that, you know, not only will people see that story, they can comment, they can share, they can share it on with others and makes a testimony even more powerful when people can do that. So that's one of the things I've, I've liked seeing churches do other than, like you said, just events and announcements. That's good. Yep. So good stuff. Well, good. I'll get the next one. That's uh, let's not forget traditional media, uh, or I'm sorry, ministry marketing ideas. Um, so, you know, I, we don't believe that newspapers magazines, radio television is, is totally dead, uh, or even billboards. Speaker 4 00:20:32 My church still uses a billboard that's effective, um, off of, of, uh, the north part of the highway that is up the road from our church. We've gotten a lot of visitors from that. Um, so, uh, now some of these things can be pretty expensive and, and you gotta keep that in mind when you look into 'em. But, uh, I think still being in the local newspaper, um, you know, maybe getting a radio clip, uh, somewhere can still be effective. I mean, I, I think we're seeing, obviously we've seen in recent years, uh, more digital and online marketing being more effective, but these things are still out there and still can be utilized. Speaker 0 00:21:09 Yeah. The nice thing about digital marketing is you can get very specific with who you're targeting and who your audience is. Whereas these traditional media methods, whether they be billboards or television commercials or newspaper ads, you just hit everybody. Right? Yeah. So you don't have any control over who drives by, I mean, I guess it's people, if they're driving by your neck of the woods, well, there might be a good candidate to be coming to your church, but sure. You know, your church, for instance, if you have a, a billboard, is it on I fives or on, uh, I I, 35, 35. They're still, yeah. Yeah. Mm-hmm <affirmative> so I'm 35. And so, you know, I don't know that a lot of truckers, uh, that are driving by I 35 are gonna be stopping by and those things, but there's a lot of commuters that are, so you're reaching a lot of people that you probably won't be able to re uh, to minister to long term, whereas yeah. Speaker 0 00:21:55 Digital marketing methods, they let you get laser focused right. On the exact right audience, but who the targeting, I think that there is still a lot of, a lot to be said for some of these traditional methods. Uh, I probably wouldn't be looking at newspaper or yellow pages or sure. Um, even television ads, you know, you, and I know I, that we started out as a company that helped churches doing TV commercials. Uh, we, right. We did a lot of that kind of work there. And there was a time when that made a lot of sense because yeah, that was one of the best ways to reach a large audience. But I think it's just too cost prohibitive now. Uh, but I, I think one thing is that, um, like small scale, uh, billboards or like print ads, like for instance, I know that reach, right. We, that rewrite, we sponsored or one of the sponsors on your son's baseball team. Right. So you have, we had our, our logo up on the sign there. Yeah. I think for a church, what a great idea. If you could sponsor local baseball, football teams, local high schools, those kinds of things, you can get names on jerseys. I mean, what an amazing thing you can do to kind of build your brand awareness, but I would always be thinking about that more as big branding plays. Right. So, and what I mean by that? Speaker 4 00:23:04 Not an instant. Yeah. Speaker 0 00:23:05 Yeah. It's not like someone sees that and says, I gotta get there this weekend. Yeah. Yeah. But what they do is that it kind of puts your church at the top of people's minds. Yeah. And when they think they get to that point in their life, when they're saying, you know, we need to get to church, yours is the one that they think of that they think of connecting at your church there. So, uh, if their marriage is in a rough place and they've been fighting a lot and they say, you know what, we probably ought to try, uh, checking out a church there. Yours will be the one that comes to mind first. So that's, I think the value of some of these, uh, big, uh, media minister or, you know, doing old media ads, those kinds of things. Yeah. That's where those would really shine. I would say. Speaker 4 00:23:44 I agree. I agree. Speaker 0 00:23:46 All right. Next one. Number eight is print materials and there is a caveat to this, uh, print is by itself. Not probably not a great method, but print materials with QR codes. That's kind of the key to this one here. Uh, using QR codes. I went to a church plant just recently. They're opening Sunday, uh, and great church. They're really killing it. They're in a small town, not too far from me here. Uh, and they used QR codes for everything, but they had one QR code, but here's what I loved about it is that every single thing that the guest services people did, they had QR codes on it. They had t-shirts that had a big QR code right on the front there that a visitor could scan right. On their chest and on Speaker 4 00:24:29 Their Mac, on their Speaker 0 00:24:30 Chest. Yeah. If they were there for the first time. So it's a little bit funny. If you go up to a Speaker 4 00:24:33 Girl that is take, take a picture Speaker 0 00:24:34 Of her like that it's a little bit weird, but they did it that way. And they, they put QR codes there. Uh, and that QR code led to their, their visitor form that people could put in their name. Yeah. Their phone number, their email address, and kind of sign up. And then the church could then use that for email and text messaging and doing some of those kinds of things there. But that is an I, when we talk about print, think really broadly. So t-shirts are a form of print, uh, and lanyards that, uh, that your ushers wear, that's a form of print. And those cards that say you are welcome here, that people wave, right. That's a form of print. Uh, yeah. So all of these different places are places you can print your ads. And this is stuff that's mostly on Sunday morning, right. Speaker 0 00:25:16 But using QR coach people to engage, that's really valuable. I'd say even if your church was the type that was gonna send out, uh, or do door hangers or do a mailing, which I don't think is a very cost effective way to do outreach and marketing nowadays. Right. But if you were so inclined to do that and had to do that, you'd be, it'd be a big mistake to not include a QR code on there so that people can immediately respond and react and jump in and, uh, get involved with things that way. So I think that's a good idea. Speaker 4 00:25:44 And, and low and behold digital is helping keep, uh, print alive. So there you go in that, with that example there. So that's good. Well, last but not least I'll tackle this one, uh, community involvement be involved in your community. I think every church knows they should be doing that anyway. It's not about just, uh, inviting all the time within the four walls and to your church service. We want that, of course, but be out there involved, it shows that you care. Uh, and it's another way of marketing and branding yourself. If you're out there during, uh, food drives and clothing giveaways, and, um, whatever it would be local events. If you're out there just handing out water bottles that, uh, I know that would come in handy right now during this Texas heat in the summer. Uh, you know, if you're out there doing that and, and, uh, and maybe you're doing that with a QR code on your t-shirt, uh, there you go, you know, that's, that's effective, but you know, there's all sorts of things too. Like, you know, um, not just community events, but being on certain boards in the city and being involved in your local community, there's a lot of things you could be doing. So, Speaker 0 00:26:49 Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. And I think that it's, uh, I think we touched on youth sports. I think that is one of the biggest things for a lot of churches. What do we hear churches tell us all the time when we ask them that question. Yeah. Who are you trying to reach? They're gonna say young families. Right. And what do young families do? They're engaged and involved with sports in your community there. So I think that is a great way that every church should find any way they can to be involved with youth sports leagues. Yeah. Whether it be coaching or sponsoring or helping in any way or yeah. Putting out cookouts, those kinds of things, all those things would be really great. But yeah. Um, you cannot overlook those things. I think that is more important. And it's what our community's long for. Yeah. Cause they want a church that isn't just come to our building. Yeah. But they're out there and engaged and connecting with people and actually making the community a better place. So what Speaker 4 00:27:34 Did Billy Graham say? Uh, but they don't care about how much, you know, until they know how much you care. Right. Speaker 0 00:27:40 Yep. Tried and true. That's Speaker 4 00:27:41 A good, that's a good way to, to end that. So Speaker 0 00:27:43 That's it. That's good. So, well, hopefully this has been helpful to you guys. That's just nine ideas or things that you can be focusing in. Some certain areas that we would recommend that churches be focusing on here in 2022. Uh, if this has been helpful to you, it would mean so much to us. If you would rate, review, subscribe, give us a, like a comment, all of those things that helps us to get the word out there and do our marketing and outreach, to be able to help more people help more churches like yours. So yeah. Thank you guys so much for being a part of the reach, right. Family. And we hope to 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 online at reach, right studios.com. If this episode has been helpful to you, it would mean the world to us. If you would rate, review and subscribe on iTunes or wherever you get your podcasts. Thanks again for listening. And we'll see you next week.

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