Episode Transcript
Speaker 0 00:00:00 One of the best opportunities that churches have every summer to reach people is a vacation Bible school or a V B S. It's a great chance for you to reach families and children and share the gospel with them. And in this conversation we're gonna unpack some of the tips and tricks that we've learned to best promote your church's V b s. Let's do this. You are listening to the Reach right podcast, the show dedicated to helping your church reach more people and grow. Hey guys, I'm Thomas.
Speaker 2 00:00:32 And I'm Ian.
Speaker 0 00:00:33 And today we're talking about Vacation Bible School and how your church can promote your VBS and get more families to sign up and more kids to show up. I think it's gonna be a good conversation. Ian, did you grow up going to vbs?
Speaker 2 00:00:47 Yeah, I, well, not on a regular basis. Uh, as you know, my story, uh, didn't grow up in a Christian home, but I was drugged by some friends who were Christians and some neighbors that cared about me, and, uh, think I got kicked out of it one summer, but, uh, but hey, here we are now following the Lord, doing better, but I had some experience with them Yes. And <laugh>. Yes.
Speaker 0 00:01:08 That's good. My experience, I never went as a kid. It just wasn't even something I was aware of or wasn't on my radar. Usually it's on parents radars and kids get signed up for it. But it's something that my church growing up never really offered, and it wasn't something I even heard about. I fell in love with it, though, as a parent, uh, especially a parent of young kids because Yeah. Uh, an elementary age kids, when summertime comes around Yes. And they're in the house all the time and all of the challenges that come with that, getting 'em out of the house for a week is a beautiful thing. And then
Speaker 2 00:01:39 Oh, yeah.
Speaker 0 00:01:40 On top of that, they're learning about Jesus and growing in their faith and Yep. While it may not have worked for you and your faith as a child, <laugh>, maybe the, maybe the seeds were planted, I guess they planted, I was
Speaker 2 00:01:49 Gonna say, a couple of seeds were planted. All right. Planted.
Speaker 0 00:01:51 Planted, and then future. It was watered in the future and it was
Speaker 2 00:01:55 Waters
Speaker 0 00:01:55 Harvested much later. <laugh>. Yes,
Speaker 2 00:01:57 That's <laugh>.
Speaker 0 00:01:59 But, uh, it's, it's something that's been dear to my heart. And so I know so many of our, uh, people that are in our audience, I'm sure that they do vacation Bible school, or at least they've thought about doing a vbs. And, um, I think that one of the things that maybe makes people hesitant about it, some of these vacation Bible schools, they're like, just, they're already at capacity. They can't get any more kids. Right. But for most people, there is some room and you'd like to have a successful one. And that's maybe something that makes people hesitant about doing a VBS is will anybody even show up? And so, yeah. Today because we do digital marketing and communications for churches, this is what we specialize in. We wanna talk about how a church might go about better promoting your VBS this year. And it all comes from a question that we got, right? So I dunno if you want to tackle that and share the question. Yeah,
Speaker 2 00:02:44 Yeah. We, we got this question, uh, that came in here. Our church is planning a vacation Bible school this summer. We really want to reach as many families as possible. Do you have any specific strategies or tips for promoting our VBS effectively both in our congregation and br and the broader community? So I like that they included both of those.
Speaker 0 00:03:05 Yeah. I think that's really important. Like, so the, yeah. The audience, I think in, when you start out thinking about this, you have to remember that if the audience is just your church and the children within your church, um, you know, you'll probably get a pretty decent signup rate if you're not on vacation. Yeah. I imagine that you'll want your kids to go to your church's vacation Bible school. Yeah. Um, but the, the key is, is that we have to broaden our horizons. And I think that's the thing for all marketing. Whenever we talk to churches about anything that we do remember, the target of our marketing is not typically our church members. Right. It's for people that are not yet a part of our church here. Yeah. So, uh, that really is the key is how do we reach our broader community. So, um, I'll kick us off, uh, and we have a list of, I think, eight different ideas we came up with for how to do this.
Speaker 0 00:03:50 And we'll just kind of go back and forth on them. The first thing I think is you need to get your website ready for it right away. Uh, so this needs to be something that is front and center on your website. And so, to start off though, I wanna make clear, we do not ever recommend churches doing a those rotating banners or slideshow as your main graphic on your homepage. Right. That doesn't belong there. But I think that there is a case to be made for a few events per year warranting some kind of a popup or Right. A slide out that comes up just to grab people's attention. Yeah. So maybe not like one of those invasive popups that pop up several other windows or something like that. But if you, I know something that we do for a lot of churches is kind of a slider that it'll come down and, and cover things.
Speaker 0 00:04:38 So churches will use this for weather cancellations or their Easter and Good Friday services, their Christmas services, but I think Vacation Bible School is another reason to do something like that. You don't want it up for weeks or months or anything like that, but for maybe for a week, um, just having that pop up for anybody that gets on their website that they see a big vacation Bible school registration, um, banner, it would link them off to a place where they can get signed up. And you have to make that pivot to online registrations if you haven't already. Um, you definitely want to do that if you're doing this on your site. Um, you know, obviously church members, they can easily sign up in person, but if you really wanna reach your community, they rarely will come to your church to fill out a piece of paper Right. To sign up for an event online. So you have to get that online.
Speaker 2 00:05:26 Yeah. Yeah. I, I'm glad that you said that, that just make it easy for them to click, make them, make it visible. Yep. Uh, and make it easy for them to be one click away to sign up. People want fast convenience for that. And, uh, and I'm also glad, Thomas, that you mentioned it doesn't need to be on a big slider rotating thing that, uh, again, the homepage of your website where 85 people for, I'm sorry, we're 85%, hopefully more than 85 people, 85% of people will end up, uh, before they attend your church. First you need to be giving them a real feel of who your church is, how they fit in, but yes, make it also very visible for them to, to sign up. So that's a good one. That's a good one. So when the next one I'll get social media, obviously push this out on social media, make sure, yeah.
Speaker 2 00:06:10 Um, social media though, there's a lot of other strategies, not just shouldn't all be event promotion, but that is where your folks will see it. Um, you know, you can even, uh, I know some churches pay for Yeah. They pay for social media advertising, they can advertise it that way mm-hmm. <affirmative>. Um, but yeah, make sure that you're pushing it out on your social media. And here's a real good opportunity with that is that on social media, you can also share a lot of photos, kids having a great time, maybe it was the VBS summer before and, um, and just having, promoting what the experience is gonna be like and um, yeah. That can make it a really exciting to people.
Speaker 0 00:06:45 I think that social media is in a really great season right now to promote something like a vacation Bible school, especially with the short form vertical video format. Yes. Because I think the thing to remember again about this is that it is, it is not directed to members of your church. These short form videos are not even directed to people that follow you on most accounts. There, they'll have a, a slightly higher likelihood of seeing your video, but platforms like TikTok, Instagram reels, Facebook reels, YouTube shorts, they are all designed based on like a discovery algorithm. Yes. That shows your content. And there is a local bent to that. So obviously Vacation Bible School is going to be local kids that will be going to it. And so if you want to target local moms and dads and people in your area using short form video is a great idea.
Speaker 0 00:07:37 I love the idea you just shared about using photos. I think what you do is you turn those photos into some of those really fast-paced kind of videos where maybe they have really catchy music and you kind of zoom in on different kids having a great time at vacation Bible school, other video formats, uh, you know, doing other kinds of videos of last year's vacation Bible school or just your children's ministry happening there. I think that's gonna make for a really great content and to what you were saying about you don't want it to be overly promotional. That's the great thing about photos is you don't even need to, you don't even need to like promote and get on there and say, Hey, why don't you come on down to vacation Bible School, it's June 10th through 15th, or, yeah, well you don't have to do all of that.
Speaker 0 00:08:16 You just let the photos or the video do the talking. That's right. You let you do the talking imagery and video of kids caught in the act having a great time during vacation Bible school last year, or doing during kids' ministry. I think that will do a better job than any talking head promoting a specific event will ever do. So let the, and you know, you'll have to have some details on there, put that in the, of course, in the actual body of the, uh, of the event there. But just let the, let the photos do the story.
Speaker 2 00:08:46 Yep. No, that's good. Why don't you get the next one.
Speaker 0 00:08:48 Yeah. Next one is, uh, you wanna get it out in your email newsletter. You wanna get it out early in your email newsletter because you have to remember that families are planning vacations and sports goes all summer long for a lot of families. Yeah. So you want to get on that as early as possible. Uh, so it probably is late right now if you're just considering, we should put this in our email newsletter. Um, this is, uh, we're recording this here in early June. Not sure when you're watching this actual episode, but as of right now, it's probably late for 2023. Uh, but you still do want to get it, if you haven't had your vacation Bible school, you haven't promoted it yet, it's also a great chance for you to start to build up your volunteer base. And we all know that it takes dozens of volunteers Yes. To do a really great vacation Bible school and getting, uh, members of your church involved with that. So you wanna get that email out early, you wanna make sure that it's engaging. Um, I would encourage you to use that email to link to some of those videos we were talking about earlier and do some of that kind of stuff. So, um, yeah. Get on your email there.
Speaker 2 00:09:47 Yeah, that's good. This next one, some churches may miss, and it could be a great opportunity, is, uh, get with c communities, uh, part community partnerships. Yeah. Um, so this could be with local businesses, schools, community centers, you know, maybe, uh, them allowing, uh, you to put flyers there to promote it for them to get it out on, uh, things there that a lot of communities, um, can get behind this. A lot of businesses in the community, a lot of org community organizations may have no, uh, problem promoting that. Um, yeah. So, yeah.
Speaker 0 00:10:19 Well, so I, I know that there's so many families that struggle in this season. In the summer months you have two working parents and you have elementary or preschool aged kids, and typically they're in school in this time and now they're not because it's summertime. And so I think this is a great way just to kind of get the word out there. There are people that w that are fighting for things to do with their kids over the summer and to have good wholesome activities like this, it really is just kind of a no-brainer for so many families. So yes, getting in, in front of businesses, I think community center places where they do, uh, community type events and kids are hanging out there, that's the exact kind of place where you wanna make sure you get this, uh, this info, uh, you wanna get this info out there.
Speaker 2 00:11:02 Yeah. That's good. Awesome.
Speaker 0 00:11:04 Uh, next one should be obvious, but personal invites, I think equipping people within your church to invite people, again, back to this idea that there's lots of parents that are desperate for things their kids can do over the summer. Right. Well, nobody knows that better than the moms within your church, uh, who are Right. You know, wrestling with, uh, how to keep their kids engaged and things over the summer. They have other mom friends, other
Speaker 2 00:11:27 Moms that are going through the same struggle. Yes.
Speaker 0 00:11:29 Yeah, exactly. So, personal invites are important. So I think what a church can do is give people opportunities to do that. So maybe you make, uh, social posts that are easy for people to share with just the details of it so they can shoot it over and share to a friend. Maybe print out physical invite cards that someone can hand to a, a, a friend or another mom at a play date, something like that. They can give these away. But I think the biggest thing you can do is just talk about it from the front and have people pray about maybe who they'd want to invite or extend an invitation to that way. So just getting people to think about people they can invite helps them to get over that hurdle. So yeah, I think personal invite should be obvious, but there are some things you can do strategically to help kind of move the needle on that.
Speaker 2 00:12:13 Yeah. Again, it's how I was invited as a kid from a neighbor. I may have gotten kicked out, but I was still invited that when came, so. Yep. Um, but, uh, yeah, so next one, uh, registration incentives, um, maybe early bird discounts, um, special gifts for people that register early, that does create a little bit of urgency for people to sign up. I know my church, which is very event based, uh, we do this for a lot of events, uh, that, you know, that, you know, where we have a cost to it is an early bird special mm-hmm. <affirmative> and it seems to, it seems to work fairly well. So
Speaker 0 00:12:47 I, I joke cuz there's a running joke we have here with, uh, some, some churches just seem to, uh, charge, uh, a lot for events. It seems like <laugh> and, uh, it's a running joke we have here that Ian's church, uh, does seem to do that a little bit. But, um, yeah. Anyway, I think that, um, the, if you are going to charge, and that's an if I would say I, I would, um, if you could, if there's any way you could not charge or charge a very low amount, if you can't small, I would fight tooth and nail to do that. Right. Uh, because I think this is something that you want, it's a chance for you to share the gospel with kids and to charge for that. It, yeah. I know that there's expenses you have to feed kids and do those things.
Speaker 0 00:13:26 There's lots that goes with it, but if you can make it so you don't have to charge, that would be great. If you do charge a couple of things, I would recommend number one, like you were saying, Ian, offer an early bird discount if you register, you know, by a month before the actual event. Yeah. Then it is, uh, a discount on that. Uh, I would also offer, uh, opportunities for people that are not a part of your church. I would try to make discounts available or make it free for people that are not members and have people that are a part of your church bear a lot of the cost on those kinds of things there. Yeah. I just think it's a good practice, uh, to engage people and you want to remove any barrier that anybody possibly could have to having their kids here in the gospel at your vacation bible Indeed.
Speaker 0 00:14:08 School there. Indeed. So, um, yeah, totally agreed. Anything you can do. So anyway, uh, next one, uh, promo video. Um, we talked a little bit about, uh, some of the videos that you can share in short form, uh, for this promo video. We're thinking something that isn't necessarily long, uh, but I think the best kind of promo video is, uh, it's gonna be ones that are full of stories and video of what happened last time. Uh, so the last time we did a vacation Bible school, and again, it's video of kids caught in the act mm-hmm. <affirmative> having a blast and hearing about Jesus at vacation Bible School. That's what tells the story there for us. Yeah. So, um, you're gonna put this kind of video on platforms like YouTube, uh, and you want to be able to probably, you'll probably wanna run this in one of your Sunday services. You'll wanna run this video Yeah. To get people excited about it. You'll probably want to do this before today. This is, again, we're recording this in early June. You'll probably have done this video back in May or sometime earlier, before the summer started. Uh, but you'll want to get something like that, uh, on there so that people can just kind of engage and get excited about the actual event. And video is a great tool to do that.
Speaker 2 00:15:19 Indeed, indeed. And, um, I'm excited about this last one to bring this home here because, uh, this is the, I think really what it's all about. And that is share testimonials and success stories from your vbs. I mean, we've mentioned what you just said, it was a good segue as far as kids caught in the act. Um, you know, all of that. I think we can often get in this, uh, hamster and a wheel kind of effect thinking that yeah, we've done vbs and it it's just a way for us to babysit, uh, you know, um, kids, uh, and parents who wanna break from their kids. Uh, and you know what, there are gonna be people that take advantage of that, but I will tell you that I know that it's just, I've heard it from churches. Um, I've seen it that we were joking about how even though I may have gotten kicked out of EBS as a kid, there were seeds planted.
Speaker 2 00:16:06 Yeah. I did remember a good experience, remembered the church down the road and some of the bible verses and the things that we did that, that were in my memory years later mm-hmm. <affirmative> that, you know, uh, that where God finally, eventually watered that. And I will say for other churches, don't forget if you're doing a good job of this and they are hearing the gospel, you know, this is something, even if the parents don't come the next week, they, that kid a month later might be missing church. Yeah. And he might be, he might be telling his, uh, parents and, and then a parent and then a, the family comes and, and gets led to Jesus. Well, isn't that an amazing success story that you can share? Testimonials, success stories, maybe it's from kids themselves, uh, too that have been impacted, so, um, could be really impactful.
Speaker 0 00:16:52 Yeah, I think you're dead on with that, Ian. I think just testimonials are so powerful and that would be probably the foundation of all of the other promotional things that we would do for a vacation Bible school is telling the stories of kids that have been impacted and parents that have been blessed. I think that's the two, um, kind of avenues you can go with that. So Absolutely. I think you're dead on with that. Yeah. Good stuff. Uh, anything to add as we close up?
Speaker 2 00:17:16 No, just, uh, be encouraged to, you know, don't, don't just, uh, get in a rut with it or a routine. If you've done it again, many churches have done this for years. What else can maybe hopefully this encourage you for some, some different things you can do to, uh, vamp this up? Yeah. This summer. That's what we hope.
Speaker 0 00:17:32 Yeah, absolutely. So if this has been helpful to you, it would mean a lot to us if you would rate, review, uh, subscribe, do all those things. Uh, all of the questions that we talk about, we like to pull those from our audience and comments that people leave. So if you're watching on any platform, whether it's on our website or on YouTube or you're listening on our site, uh, let us know down in the comments, is there something that you have a question about? Or do you have anything that works for your church when it comes to promoting your V B S that we didn't mention here? We'd love to hear about that. But any questions at all, let us know down in the comments and we'll catch you next time. See you.
