Episode Transcript
Speaker 0 00:00:00 For most churches, your Christmas Eve service is the second most attended service of the entire year. After only Easter, you put a lot of effort into it, but today we want to talk about how you can promote your Christmas Eve service. We hope this conversation helps your church reach more people and grow. This is the read-write 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 2 00:00:50 I'm ready to get.
Speaker 0 00:00:55 Hey guys, welcome to the retry podcast. Episode number 76. I am your host Thomas Costello. And with me as always is my cohost Ian
Speaker 3 00:01:04 Hyatt. Hey Thomas, Merry
Speaker 0 00:01:06 Christmas, Merry Christmas to you too, man. Looking forward, we're getting closer and closer. The day is nigh. Uh, Christmas is close here. So, uh, in that spirit, we'll be talking today about eight ways to promote your Christmas Eve service. Uh, last week we talked about how you can, uh, you can put, make Christmas happen on your website, what your church website, how you can make some improvements there to make it more Christmas ish. Uh, today we were talking specifically about promoting your Christmas Eve service. Uh, it is one of the most important services for most churches every year, other than other than Easter. It is the second most attended service. Uh, and it happens at night and it's for most churches. It's a kind of a special day. I think it's falling on a Saturday this year. If I'm right. I think Christmas is on a Sunday if I remember right. I think most churches do not have Christmas service if service, uh, do you guys have Christmas day service? If it falls on a Sunday? We do. But
Speaker 3 00:02:04 Of course being the size church, we, we are there. We're going to have a lot of different Christmas Eve service options.
Speaker 0 00:02:10 Yeah. I, I have never been to a church service on Christmas in my life. Even when it falls on a Sunday, I wouldn't do one. And I imagine most of our audience probably doesn't do it, but
Speaker 3 00:02:21 I maybe I may missed what you said. No, we would not have it on Christmas. No, it would be no, we wouldn't do that. Yeah.
Speaker 0 00:02:26 So when Christmas falls on a Sunday, you wouldn't have a Christmas day service. I wouldn't think so. So yeah. And you know, I think that you have the Christmas Eve service that usually that is something that people have the tradition of doing there. So, uh, we think it's super important and it is a great thing to promote online. And so today we put some ideas together on how we have experienced promoting Christmas Eve services online, and some of the things that you can do to start doing that. So, uh, why don't you go ahead and, uh, and kick us off here with the first one. Yeah, first one's a good
Speaker 3 00:02:59 One to start with, let people know early, get on it. We talked about that in the last, uh, last week's episode, you know, don't procrastinate, um, right after Thanksgiving is, you know, right when December starting is usually a good time to start promoting it. Um, give people time, people will be looking, uh, that we'll be looking as soon as you know, Thanksgiving is over. Some people are looking even before Thanksgiving. Uh, we were joking about people decorating before Thanksgiving to, uh, last week. But, but yeah, I think don't procrastinate. Get it out there, get it online, get it on your website. Um, get the word out there, start promoting it early. Um, and I think that's often missed because everyone's, we're always so focused. There's a lot of stuff to do internally at the church to production-wise get ready for and everything else. So don't forget about promoting an online, uh, as soon as possible.
Speaker 0 00:03:49 I think part of the reason why we miss it sometimes is because it's something that we do every year, right? So if you've been pastoring a church for any length of time or leading a church, or maybe you're on staff at a church, you've probably been doing Christmas Eve services. You did one last year and the year before and well, maybe you didn't do one last year and the pandemic season, but yeah, you have a history of doing Christmas Eve services. People have come to expect them. And so if you're a, if you pastor a church, that's the first United Methodist church or the first Baptist church you've been doing Christmas Eve services for 75 years at this church. And nothing has really, even if nothing really changes, it's still something that you want to make sure you get out there. And the reason for that is because it helps people to start to plan accordingly.
Speaker 0 00:04:31 Like, so maybe, uh, they probably already know about it. They have it in the back of their head that, yeah, we're probably going to go to Christmas Eve service. But if you get that out there on that first week of December, you know, I guess this podcast episode is coming out the third week of December. So it's probably a little late for this already, but if you haven't started, you need to like hit pause on this episode right now and start doing some of these things we're going to talk about, I guess you can't hit pause cause you don't know what the things are going to be, but you need to start promoting this right away. I think here in the third week of December, but I think what it is is it helps people think through their plans for Christmas. So everybody's families, they change maybe families coming in this year, maybe they're going somewhere. Right. It helps you to think it helps you to think about who you might invite, helps you to think about whether or not grandma wants to come. Some of those kinds of things. So just getting it out there and start talking about it in announcements the earlier the better anytime after Thanksgiving, I think is fair game. Yep, absolutely. Cool. Uh, next one is, choose a theme. Uh, it's important each year, uh, because I think that Christmas Eve services have this way of feeling like they're the same every single year together. Uh, we
Speaker 3 00:05:43 Just roll just a candlelight service
Speaker 0 00:05:45 Candle, light, silent night, uh, camo Comey, manual a message about the birth of Jesus and then go home and yeah, you're going to do all those things. Probably all those they're going to sing. Probably 90% of churches are going to sing silent night on Christmas Eve. It's
Speaker 0 00:06:02 Nothing wrong with that. But I think you miss an opportunity if you don't make it feel distinct each year, year in and year out. And again, the story of the birth of Jesus, it's going to be, if you've been pastoring for any length of time, you've told this story, you've read these scriptures before, but it's important to really key in, on some new aspect of it or something that is an aspect maybe that you didn't talk about last year. Maybe there's a key phrase or maybe there's a line from a Christmas Carol that you want to hone in on and show where it comes from from scripture. Or maybe you're going to talk about the wise man, you're going to talk about Mary. Did you know, we talked about last week or whatever, that would be key in on that. And it gives it a sense of freshness and it makes people kind of start to anticipate it more and expect something, not just their standard Christmas Eve service, but something that will be standard, but at the same time fresh, I think that's what's important. Right?
Speaker 3 00:06:56 Yeah. I like that. It's kind of like a good sermon series, right? I mean, if, if you're always just, you know, just don't have a series, not that you have to be a series oriented a church or do series or whatever, but it's the same kind of concept, make it fresh, make it unique. And that might actually be the difference in someone checking your church out compared to the other one, near them, if they don't belong to a church yet, you know, if your team's a little more interesting to them, then they're going to maybe check you out. So I like, yeah,
Speaker 0 00:07:26 Yeah. The next one is actually a great way for you to go ahead and hit it, but it's a great way to make that. Interesting. So why don't you hit that for us?
Speaker 3 00:07:31 Uh, graphic, just like a sermon series graphic, right? That if you have a sermon series, it's not as exciting without a graphic that goes along with it. So, um, you know, if it's married, did you know, you know, find a Mary image with question mark over head or something. I don't know, cheesy joke, but uh, but yeah, you know, make it exciting, make it appealing, make it pop, you know, people are visual. Um, this nothing has changed, uh, online. They're impatient. You want to grab their attention. So make it pop if you, especially if you have a theme.
Speaker 0 00:08:01 Yeah, absolutely. I think that a graphic is, uh, it's especially important for digital marketing, uh, because when you're putting out your Christmas Eve service, you're putting it out there. You always want to have something graphical, not just say Christmas Eve at first Baptist, click here. You know, you need something that people see to inspire them to click on it, to go deeper, to introduce that theme. Uh, so if you don't have one already, you need a Christmas Eve service theme to graphic that goes along with that. There, I think that that is, I mean the click rates are at, I don't have a stat for you right now, but it is night and day difference between a, uh, an, an invitation with a graphic and an invitation that's just text a totally, totally different. So, uh, spend the time, there are some great solutions on how to make that.
Speaker 0 00:08:49 If you're kind of stuck on that, I think the easiest way for churches with little to no experience in graphic design, or if you don't have someone on your team there, Canva is a great way to do that. And we're not sponsored by them or anything, but canva.com. You could even do a free account. You might want to even put a couple of things in there that cost a dollar or two, but it is a piece of cake to make anything. And the great thing is they're already have a whole bunch of Christmas themed templates ready to go for just about anything you can imagine Christmas related there. So they probably have something you change around a little bit of the text. You put some service times in there, some of those kinds of things, and you're ready to rock and roll. Yeah,
Speaker 3 00:09:27 That's good.
Speaker 0 00:09:28 Yep. Cool. Uh, next one is build a Christmas Eve landing page. Uh, we talked last week about landing pages for Christmas in general. I think at Christmas Eve specific landing page, that is all about the event, uh, that service time or times if you have multiple services there, the location, the theme, uh, some, maybe even some frequently asked questions because this is one of the times that a lot of visitors will come to your church. If you can pull off like a welcome video or a Christmas themed little video for this landing page that helps someone reduce their apprehension before they show up for the first time. I think that would go a long way. But yeah, just introduce all that kind of information. And FAQ is really great here. I think too. Cause you can answer like, you know, how do people dress when they show up at these Christmas Eve services? Cause I dunno, some churches are more dressy then than they are on normal Sunday mornings. Some are not some people come in their Christmas pajamas to church. I don't know. Maybe you guys do all kinds of different things. Maybe it's a Christmas sweater.
Speaker 3 00:10:27 I was about to say that I was about to say that Ken, someone where they're ugly Christmas sweater or whatever. So
Speaker 0 00:10:34 Yeah, I think just, uh, answering some of those kinds of questions that people may have before they show up. I think that would be really, uh, something that's important. Um, yeah. So anything that,
Speaker 3 00:10:45 Uh, it might go well on a, if your church does invite cards, you know, um, putting that landing page URL on there. So your church's website slash Christmas Eve, um, you know, if that's an initiative you're taking, I know sometimes my church does that for certain events and things that we're doing. Have we have invite cards ready to go. Um, you know, out the back of that, we're going to talk a little bit more about that here in a minute, but I think that the landing page on an invite card or on your promotional materials is good. Yeah,
Speaker 0 00:11:14 Yeah. Yep. Yeah. That's really well said. So you said it right to the correct domain for your landing page is going to be your church.com/christmas dashi Eve. So usually you want to use dashes between words. So Christmas dashi Eve, you don't want to have some kind of a, you know, celebrate Christmas at first Baptist or something like that. You don't want a long one, the shorter, the better. So slash Christmas dashi Eve is the right way to do that.
Speaker 3 00:11:40 That's good. Good point. There I'll get the next one and it's create a Facebook event. So definitely, um, not just, we, we talked a lot, um, last week about it on your website, promoting Christmas Eve and Christmas. Yes. Do that. Don't forget Facebook. You're going to catch a lot of people there create a unique event on Facebook, um, that people can share and comment on. And I mean, that's obviously going to get a lot of buzz and eyes on, uh, what you're doing for Christmas Eve.
Speaker 0 00:12:08 Yeah. No, I think that that's really good. And what do you use, like if you use one social platform, do you use Instagram most or Facebook or what do you tend to use? Do you find still Facebook?
Speaker 3 00:12:18 It's still Facebook. I do use Instagram too, but uh, I still, I gen
Speaker 0 00:12:23 X-er I know shit's
Speaker 3 00:12:24 Crazy. I got on Instagram just to just get younger and more relevant. So
Speaker 0 00:12:29 Yeah, that's it even that's for even that's for millennials, you're not even with the gen Z is now on Tik TOK. So
Speaker 3 00:12:35 Yeah, Tik TOK. I do have tick talk. I checked it out for the first time, a little while back. So, um, yeah. Um, I
Speaker 0 00:12:42 Do not, I do not have
Speaker 3 00:12:44 I'm knowledgeable on Tik talks. I don't use it that much. So my daughter does and I have to watch out for things there. So yeah.
Speaker 0 00:12:51 Yes. I just asked that because I think that, you know, more and more Facebook is becoming kind of that passe, you know, the boomer, the boomer social media channel, but they still own everything, right? So they, Instagram is Facebook and, or, or is Metta I guess is what we would say now. Um, but it's, it's something that when we say creating a Facebook event, uh, uh, this is not us promoting or, you know, Facebook being the primary. It's just, it is the best way to get your content out there still. And Facebook, regardless of what we see on Instagram, or I primarily use Twitter more than anything else, that's what I'm on. But it's something that, um, Facebook is still the most widely used. Uh, and what you can do is when you create vents events, they actually do pair well and you can do some things.
Speaker 0 00:13:42 So we'll talk more about this to promote them on Instagram and that kind of stuff there. But I just was kind of curious what you use, but I think, yeah, creating a Facebook event is really important to kind of get it out there on other channels that people can wind up seeing out there. So they don't have to get onto your website to learn about this. They can learn about it in their social media platforms. And I think it's really great so that your people can do invites and share a Facebook event that way. Uh, Hey, you know, even if it's in a message to send to a loved one, say, Hey, I'm going to this Christmas Eve service. I'd love for you to come with me. Here's a link, but they can also just share it directly onto their wall and see lots of people in your community start to be engaged with that event and be invited to it in a way.
Speaker 0 00:14:24 So, so I'll take the other end of that in addition to creating a Facebook event, I think it's, this is the real big opportunity is promoting a Facebook event. And by that, I mean Facebook's promotion tools where you actually, I think if you're going to spend some money on getting the word out there about your Christmas Eve service, I think the best place to spend some of that money is on your Facebook page. So it's on your Facebook event, actually putting some money into there. The reason for that is because it has amazing tools to target very specific people when you're promoting that event. You know, it used to be, I've been in ministry for 20 years now. And when we started out in ministry, we'd send out mailers about our Christmas, our Christmas Eve service. We did some door hangers. We would go hang on, people's doors all over the neighborhood, but now this is such an easier way to do it.
Speaker 0 00:15:19 So here's what we would recommend. We'd recommend you probably really good at a very tight radius around your church and how far that is. That's going to depend on your area. If you're in the middle of New York city, you're probably going to target, I don't know, half a mile around your church building something like that is going to be your range. If you're in a very rural area, you might target 20 or 30 miles. If you're in a suburb or an, uh, you know, kind of an average size community, you might want to target five to 10 miles around your church, right. That kind of a vicinity there. So you want to definitely start with that. And then you want to think through a little bit about who is most likely to benefit or, or like being a part of our church. So if you're, if your church is, uh, if you don't offer any children's ministries at your church, you probably don't want to target young, uh, young families as the main people that you want to go after you do a more traditional kind of a service, and you have a, you have an organ and that's the style that maybe people that are older, they might be looking for.
Speaker 0 00:16:21 Maybe you do want to target people that are looking for a more traditional service. You can do all, you can use tools to target all those kinds of people. So we are huge proponents of this, I think for the average kind of church that most churches tell us. Yeah, we have lots of young families. We want to reach more young families. I think there's some really good tools in Facebook. You can target parents of kids and there's all kinds of rages. So you can parents of kids that are under five parents of kids that are in elementary parents of high schoolers, you can target all these different ranges. So, you know, your church better than, than we do. And so your area, but the great thing is you can, you can make sure and you have this, that your money has a laser focus, and you're only spending money, reaching people that are actually good candidates to come to your Christmas Eve service, to be a part of your church and to connect with them.
Speaker 0 00:17:15 So I think this is one of the great things, and here's the other great thing about it too, is that it is very inexpensive having come from the days of doing mailers and having to spend, you know, 50 cents for every single house that got one of our ads there, you're going to spend nowhere near that kind of money for people to see your Facebook ads or your Christmas Eve event ad basically you won't spend, you'll spend almost that kind of money for each click that you will get on there and learn about it. And it really is night and day it's, you can be so focused, right? You can hit that very specific audience. Uh, and it really is the best value. I think in advertising, we are obviously huge proponents. We use it all the time. Uh, so, uh, we, we don't make any money from Facebook far, very much the opposite.
Speaker 0 00:18:01 We give Facebook lots and lots of money here, but, uh, but I think it's just a really good opportunity and probably the best way to spend, uh, I guess what I wanted to say too, is that you can spend very little money. You don't have to spend $800 or $5,000. You could spend $50, you could spend $10. Some of our advertising campaigns, when we start them out, we started out with two or $3 a day just to kind of test the waters and see how it's going to go with that. So yeah, you can, you can do it really for any budget. You can start to see, you'll see more people if you do it that way. So
Speaker 3 00:18:32 That's a good point. There could be churches out there that don't have much of a budget for that. So good point on that. Well, good. I'll tackle the next one. And that's the, don't forget to teach your people to just invite. We are talking about a lot of online invitation and strategy, but good old, uh, having you're encouraging your people and your church members to invite others is, is a key thing. I mentioned the invite card earlier. This kind of goes in the same vein if you're going to do that, or if you're going to just from the pulpit kind of in courage, people to invite and talk about the theme or the Christmas theme and the message and say, Hey, you know, this could be it. So don't forget that a tried and trued and biblical method of relating in inviting and speaking to people about it. So,
Speaker 0 00:19:20 Oh my goodness. Yeah, I think that's so important. And you know, even, even us as digital marketers, that's what we do. We help churches do digital marketing professionally. That's our job. I'll be the first to tell you that people inviting other people as much better. That's, that's a much better way to win people for Jesus. You know, we can build the nicest websites and have the best search engine optimization and all the things that we help churches do, but that all pales in comparison to people inviting others. So I'm reminded of a stat. Uh, there was from Lifeway research. Uh, this is about Easter, but I would imagine the numbers would be similar. They said that 89% of people would say yes to an Easter invite if they were invited by a friend, 89% of people. And so I imagine the numbers are probably pretty similar, you know, change the holiday to Christmas.
Speaker 0 00:20:06 It's probably something that's kind of a similar number there. Um, you know, I think your people need to know that cause there's a lot of apprehension about, Hey, what if someone says no, what if I offend them? What if they're, you know, they don't really want to do that. And it, it might break our relationship. I think you need to not just encourage people to invite others, but you need to equip people to invite others and let them know how to do that. And you mentioned the invite card and I mentioned a Facebook events to share those kinds of things. There's lots of ways to do it. But I think just having that conversation. So maybe in your announcement time or something this week, you, you make sure you spend two or three minutes saying, Hey, there's nothing wrong. Here's how I would do it. Here's how would give it an invitation and explain some of those kinds of things. And you know, we don't want people to be doing the hard sell and saying, have you made a decision for Jesus? If not, you need to come out to our Christmas Eve service this year. Can I change him being there
Speaker 3 00:21:01 The whole way you and your family do Christmas from here on out?
Speaker 0 00:21:04 I see that's the impression so many people have about it. We're saying when we talk about inviting people, it's not, we all know. I think anybody in ministry knows it's not that hard sell, but just that friendly invitation from one person that you trust to another, I think it really just goes a long way. So equipping your people to make them ready for that. I think that's important
Speaker 3 00:21:24 Stuff just reminded me. There's some people I need to invite. So absolutely. There you
Speaker 0 00:21:28 Go. See, you got to talk about it and people remember
Speaker 3 00:21:32 Why don't you bring us home with one of our favorite things we usually always end with?
Speaker 0 00:21:36 Yeah, it's always the way we finish call people to action. You could probably just stop listening to any retried podcast right around five minutes from the end, because you can just assume this will be the topic. The last thing is ask people to let you know that they're coming, call them to action. Uh, Christmas Eve services, a great time to do that because a lot of times it's so well attended that Pete churches will have to take reservations or you'll have people sign up for a spot or save my seat. Uh, just so that you can make sure you have seats at all of your services. If you do multiple, uh, so people might be open or more open than normal to filling out some kind of a form that lets you lets them know that or lets us know that they're coming. Uh, so on that you want to keep it really simple. You'll just ask for probably their name, their email address, maybe their phone number, if you're okay with that and how many people are in their party there. Uh, and yeah, from there, I think what's great is it lets you pull some, pull forward some of the assimilation and followup, you can start to have some conversations ahead of time and it just helps people feel comfortable before they show up there. So I think that's really important I think to add,
Speaker 3 00:22:43 Well, we've just found that when you do call people to action and they do fill out a form or they let you know they're coming, they're stickier actually. So I think that's the key thing. Not everyone's going to let you know they're coming, but the ones that do we've seen are the stickier, uh, not only visitors, but return visitors and save for a later date too. As far as after Christmas, what happened?
Speaker 0 00:23:04 Yeah. Stick around next week for that. We'll talk about how you follow up with them after Christmas. That's good. So we'll, we'll leave it at that for this week. Thank you guys so much for being a part of our reach, right family. Uh, if you have a second to rate review, subscribe hit that like button, uh, you know, it's kind of our version of it. Our version of let us know you're coming, let us know you're watching, uh, that kind of a thing. That means a lot to us. So thank you guys so much for being a part of our family, uh, Merry Christmas and we hope to catch you next week. Thanks for listening to the rich 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 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.
