Steve Fogg wrote a post last month on the all-inclusiveness of church marketing. Everything we do is marketing the church.

At Communicate Jesus we continue to explore good (and bad) marketing techniques – all with the desire of making Jesus known. Today, a guest post from Duncan Robinson on this very topic. A little about Duncan:

Duncan Robinson is the Pastor of Small Groups Ministry in Maricopa Arizona at Church of Celebration. Prior to that he served as the Youth Pastor for Macquarie Chapel in Eastwood. This is the second Church Plant I have been a part of, we have seen the ministry grow to over 800 people in 4 short years. I have been the guest speaker at a number of Youth Conferences in both the USA and Australia most recently speaking on an Arizona Youth Camp. Blogger, Techno Geek, I love being a Pastor and think about church stuff a lot!

Over to you Duncan…

For many pastors, marketing is not a skill that we are trained in. Yet when it comes to promotion of your church it is vital. Many of us don’t know where to start or what constitutes marketing. Some of us have bought the lie that marketing is not important when communicating Jesus because Jesus doesn’t need slick marketing. I agree with that statement in part – God’s word is sharper than any two-edged sword – Hebrews teaches me that. But your logo made up of a dove and a rainbow hasn’t been popular for over a decade. That embarrassing PowerPoint slide promoting your up-coming series looks trashy, and people who aren’t churched are turned off by it.

So why hinder yourself anymore? Four years ago we started Church of Celebration in the hardest hit town in America after the property crash. Housing prices dropped by 60%, people moved out in droves and we elected to throw up a church because God called us there. We realized marketing and design was important, and we didn’t have a big budget so we invested money where it counted, advertised creatively and paid a designer to create a slick logo.

Marketing matters, but you market to women. Then you do Sunday church to men.

Put simply, wives can be relentless naggers. When it comes to getting their man into church they can plug it until they fold and get that guy into the building. Just realize that the husband doesn’t want to be there – as he sits there with his arms folded he is ust waiting to run out of there at the last song. So you speak “blue”, masculine colors, dark lighting, slick marketing and invest time and energy into making Sunday look good. He’ll come back if he feels like church is speaking to him personally.

Church population is roughly a 60/40 split of women to men. Women can get men into the church, marketing Sunday church for men will bring them back. Men are marketing savvy whether they know it or not. TV teaches them what they like and what they don’t, so early on in the church plant, we spoke blue, we did church blue, but we marketed pink.

Crisis breeds innovation. When you church plant there isn’t a bunch of money so you get creative with your marketing. We have bumper stickers, T-Shirts (that look good!), a good looking website, we advertise in local papers, have local TV/radio spots and just recently we bought a billboard. We have promoted sermon series with yard signs, websites, mass mailers and personal invite cards. The majority of this stuff we ripped off from other much larger churches.

These websites offer great designs and inspiration:

• CreativeMYK
• Elevation Church Resources
• Open Lifechurch
• Church Marketing Lab (this group will even give you feedback on your designs!)

Even websites like Church Marketing Sucks will give you some simple insights to the value of marketing.

Good marketing will cost you money. When we started the church we invested in a designer to develop our stationary and website. Communicate Jesus mentions this often but a good website will drive bodies to your church! Think about it  this way – if you spend $1000 on a website (for example, with Clover Sites) and you pick up one member who gives $20 a week, you pay for that investment in one year…oh and they get eternal life and get to go to heaven.

Bad marketing is no longer an excuse, incredible resources for churches are out there and they are free. We are even bold enough to call Churches for series that we like and ask blatantly for all their materials, most of them give them up for free! Kingdom-minded ministries want to see people come to know Jesus, so if it worked for them they are typically excited to share it with you. Don’t be afraid to ask the question.

Marketing is your face to the community, I’d prefer to look good and represent Jesus in a slick, bold, creative manner. I want people to come to know Christ, and I want them to see I care about this ministry/church. There is no excuse for allowing your church to look like an ugly duckling.