Other than the church you attend personally and the church(es) you pass every day on your way to work, I bet you’re able to name several other churches in town. Think about them for a second. What do they have in common? The three or four that you were able to name quickly are likely some of the largest in town.
Why were you able to think of them so quickly? Probably because they do a good job of marketing and advertising in your area. They have a marketing or media director and possibly a whole team of marketers. They also have a decent budget and are able to buy billboard and print ads and probably show up repeatedly through sponsored ads on Facebook.
What about the small and medium-sized churches out there? What about them? They don’t have a marketing team and they certainly don’t have a big ad budget. What they do have however, is a strong leadership team and a ton of eager volunteers. They have a clear vision for the future and lots of manpower but they are typically lacking one thing. They know exactly where they’re going and they’re willing to do whatever it takes but what’s missing?
Is it campaign strategy? Elegant graphic design? Ad impressions? These things are great but I would argue there’s one critical piece that’s missing. One piece that ties everything together and that’s Communication Strategy.
Church leadership has the vision and the creative energy to lead the direction of the church, they set goals but they typically lack the time to control the minutiae. Church volunteers have the time and enthusiasm to get things done but they (again, typically) lack the expertise. Small to medium-sized churches cannot afford to hire a marketing person to handle the details. Out of the budget also is the hiring of a full-blown marketing agency.
Hence the need for a Marketing Coordination Professional. One person to lead the communication efforts of the church and keep everything ticking along. The typical issues a church can face in communicating to both the congregation and the community are inconsistency, poor planning, poor timing and wasted effort.
Early in the month, a single Marketing Coordinator can meet with church leadership and layout a communication strategy for the coming months, with focus on the next month. Giving up to 30 days to prepare bulletins, newsletters, sermon graphics etc. Each piece of the communications puzzle is assigned to a volunteer who is tasked with generating the content. One person may take photos at events for the newsletter. One may record the sermon and upload it to an online video service and the website. The key here is that these things are all delivered to the Marketing Coordinator on schedule (and fully proofed) so that he or she can do their job, which is communication.
The reason why the content generation and editing are NOT this person’s responsibility is simple. If they’re asked to do those time-consuming tasks then it becomes a full-time position and that is what we’re looking to avoid!
So why are we not calling this person a Communications Coordinator? The reason for this is simple too. Logistically, what we’re doing is communicating but for it to be effective it needs to done with a “marketing” mindset. The sermon series graphic needs to be beautifully designed, the newsletter layout needs to be both visually appealing AND easy to read and the timing of these communications needs to orchestrated to lead people to an appropriate level of excitement regarding upcoming events. All of this is Marketing.
My final word is this. When designing a communications strategy, you may have several qualified volunteers available in your congregation. However, you must beware, assigning these critical tasks to multiple people with no clear leader or focal point can lead to disaster. Furthermore, these willing volunteers are not always impartial. They’re part of the church. They have their own ideas and wishes with regards to direction. It’s nice to have an outside perspective…
