Small churches usually don’t have an advertising budget, or if they do it’s too small to be effective. But, relax my small-church friend because you don’t need an ad budget. Here’s why:
- Trendwatching.com says that only 13% of consumers admit they buy products because of the ad, and 6% of consumers believe that advertisers lie in their ads. Nice group to be associated with.
- Word-of-mouth is still the strongest way to get your message out. The new jargon is viral-advertising, which can include stuff like Youtube, blogs, zines, and a bunch of under-the-radar citizen marketer action. But it’s all the old word-of-mouth, just with different mouths!
- The genius of small churches is relationships. About the last thing you (and I) need is to double our attendance/membership/worship overnight. Rodney Stark writes in Cities of God that Christianity grew at 3.4% from the beginning. Could your church do that? Probably. A much more absorbable rate of growth for small churches.
- You can get enough free “advertising” to get the word out about anything that you’re going to do. Poster, fliers, tickets (even freebies), handouts, mini-mailings, targeted groups, speaking engagements, phone calls, emails, websites, blogs, free soft-drink company banners, and (do you get the picture?) will be more than enough exposure for your church. Plus, the old standby — your church sign, if you have one.
So, be creative. There is a ton of stuff out there about how to get this kind of exposure, and it’s a lot more fun than paying someone a lot of money to do second-rate advertising, which is what church ads usually are. Let me know what creative stuff you’re trying and how it’s working.
We had something like this happen. A young couple volunteered to lead a program called “Financial Peace University”. Chuck, you having spent time in Nashville, I’m sure you know that’s a Dave Ramsey curriculum.
It requires people to pay for a curriculum kit costing about $100.
Using free publicity only the class was able to attract 15 paying families that meant access to 25+/- new people. Most have a church, but some don’t.
Doing serveral semesters of this will be required to see it build the church but it builds our network of contacts in the community and gives us a chance to serve some new people.
Chuck in TN, this is my point exactly. For a small church to attract 25 new people is phenomenal. If that were our church, the percentage increase would be 25% — for free! Two years ago we did a series of three direct mail pieces with a total cost of over $7500, and they produced nothing, zero. We attract new folks best by word of mouth here, so I’m glad to hear it works in TN, too. Thanks for your thoughts. — Chuck W.
One of the things I forgot to mention is that since Dave Ramsey is on national radio, I think that created lots of buzz. People in the community would meet us on the street and say “we heard about Dave Ramsey’s program coming to your church.”
In a way we harnessed his popularity and “brand”…which the staff at Dave’s office was very happy to hear.