The church growth blueprint: 4 steps to a holistic marketing plan that works - nate thomas, manager of marketing and development
Churches today face a big challenge of reaching a diverse audience across various platforms. The world is noisy out there!! Building a holistic marketing plan ensures that your message resonates with the entire community through the intentional use of print, digital, people-based, and paid communication strategies.
By following the four key steps—Identify Your Target, Build Your Plan, Execute Your Plan, and Track Your Results—you can create a comprehensive approach that aligns with your church’s mission and maximizes outreach.
Step 1: Identify Your Target
In marketing, a target audience is a specific group of people that you are trying to reach with your communication efforts. For a church, this may be as broad as the people of your community OR as specific as parents of preschoolers that would benefit from your preschool ministry efforts.
Identifying your target audience ensures that your marketing efforts are directed toward the right people, increasing engagement and connection.
If you don't know who you're talking to, your message won't connect.
Key Questions to Ask to Identify Your Target Audience:
Audience: Who are the people in our community?
Population: Who are the people currently involved in our ministry?
Target: Who are we trying to reach?
Alignment: How do these answers align?
Step 2: Build Your Plan
Using a combination of print, digital, people-driven, and paid marketing and communication strategies ensures that your message reaches your community through various touchpoints.
A balanced marketing and communication strategy includes four components:
Print Marketing: Flyers, bulletins, mailers, and outdoor signage are tangible ways to reach people where they are.
Digital Marketing: Utilize social media, email, videos, and your website to connect digitally.
People Marketing: Leverage key volunteers, staff, and partnerships to spread your message organically.
Paid Marketing: Invest in ads through platforms, like Facebook and Google, and utilize tools like Google Grants for churches.
Application: Build your marketing calendar and plan 10-15 day campaigns tailored to different events or seasons in your church. Check out the attached template!
Step 3: Execute Your Plan
Timelines are crucial. Utilizing tools like Basecamp, Asana, or even Google Sheets to track tasks and deadlines, as well as assigning clear roles and responsibilities to teammates also working on the communication plan ensures the plan is carried out effectively. Once you have built a clear plan, you can spend time doing rather than thinking or planning!
Best Practice: Start with small campaigns and scale up as you analyze what works best for your audience.
Step 4: Track Your Results
"What gets measured gets improved." - Peter Drucker
Regularly tracking your results helps you refine your marketing efforts and make data-driven decisions for the future. Your results help you to know what works and what doesn’t. Having metrics to track and setting goals for those metrics can help you to know when you’re hitting the mark and when you’re falling just a little short.
Use metrics like:
Registrations for events
New contacts added to your database
Engagement rates on social media posts
Open and click-through rates for emails
A holistic marketing plan empowers your church to reach people through intentional, multi-channel strategies. By identifying your target audience, building a diversified plan, executing with clear timelines, and tracking results, you can maximize your church’s outreach and impact.
You can meet new people in your community by using a clear and intentional marketing communications plan. It takes time, but it’s worth it to nurture relationships with church members and to reach new people outside your church’s four walls.
Connect Maketing exists to help churches meet new people through a clear marketing and communications strategy. If your church is interested in additonal marketing and communications support, book a discovery call today with the Connect Marketing Team!