Strategic Marketing for Churches | Jason and Bart

Welcome to another episode of the Missional Marketing Podcast, where our goal is to help churches grow by leveraging digital marketing and effective communications. My name is Bart Blair, and I have a new job title since the last time we recorded a podcast. It’s been a while. I’m joined by Jason Hamrock, who is the CEO of Missional Marketing, and I have a new job title. My job title changed from being a digital marketing strategist, coach, or whatever it was, to now being the brand director for Missional Marketing. That’s right. That’s kind of cool. It is cool. And it fits really well for what you’ve been doing to lead and pour into additional marketing. So the title fits, Bart. I don’t really know what a brand director does, but I’m learning every day. I’m learning a little bit more every day. So it’s been a fun ride. We are in twenty twenty five, which has also been a fun ride. I mean, we’re already by the time uh this podcast drops we’re probably a quarter of the way through the year it’s absolutely amazing uh easter is coming up upon us and one of the things that you and I jason have just been in the weeds on here the last few weeks is advertising campaigns marketing campaigns uh specifically related to easter but obviously all kinds of other marketing campaigns and what I want to do in this episode today is I want us to answer for our audience as a whole some of the questions that we get pretty regularly when we’re working with churches. The top question is always like, what makes for an effective marketing campaign? How do I know if what I’m doing is going to actually be effective? Because we want to steward our resources well as a church. So if you’re going to spend money, you want to make sure that you’re going to get a positive ROI for the money that you spend, whether you’re talking about digital ads or traditional marketing, print marketing, billboards, you name it, the different options that you have. How do you know that this campaign is going to be successful? So let me kick this off by just posing the question to you, Jason, right at the get go. If I’m going to plan a marketing campaign, what are some of the first questions that I probably need to ask myself so that I can actually design an effective marketing campaign? What are some of the big questions you would be asking if you go into a room and you’re getting ready to start planning a marketing campaign? I could probably come up with twenty of them. So we don’t have that much time. So, you know, obviously, why do we do it where we have a result in mind? We have a goal and we should have a goal in mind. And I work with a lot of churches that we don’t always think about the goal. We just know we have to do it. It’s almost like, oh, we just got to spend money on this because Easter’s coming up. Yet, I don’t think we really think about what’s the goal? Is it we had twenty eight hundred people in seats last year, we want to hit What’s the goal for whatever event? If you’re having an on-campus event for Fall Fest, is it number of people walking through the gate, so to speak, or is it a class, a financial piece university? What’s the goal? I always want to start there. Sometimes we don’t go that far as comms people. We’ve just been tasked to spend some money on a campaign and hope for the best. So that’s probably the biggest question is, have you actually taken the time to set a goal for what you want to achieve? I think that’s really, really good because the big picture question that I asked here is, how do I build an effective marketing campaign? Well, what’s the desired result of the campaign? So if you don’t have a well-defined desired result, how do you even know if what you’ve done is effective or not? It was only a month or so ago that some of us watched the Super Bowl or parts of the Super Bowl or maybe the halftime of the Super Bowl. Actually, I don’t know anybody who just tuned in for the halftime of this last Super Bowl, but hey, that’s political commentary I should just leave alone. Anyway, One of the big things that a lot of people like about the Super Bowl are the ads, right? The ads that are run in the Super Bowl. Well, how do we as consumers judge the effectiveness of Super Bowl ads? Well, it’s how much people are talking about the ads after. Oh, did you see the ad that did this? Or did you see that ad with that actor in it? Or what that ad that company did? But I can guarantee you those companies… that are spending millions and millions of dollars producing and then paying for those ad spots they have to have some sort of roi in mind in terms of sales marketing lead generation clicks to their website you know new customers acquired there’s got to be something that they’re measuring there otherwise they’re literally throwing tens of millions or hundreds of millions of dollars out the door. We can’t do that as a church. We need to define what the desired result is for our campaign. Yeah, they take it to the furthest degree possible. That’s why, you know, why does Doritos spend? Because they know when they spend money on the Super Bowl, their sales go up. and the more eyeballs seeing those ads the more sales they get so I mean we don’t do that in the church world really at all it’s more we just put together budget what we think is available for us and then we just go spend money and sometimes churches do it sometimes they don’t so yeah the goal is pretty darn important now Let’s back up from there. So let’s say you do kind of have a goal in mind and you’re going, OK, we want to have more people. That’s what we’re about. We’re trying to we’re not selling stuff here. We’re trying to get more attendance to something, probably to to our, you know, to our event. Now we’ve got to back up and go, OK, how are we going to measure this? Well, there’s a lot of, I guess if you look at a funnel, there’s a lot of rings to that funnel. If you’re going to run an ad campaign, you’re trying to get the most exposures you possibly can to your target audience. That’s pretty darn important. Who is your target audience? You got to make sure you’ve identified who your target audience is because that’s really going to determine what kind of mechanism or platform you actually use for your ads. You know what I’m saying? You know what I’m talking about. Oh, absolutely. I also think it determines what assets you use in the ad campaign. And let me use this as an example. I have a conversation, lots of conversations with churches. Right now, it’s Easter. A lot of them are dipping their toes in the water of using video ads, more video content, specifically in YouTube. You know, we’ve sort of, We sort of learned that if you want to reach young men in America today, YouTube is probably the best platform on which to do so. And so I get asked the question all the time. So should we just get our pastor to do like a talking head invitation or do we need to have lots of B-roll or whatever? And the first, here’s the question I ask, and I don’t mean to sound like an ageist, but I’m old, so I’m able to do this. I’m the oldest one on this podcast today. I asked this question. So how does your pastor? Oh, he’s… He’s my age. He’s fifty fifty five. That’s how old I am. So now everyone knows how old I am. I’m fifty five. Well, how old is your target audience? Oh, we’re aiming to reach, you know, thirty to thirty eight year old. OK, so. I don’t know that a call to action from a fifty five year old is probably the most effective for reaching thirty five year olds because it’s really there. You’re talking about somebody, their parents age in a lot of cases. I suggest that you use people in your videos who look like the people that you’re actually trying to reach. If you’re aiming to reach young couples in their early to mid-thirties, then find people who can be in your videos who look like the people that you’re trying to reach. Now, that doesn’t mean that you can’t also include a video of your pastor. Your home church in the Phoenix area, Sun Valley, does this. They do amazing video work. They always include a video from Pastor Chad. Yeah, he’s my age. But those are not the best performing ads. The best performing ads are the ones where they have other staff members who do those talking head invites, who are in the target age range of the people in the community that they’re trying to reach. Because you have, you know, Yeah, exactly. If Chad’s on stage, he has thirty minutes to connect and he does an amazing job of taking that thirty minutes and really connecting with every age demographic in the room. Like you said, on social media, on a device, you’ve got seconds to make a connection. Yeah. Let’s talk a little bit about the calls to action from the different ad types. Obviously, our bread and butter is digital marketing. That’s what we do. We’re running ad campaigns on the Google platforms, on the meta platforms, and a few of the other peripheral ones that from time to time a church asks us to use. By and large, we know we can get our ads in front of tens of thousands of people in a very short period of time. Um, when it comes to a call to action, Jason, what are the things that you think make for an effective CTA in those ad campaigns? Well, I think the first thing you have to do is, um, is, is connect with them. You know, I’m a big fan of, uh, Donald Miller and just, you know, drop him. If you guys haven’t read the story, you know, building a story brand, check that out because I think you got to make a connection with the audience. You gotta, you gotta speak them and with them, not at them. And so, you know, the call to action is really important because it’s got to speak to them. It’s got to be, it’s got to be relatable to them, something that they might be dealing with. You know, it’s just not, Hey, come to our Easter services and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. You should be a little bit more like, we want to help you on your journey to discover what God is for you. He’s not against you. And if you come this Easter, you’re going to learn about how you can improve your life. So there’s a there’s a subtle way to say and talk about that, you know, that call to action. And obviously what we’re trying to get them to do is show up in a seat. Right. We talk about that’s our goal. But, you know, maybe the first step is, you know, click right here to to learn more about how God is going to change your life this Easter season or something like that. So I’m a big fan of trying to get people to lead them to a landing page so that we can, you know, that’s the first little hurdle, right? Get them to a landing page. Now we can communicate with them and keep them going on their journey. I’m going to double click on your click there for a second because I think so when we were talking about knowing your audience, knowing your target, we brought up, you know, Age and gender, you know, young men, thirty five years old. But what you just said actually tells me that when you’re creating your profile for your target, there’s another layer that you need to to to dig down into. And that is knowing and understanding the worries, the fears and the hopes and the dreams of the people that you’re trying to reach because your call to action. Needs to speak to those things. So if you believe that, you know, the average thirty five year old guy was working, I was working with a church in California a couple of years ago and I was kind of doing this exercise with them and we were kind of creating a profile of who they were targeting in the community. And I was asking them questions like, what are some of the biggest fears of people in your community? And one of them was that they’ll never own a home, that the cost of housing, the cost of owning a home in this community is so expensive. And so people are one step away from homelessness because you lose your job, you find yourself unemployed, you have an illness or whatever, and you don’t own your home, then you can literally be one step away from homelessness. And I was like, that is crazy for me to think about. But- when they started working on their marketing language, they started using the idea of the church being a home, a safe place, a refuge. So they were using language that actually directly spoke to that deep-seated fear that they think people in their community have. Now, granted, the church isn’t technically a home, but using that language that still fit with those same fears, I thought it was super powerful. It was really super powerful. So when you’re talking about these calls to action, the call to action, you use it, you know, no God’s purpose for your life. Well, if, if that’s the call to action, click here to get to know God’s purpose for your life. You must be assuming that the people that you’re trying to reach actually have questions about their life’s purpose. Now, if you’re doing your community exegesis and the people in your community don’t seem to have questions about the purpose of their life, then that call to action is probably not going to be very effective. No, not at all. You do need to know your demographics. So we’ll, where you live and what they’re dealing with. And you can learn that. There’s platforms for you to be able to learn that. You don’t just come up with it. Well, we think we want to reach, I mean, you really want to study your audience and make sure, you know, we don’t have millions of dollars to spend on research. Like companies like Doritos and those guys do. And so we have to try and use as much as we possibly can in terms of the internet and just different free resources. But also looking at your own people, the people that actually attend your church, because you can’t really bait and switch stuff. You can’t go after a thirty year old when your average age is sixty. That’s not going to work. So you do want to look at who is in the room of your church in the worship service. Who comes to your church? Start there and understand, okay, these are the people we are reaching because we are reaching people. This is who we reach. And these are the needs of these people that we’re reaching. Maybe that’s what you just want to carry out because you’re trying to grow. And so, you know, if it isn’t, if you’re not growing younger, well, that’s a different conversation. Maybe it’s because you have an older pastor and older staff, you know, but. Yeah. When you think about just advertising in general, we we’ve kind of gone deep into, you know, the super bowl type of type of things that you should be doing. Uh, but you, you wanna take as much as you possibly can to study and who we’re trying to reach, at least build your artwork, build your, your text, build your video to speak to that particular audience, build your landing page. on your website. You don’t just send them to your homepage. Send them to a landing page that goes deeper into what it is you’re inviting them to. And again, keep carrying through with that language. Keep carrying through with those images, those videos. Speak to them. Put some testimonials on that Easter landing page from younger, if you’re trying to reach younger people, from young people of why they love coming to your church, how they’ve grown in their faith. It speaks to the felt need that you’re trying to address. In this case, it’s a spiritual need. Yeah, we’re going to get to the landing page as our next point, because you brought that up a couple of times. So I do want to do a little bit of a dive on that. But I want to highlight the fact that I used a fifty dollar church planter term just a moment ago when I said community exegesis. Google that if you don’t know what it is. But no, it’s it’s really getting to know your community, doing the demographic research that you can do. There are some online tools. There are some that are free. Some of you can purchase. But I want you to testify to this. We’ve had the opportunity over the last couple of years to build quite a few websites for churches. And you have been really intimately involved in the website builds of a number of these churches. Tell me if I’m wrong. The churches that you’ve worked with that have actually done their research, know their community and have a very clear profile for who they’re trying to reach, their websites end up being the best websites that we built, aren’t they? A hundred percent. Yeah. Like they know who their target is to the penny that that person earns, the level of education they have, the hobbies they have, the radio station they listen to. I mean, they’ve drilled down on the demographics. And so when they go to build a website, which is essentially a marketing tool, uh those are the those are the best websites that we built because they’re so clear on who they’re communicating to so the copy they write the images that they choose the navigation um it’s all it’s all intentional so if you’re listening to this podcast or watching on our youtube channel then you’ve never taken time as a staff team as a leadership team to create that profile, that community-based profile for who you really want to target in your community. It’s an exercise really, really worthwhile, not just for marketing, but for all of your ministry initiatives. Because when you go to start new ministries or try to refine existing ministries, you know that these ministries are going to be most effective if we design them in a way to connect with the person who is ultimately our target. So it’s really an exercise worth its weight in gold. yeah and and I’ll coach churches to say you know it’s the we’re trying to anybody who’s breathing we want to know who jesus is okay that so it’s not like we’re alienating all the other age demographics that were focused on twenty five to thirty five year olds. Doesn’t mean like we don’t care about the forty five and up. No, we absolutely do. But we’re mindful in just building the website to speak to the twenty five to thirty five year old while also communicating to the forty to forty five to sixty five or seventy five year old. Right. So we’re going to have images that show everybody. If that’s true in your church, right? Yeah. So you have to be true to the, I always say the continuity, the continuity is really, really important. The continuity from the ad you run that relates to the web page or website that relates to my experience, parking in the parking lot and walking up and checking in my kids and walking through the doors of the lobby, sitting in the worship. There’s continuity in colors. There’s continuity in words. There’s continuity just in the spirit, right? and it yeah your website’s a massive tool in all that because it is where people are going to ultimately land up right we run ads to get people to the website but people find you organically or their neighbor invites them or there’s so many ways it’s a big pie chart of how people find your church all of them go to your website and it’s the only digital tool you actually own and you can control that messaging Yeah. Let’s talk about the landing page because you mentioned it a couple of times. What makes for an effective landing page when you’re building an effective marketing campaign? Because I really think at the end of the day, the ads, regardless of how good they are, if your landing page stinks, the ad campaign will probably not be a terribly effective landing page. It won’t be an effective ad campaign. So let’s talk about what makes for an effective landing page to be a part of an effective marketing campaign. Well, whenever I share this with churches, I put at the very top, don’t make me think. Don’t make me think. So as a user, I shouldn’t have to think hard about what I’m trying to learn about your event or your church. So if you have that posture of don’t make me think, then everything else kind of falls in place. So obviously, if we’re talking about Easter, well, the very first thing you want to communicate are service times and what you’re actually offering. If you have an egg hunt, the egg hunts the Sunday before, you got to communicate that. So obviously, details about what you’re doing and when you’re doing it. But it can go a little bit deeper than that as well. Because remember, if you run an ad campaign and they click on that ad and they land on that landing page, that is their homepage experience. So don’t do insider language. Speak to somebody as if they’re unchurched, de-churched, really far from God. Speak to them. And so obviously don’t make me think is really, really important. But in that, I also want to make sure I’m communicating some really good truths to them about what we’re wanting to say to them. cares about you. He’s got a plan for you. We’re excited. Your whole family is going to be impacted positively from coming to our church this Sunday or whatever that might look like. I want to show pictures. I want them to visually see themselves engaged with those people that I’m looking at on the screen. You’ve said this before, Bart, and I use this all the time. If you’re a follower of Jesus, there’s something different about you. I should look at you and go, You’re different. You know, the way you communicate, the way you talk, you know, your posture. It looks like there’s joy in you. You look happy versus somebody who probably doesn’t follow Jesus. Maybe, right? And so I want to see that in your images, especially in your videos, where these people look like they’re having a good time. I want to be a part of that. So we want to create a little bit of FOMO on our landing page. And then, of course, you want to make sure you’re, you know, don’t make me think. Have FAQs. You know, what do I wear? do I have to give anything because the church is always about money right uh what’s in it for my kids you know where do I park um when should I show up you know maybe maybe even have a call to action that says hey we got you covered just drop your email we won’t spam you just give us your email we’ll send you an email pdf that’s got all the details you need for your experience this coming easter right now you just collected a lead now you be careful with that but you just collected a lead of somebody who’s interested in coming to your church So that’s just a couple of nuggets. I know you got more. Well, I want to talk about leads in just a moment because I think leads are a very important part of an effective marketing campaign. I want to back up and add one little piece. You were talking earlier about continuity. One of the things that I love to see churches do is when they create video ads to use in Google Display or YouTube or even the meta platforms. is to always have a part two of that video on the landing page. So you see a picture of someone who’s twenty years younger than me inviting you to celebrate Easter with your family and my family in my church. And then when I click the ad and I land on that landing page, I want to see that same person or that same those same people say, we’re so glad that you’re interested in learning more about our Easter services this year or our whatever it is. Build that continuity because it creates, you know, it strengthens your brand. It gives them the ability to… They’re more likely to watch that video because they’ve already seen an introduction. Now they’re seeing a second video of the same person. So I like that idea of creating that type of continuity. It’s a little less… It’s a little more challenging to do so with static imagery, but I don’t think it’s a bad idea to use some of the same images that you’ve used in ads on that landing page. So if you’ve got some images, not talking about your Easter brand or your event branding graphics, But I’m talking about images. If you’re doing a spring fling and you’ve got a petting zoo as part of the spring fling, and you’ve got pictures of the animals in the ads, then go ahead and use that same image on the landing page. Because again, it does create some continuity there. And actually, this is something that a lot of churches… They seldom do, Jason. They send us images and videos to use in their ad campaigns. And then you click and you go look at their landing page and they haven’t used any of the images from the ads on the landing page. I’m like, you’ve missed an opportunity to kind of create that continuity and reinforce. It was that image of those animals at the petting zoo that got people to click to the page in the first place. Reinforce what’s there, build on that. I think that that will make the campaign more effectively. One other thing, though, I would say in your ads, you know, we’ve tested this. I mean, we’ve run millions, millions of impressions over the years, millions of impressions, lots of clicks. Easter graphics don’t really work. As much as your vector artwork is super cool, it’s got to be an emotional thing. And I can look at an Easter graphic, and it’s like it doesn’t move me at all. But when I see a dad holding his son, walking with his wife, that gets me. I see myself in that image. I don’t see myself in your vector Easter graphic. Now you want to use that on inside of church and everything, but don’t use it on your ads. It won’t get near the clicks as it will. If you put in a graphic of a picture of a P of people that you’re trying to reach, that’s emotional. And just as you said, Bart, I land on the landing page. I should see, I should see more of that. Yep. Yeah, it’s great. Let us talk about leads. You mentioned one of my favorite ones, which is, let us send you a pre-visit email or a pre-visit text to give you all the details that you need to make your first experience with us amazing. Whether that’s on your plan to visit page or your event page, whatever it is that you’re marketing, love that idea of a lead generator. We obviously, Jason, we’ve talked about this ad nauseum on this podcast, which is high value content offerings, something else on that landing page. You want to speak about that for a moment? Well, it’s, you know, when you talk about leads, you know, there’s like I said, there’s an easy one that you can say that we’re not going to spam you. But, you know, you got to think also that, OK, if somebody if we’re invited to Easter and they land on our landing page, let’s just assume. that maybe they don’t go to church. Let’s just assume that. Maybe they’re spiritually curious. I know this to be true simply because in the last year, Bible sales in the United States are like through the roof, up. People are curious about faith. They’re curious about God. They may not be so curious about church, but they are spiritually curious about what happens after I die, right? We know this. So perhaps maybe on that landing page, there could be a cool little, hey, download this free ebook to understand what God has for you. It could be three steps to understanding, or it could be five ways to improve your marriage, or it could be you know, do these four things to really become a phenomenal parent, you know, stuff like that, right? Some kind of an ebook content that you’ve created and you put that on there. And if people give you their name and their email, they can download this amazing piece of content that you probably preached on in the last twelve months. so we could talk about how to use ai to pull that together and make it I mean literally create an ebook today and get that on your website um what a great opportunity to kind of connect or match what they what you might be perceiving as their felt need on that landing page with another felt need that they may you can answer a question to Right, so a good one would be, you know, if you have like a fall fest. Fall fests are for kids, right? And we’re having bounce houses and candy and all that kind of stuff. Well, on that landing page should be things that would be relevant to parents or how to help raise their kids, whatever that might be. You make that connection. Don’t put it on your Fall Fest landing page, Financial Peace University. I mean, I guess you could, but I’d probably relate it to what parents are dealing with and make that connection. Use FPU for some other landing page. Yeah. Again, we have multiple episodes on the concept of lead generation. And the reason that lead generation is so important to me is that the way that The way that I sort of view our responsibility as a church when it comes to outreach and evangelism is that all outreach and evangelism should lead to the beginning of new relationships. We as Jesus followers need to start new relationships, whether it’s individually or corporately with people who don’t yet follow Jesus. So when you think about the effectiveness of your marketing campaign, somewhere along the way, you have to say, we’re trying to start a new relationship. Now, I like the idea of using the website as a place to start that new relationship. You may not start that new relationship until the person actually shows up on your campus at your location, checks in, signs in, registers for something, whatever. But think about it as starting that new relationship. Now, the last couple of minutes that we have here, Jason, talk a little bit about what we need to do with those email addresses, names or cell phone numbers that we get them. Again, we’re trying to figure out how we measure or create the most effective marketing campaign. What do we do with those names and those email addresses once we get them? Yeah, well, real briefly, you may not realize you’re on a date, but they’re dating you. you don’t even know their name and because I know most people that show up to church if you ask them the question what brought you here you’ll get an answer but if you ask the question how long have you been engaged with our church you’re gonna be blown away it’s probably months it could even be in the years for years I’ve been following you and I now have the confidence or trust to come actually in person OK, so just think about that and you go, wow, if that’s true and somebody watches us for seven months or eight months, what are we communicating on our website? And then and then if they do fill out a form, what are we sending them? What’s that email follow up look like? It shouldn’t just be get to church, get to church, get to church. I don’t I don’t I think that’s kind of a turnoff, especially if they’re not interested in church, but they’re interested in they’re very interested in God. So be careful and work those really, really well. Now, obviously, the goal is to get them into a seat. We know evangelism and relationships in the context is going to have the best effect is going to be sitting in a seat of a church. Right. We just kind of know that. So that’s the goal. But I think I’d be really I’d put together a game plan for Easter leads. Right. So what would be the next thing that you might want to communicate to them? Do not drop them into your weekly church email newsletter. Right. You might as well just say, don’t ever talk to us again. Don’t ever do that. But build a strategy for what you’re going to say to them the week after, maybe a few weeks later, and then another few weeks, and then another few weeks. And it really should be speaking to them. Not what we want, but what we have to offer you. And so that could just be content, could be a sermon snippet, like your pastor said something amazing. You know, a lot of churches after Easter will come into a sermon series that’s really felt need focused or something that’s, you know, very, what I’d say, you know, community minded, you know, it could just be about relationships or parenting or something like that, right? That’s not super heavy biblical, you speak in the Bible, but you know what I’m saying? It’s not like a study on the book of, know deuteronomy or something like that it’s it’s a it’s a it’s a it reaches everybody great if you get some leads um share some of that content with them maybe don’t even invite them to church yet but just share some of that content with them you’re building that like you said you’re building that relation you’re nurturing that relationship and you’re you’re being careful with it and you’re protecting it with a goal in mind to get them ultimately in a seat where they can hear the gospel and get their life changed. Yeah, you use the word there nurture. And that’s exactly what we would call the follow up would be a nurture campaign. So maybe it’s three touch points or six or twelve, whatever you want to put together. We call that a nurture campaign. And what you’re trying to do is nurture the relationship, build the trust, and hopefully, Lord willing, those people will eventually trust you enough to walk through your doors on a Sunday morning. But here’s what I’ll challenge you to consider when you’re building that nurture email campaign, creating the content, make it a win for them. It’s not about you. It’s not about what you want. from them, it’s what you want for them. It’s what God wants for them, right? So make it a win for them, create that content to speak to them, to their needs. Once they know that you really get them, that you’re addressing real needs, that you have answers to their questions, there’s a much higher probability that they will eventually check you out in person. And that’s the ultimate goal. We’re out of time, man. This has been a blast. I told you before we started that we could probably talk about this for hours, but we’re going to try to limit this to a half hour. So thanks, Jason, for hanging out with me today. For those of you who have made it all the way to the end of this episode, thanks for hanging out with us. It has been a while. We’re committed to getting back in the saddle and doing more of these podcast episodes here in the upcoming weeks. So if you haven’t yet subscribed, wherever you listen to your favorite podcasts, make sure that you do that. And if you’re watching on our YouTube channel, make sure you’re subscribed to our YouTube channel and give us a little like on the YouTube channel so more people can find this content. Thanks again. Have a good day.