Growing Church Attendance
You want to grow your church, reach more people in the community and share the good news of Jesus with the world. So, what steps can you take to grow your church? How can you make sure that your church holds a vital presence in your community?
If you’re looking for new strategies for church growth, you’re not alone. Churches all over the world are reevaluating their approach after the impact of COVID-19. They’re searching for novel ideas to engage and invite new families to their churches. So, how can you reach those who are seeking community in the most effective, strategic way that is authentic to your church culture? This post will help guide you in developing your strategy for church growth online.
Establish Church Growth Goals
Before you make a move, determine your goals.
What is your church trying to accomplish?
Who are you trying to reach?
Local, regional, national?
What do you know about your target audience?
What do you hope people will do when engaging your church?
Once you understand who you want to reach and why, you can put the resources and talent in place to move toward your goals. Goals can be centered on awareness, consideration, membership, engagement, or giving.
If your goal is to build in-person attendance, then take some time to identify and understand your target audience. Once you understand your goals, who you’re trying to reach, and other characteristics of your target audience, you’re ready to engage them online.
Build Awareness and Influence In Your Community
Your target audience needs to know that you exist and are active online. Local people need to know what kind of stuff your church offers so they’ll look for you when they’re searching for help and hope.
If you’re looking to expand your reach beyond your local audience and gain regional exposure, think about the type of solutions you can offer to your online community. People are often searching for real answers to life’s most challenging questions. Share sermons, fun events, and positive moments that reflect your church culture through social media, email, text messaging, and other virtual tools.
Are you hoping to reach a national audience? If you’re ready to influence the nation and step into thought leadership, you want to make it as seamless as possible for new people to find and engage with the videos and resources your church is sharing online. Consider turning your sermons into blog articles, optimizing your sermon video pages, and running campaigns that are sharable, even by those who may not attend your church.
Adjust your church’s digital strategy based on your specific target audience. Are you trying to reach people searching for a church or do you want to reach others as well? While Google searchers who are looking for a church will use keywords like, “Find a Church near me”, non-church seekers will typically search for keywords related to real-life problems.
Focus your sermon and web content on answering those questions. Tools like our Real-Life pages make it easy to run Google Ads to drive traffic from Google to your website. You have the opportunity to be a thought leader and provide relevant answers to those who are most in need, right at that moment of decision.
Engaging & Inviting Your Community Back to In-Person Worship
Beyond investing time and energy into increasing church awareness online, you also need to invite people to church. Make sure your social media strategy includes church invites.
Along these lines, make sure your church is able to be found online by people searching for a church. Your church’s Google Business Profile functions as the search result that’s returned in local searches. Therefore, be sure to log in and update your church’s information. Optimizing and keeping your church’s Google My Business profile up to date is relatively simple, but does require some diligence to maintain and update your profile.
Online advertising is also helpful in inviting local people to attend church. Online advertising can involve general church invites, specific event invites, or church ministry activities. Your church can run ads on Google, Facebook/Instagram, YouTube, TikTok, and more. Every online invite is an investment in your church’s online strategy for church growth.
Invest in Your Church Growth Strategy
Today, churches can’t afford to hang back and hope that people will come back to church. Growing churches understand the need to invest in and focus on building church awareness. Local people won’t attend your church if they don’t know you exist. Growing churches also understand the power of an invitation. Local people won’t attend your church if they’re not invited. Your church growth strategy will help move website and social media visitors toward active in-person church attenders.
Find out how your church is doing online with our exclusive suite of free tools.
Or if you’d like to learn more about developing your strategy for church growth online, get in touch with us today.