March 7, 2025 • 37 mins
Discover actionable church marketing strategies to boost attendance and connect with your community. This episode emphasizes the importance of authentic outreach in today's changing landscape.
• Discusses the significance of church marketing for growth
• Shares three key outreach strategies: announcements, invitations, and hospitality
• Details the role of your church website as a welcome hub
• Explores the importance of analytics in measuring engagement
• Advises on setting marketing goals and budgets for effective outreach
Find peace, clarity, and companionship for your spiritual journey.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:02):
This is Lead Time.
Speaker 2 (00:03):
Welcome to Lead Time, tim Allman here with Jack
Kauberg.
This is episode two of fourepisodes.
Part two talking aroundmarketing branding.
Bringing more people to church.
Speaker 3 (00:16):
I think that's a good thing to talk about.
Speaker 2 (00:17):
Yeah, like the church is advancing, the cause of
Jesus, the kingdom of God isadvancing out and we as God's
people, through word andsacrament, are called to be
about the sending, the sendingnature of God, and we are sent
as we gather.
We are then scattered.
So I think, yeah, bringingpeople to church to be baptized,
(00:38):
to hear the word of God, to bereminded their sins are forgiven
through the Lord's Supper, very, very necessary.
So before we get into theconversation for today, I've
been blessed.
Coming off of Best PracticesConference, I got to play in the
alumni basketball game in StLouis.
Went there with mybrother-in-law, tim Lawson, and
the old guys pulled out asqueaker.
(01:00):
It was pretty fun.
And yeah, shout out Dr Veltz,jack, I know that name maybe
doesn't ring a bell to you, butmaybe it does.
He's one of our kind offoremost exegetes.
I'm looking on my Greek wherehe's got a new book coming out.
He's been a guest on my podcast.
So Veltz was my coach when I wasat seminary for two of the four
(01:22):
years, two of the three yearswhen we were there, and he got
to coach our alumni team.
It was super fun and got to hita shot toward the end to help
seal the deal.
It was super fun.
Anyway, the reason I'm bringingthat up is I get to talk to so
many students at the seminaryand maybe new grads who are in
the trenches right now these newgrads and they're just trying
(01:43):
to figure it out and got to hearI talked to a couple guys that
were like well, thanks for whatyou're doing, you're setting up
good conversations and I lovethis.
I don't agree with everythingyou say and I don't know if I
said this in the moment, but I'mlike that's good, because I
don't agree with everything,like we're testing out different
ideas here, right, I mean we'reworking it out through the word
(02:07):
.
So you got to figure out whatworks in your context.
There are some established bestpractices which we try to bring
out on our show, but we reallyjust want to partner with you
and celebrate all that God isdoing across the spectrum in the
Lutheran Church Missouri Synodand it is quite a spectrum, from
rural to suburban to urban tosmall town.
(02:27):
And I think the biggest thing,we're developing a community
conversation that lets everybodyknow your voice is valuable.
We need to understand what itlooks like in your context to
reach people with the gospel andwe don't need to compromise
good Lutheran theology to do soat all.
This is first article realitystuff.
Well, you've probably longsince stopped listening to lead
(02:49):
time if you don't believe thatGod wants to work through first
article means, which means Godis a creator, we are his
creation and his cause isadvancing.
And there are different likedoing ministry today with the
technology that we have today,the marketplace that we have
today, the marketplace that wehave today remarkably different
than the fifties and sixtiesthrough the growth seasons of
(03:11):
the Lutheran church Missourisynod.
So we're simply trying to beresponsible, understanding the
times.
Speaker 3 (03:16):
Let's take it back in time.
Let's take it back in time, tim.
Uh.
Martin Luther knew that heneeded to use technology to get
the word out.
He used the printing press, andhe was a master of it.
Right, exactly so Lutherans canadapt.
Speaker 1 (03:30):
If Luther can do it so can we today.
Speaker 2 (03:33):
So, all right, let's get in, let's get into it.
You want, you want people tocome to church.
Duh, yes, there are three kindof established ways that bring
people into church.
Let's start there, jack.
Speaker 3 (03:44):
Yeah, so the three ways are announcements, and so
if you're going to bring morepeople in, you need to do
announcements.
And just a quick FYIannouncements means marketing.
I'm making an announcement tothe community about something
they can be a part of, whetherit's come to church on Sunday or
come to our big event.
(04:04):
That's an announcement, andusually what we think about is
marketing is makingannouncements to the community.
Speaker 2 (04:11):
So that's social media, that's any.
That's going to be a newspaperad.
It could be anything that'sexternal that people could just
run, run across.
Speaker 3 (04:18):
Yeah, good, okay, and then the next is invitations.
So this is one person invitinganother person to come check
this place out, or come check tocheck out this event hey, I
think you'd love our HarvestFest.
Or hey, we've got a veryinteresting sermon topic.
That's a series that we'regoing to and maybe really
relevant to you, so why don'tyou come check it out?
So people inviting theirfriends.
(04:39):
And then the third is what wecall hospitality systems.
That also result in good datacapture, right?
So having really goodhospitality that gets a hold of
people's information so that youcan follow up with them.
So those are what I'd say kindof your three most important
things.
Now, all of those arepredicated on an idea first of
(05:01):
all, that you have a goal set onhow many new people that you're
trying to bring in for the year, and then also that you have a
really good brand for yourchurch.
So that's where we would say,right now, this is part two of
the series of bringing morepeople to church.
Right, if you haven't watchedpart one, I'd say pause this
episode, go watch that first, sothat this episode will make a
(05:21):
lot more sense, because we'rebuilding on what we talked about
in the first episode aboutbranding.
Does that make?
Speaker 2 (05:26):
sense?
Yeah, absolutely, it's sonecessary.
So let's talk about the websitebeing the front door for all of
our new guests, and there is alot of work that can be done.
We did a masterclass episodewith, was it?
Jeremy?
We've talked to so many peoplerecently.
(05:47):
Jeremy up in the Midwest why amI drawing a blank?
Tim Seleska, jeremy Seleskathere we go.
Seleska's got his thing going,and he talked a lot on that
episode about website.
Anything more to say, though,about the website?
Speaker 3 (06:02):
Yeah, what I thought was a really great takeaway from
that episode is how do we thinkabout the website?
Well, first and foremost, let'sthink of the website as your
digital welcome booth, right?
So if you thought about hey,people are just coming into the,
into the Narthex or thecourtyard or the lobby of your
church, whatever, and you wantto welcome people with a welcome
(06:22):
booth that has all of theanswers that people would have
about your church, that's reallywhat you're trying to do with
your website.
You're trying to engage thesame people that have the same
questions, and you want todesign the website to be, first
and foremost, to function thatway, right?
So let's stay right there for aminute, tim.
What are the types of questionspeople would bring to a welcome
(06:44):
booth?
New people coming in?
They're going to the welcomebooth because they got questions
.
What are the questions thatthey're asking?
What do you believe?
What do you believe and whatdoes this church believe, right,
yeah?
Speaker 2 (06:55):
Hey, I'm just curious Exactly what are some of the
ways, ministries, ways I couldget involved potentially?
How can I get connected?
Are my kids probably a betterone?
Yeah, Are my kids going toenjoy it here?
What's a kid been like?
Speaker 3 (07:09):
Yeah, yeah, well, you guys have Sunday school, and
where do I drop my kids off andwhat can they expect?
What kind of experience arethey going to have, right?
These are all very reasonablequestions.
People are going to have Otherquestions.
Do you guys have any fun eventscoming up, right?
What would it look like?
You know, hey, let's just say Ireally like this place.
What would it look like tobecome a member here?
(07:29):
I mean, these are just basicquestions that people would have
.
That's really what your websiteneeds to be doing.
It's kind of that digital again, the digital welcome booth.
That's welcoming people andgiving people the answers that
they need to.
What it's not, what it's notand what we need to avoid the
temptation for it to be.
Is the community bulletin board, right?
So the risk-?
(07:51):
The church community bulletinboard.
Yeah, the church's internalcommunity.
You know there's a need forthat.
There is a purpose for that.
These types of things are veryimportant.
What I recommend people woulddo is that that's more of
something you would do, eitheras a combination with social
media hey, join our Facebookpage and people can talk about
all the fun things that they'redoing or an internal website
(08:12):
would be your app.
Setting up an app that's justfor members and it's more of a
member experience with insiderstuff to help engage with them.
But externally facing, try tokeep your website clean and
really focused on people thatare brand new to the community,
that are just trying to figureout more about your community.
What is my worship experiencegoing to look like?
And people are just looking andyou want to accurately
(08:33):
represent your community.
You want to be authentic withit.
You don't want to use, you know, fake images from the not fake
images, but like pre-shot stockimages and say that that that's
what your church experience isgoing to look like.
Actually, have photos of yourreal campus with real people
doing real stuff, so you presenta real, authentic experience.
Speaker 2 (08:53):
Yeah that's good.
Hey, two things here.
I misspoke.
I knew I was wrong aboutSeleska.
It's James Seleska.
Speaker 3 (09:00):
James Seleska.
Speaker 2 (09:01):
Not Jeremy, I don't know what's wrong with me.
Anyway, we record these, westack our Mondays and Jack and I
are just coming off of ameeting lots of meeting Mondays,
so I'm starting to use adifferent part of my brain.
Well, let's get into theanalytics, jack.
I mean, there are reliable newuser to first-time guest data
that's out there.
This is kind of new.
We're trying to drivefirst-time users and this is
(09:22):
actually converting towardfirst-time guests on our campus.
Talk about that.
Speaker 3 (09:26):
Yeah.
So this might be fun for somefolks.
What I've discovered and I'mgoing to put a caveat in this I
assumed that the numbers weregoing to be something like this.
Based on previous jobs I've hadbefore getting into ministry, I
assumed that the ratio of newusers to the website was going
to be about 100 to 1, meaning100 new people come to our
website results in one personcoming to check us out as a
(09:49):
guest.
And, lo and behold, that isexactly what it is, and it stays
that way during seasons of youknow, like your high seasons,
like Easter and Christmas, andthen when you have dips, it's
the same thing dip in website,dip in guests and it's usually
very consistent, around 100 to 1.
Speaker 2 (10:05):
So you could see at Christmas, for instance,
Christmas Eve, that we saw ahuge spike in first-time users
and we obviously, like mostchurches, well over doubled our
normal Sunday attendance onChristmas Eve and so we doubled
new users to the website.
Basically, compared to a normalmonth, Tripled it, actually
Tripled it.
Speaker 3 (10:23):
But especially what was noticeable was the number of
new users that come.
So that was you know, you havekind of a baseline number of
people that are coming and everychurch website is going to have
people that you know, existing,pre-existing users that are
coming back for whatever reason.
You've got events on there soyour members are like, hey, what
time is that event?
So they go to your website tolook that up.
So there's a lot of naturaltraffic of people that are just
(10:45):
members of the church looking atthe website.
But we really want to look atis the new users right?
Because it's the new users whobecome the first time guests.
It's not the returning userthat comes back all the time
looking at your calendar.
That's not your first timeguest.
So the goal was to find theactual measurement that makes
sense for this type of activity.
Speaker 2 (11:03):
So you can get that data.
Go ahead, go ahead.
Yeah, I mean, this is kind ofgetting into the weeds.
You get into website analyticsto see do you have?
You don't know exactly who theyare.
And now I'm asking honestquestions.
We don't know who they areUnless they tell you on a form,
unless they tell you Right, yeah, right.
Speaker 3 (11:19):
Yeah, exactly, you can learn things about their
demographics and stuff.
So this is all, and I just wantto clarify things here.
Nobody's going to watch thisepisode and become an expert at
marketing.
My goal in this lead timeepisode is you're a senior
leader and you're trying tothink of this issue as a senior
leader.
How would I engage with avendor?
How might I engage with amarketing team if I had one?
(11:40):
How am I thinking from thesenior leader level?
So, as the senior leader, youneed data to hold people
accountable.
What is the data that you'regoing to hold a marketing team
or communications teamaccountable to?
In this case, I'm highlyrecommending that you would use
this metric called new users,and you can get that data
through Google Analytics.
You don't have to be an experton Google Analytics.
(12:00):
You can kind of watch videos onhow to set that up or work with
somebody who knows how to dothat, but that's where you would
get the data from.
You would have either.
There's a little code set up onyour website.
It sends its data to GoogleAnalytics and Google Analytics
creates all the reports and it'sall there prepackaged for you.
Speaker 2 (12:17):
Like even a pastor, could maybe figure this out.
Speaker 3 (12:20):
You just have to be able to log into it and see it.
Speaker 2 (12:24):
Maybe I'm glad you guys do it, but I trust the data
.
So let's talk about an annualgoal.
How would a team start to lookat an annual goal for new
website visitors turning intonew visitors on our campuses?
Speaker 3 (12:36):
So if you watched our first episode or listened to
our first episode, we talkedabout setting goal for new
guests to begin with.
So we call it the one-to-oneratio.
We call it the one-to-one ratioFor every one person that you
have in average weeklyattendance.
That's the same number ofpeople that you're trying to
attract in a year to become afirst-time guest.
So 500 in average weeklyattendance means that that
(13:00):
church should be setting a goalof 500 guests first-time guests
for a year in order to sustaingrowth in a way that's higher
than the amount of naturalattrition that the church has.
So that would keep you on asteady, healthy growth
trajectory.
Speaker 2 (13:14):
What is that rough?
I'm sorry to press into it, butwhat is a healthy growth
trajectory?
Do you think to replace peoplemoving and dying?
10%.
Speaker 3 (13:22):
So the natural attrition of a church that's not
losing people to other churches.
Let's just say people arecontent with your church, you're
still going to be losing aboutroughly 5% per year due to death
and people moving right.
So if you don't add any newguests, you're just going to
slowly die as a church justbecause people die right.
So now you have to bring peoplein.
(13:44):
How many people do you need tobring in?
Well, if you bring in thatone-to-one ratio let's say you
bring in 500, on average you'llretain about 15% of that right.
15% of those new guests willbecome new members of the church
.
So let's just say you lose 5%,you gain 15, you're netting 10.
So that would put you on a 10%annual growth rate and you could
(14:06):
sustain that year after year ifyou're being very intentional
about it.
Speaker 2 (14:09):
Love.
It All right, let's get moreinto the weeds here.
How?
Speaker 3 (14:12):
do you?
Speaker 2 (14:12):
actually get new yeah .
Before summarizing, before wego yeah, real quick.
So how does that?
Speaker 3 (14:15):
translate to new users on the website.
So you take that number, youmultiply it times 100.
So in this church that needs500 guests.
That means they need 50,000 newusers coming to their website
in a year to reverse engineerinto that number of 500 guests.
Speaker 2 (14:32):
So we need 80.
And the cool thing is, you canactually do that there's things
that you can do to actually makethat happen.
Well, that's what we're goingto talk about.
So we need like 80,000 firsttimers to continue on a healthy
growth trajectory, praise God.
So how do you do that?
How do you get those new usersto your website?
What are some strategies there?
Speaker 3 (14:51):
Well, the first thing to know is that you're online,
you're engaging with three typesof audiences.
So these different types ofaudiences are people that are
telling themselves they have afelt need.
That's kind of the theme intheir head, and those felt needs
are people that are looking forchurch.
And those felt needs are peoplethat are looking for church.
So this would be the type ofperson that goes on online and
says, hey, I'm new in the town,or hey, I'm in a new phase of
(15:14):
life or whatever, or maybe I'mdiscontent from this church, I'm
looking for a different one.
So they're basically sayingwhat are the churches near me?
They're searching for it.
So they've already identifiedthey're looking for a church's
your goal.
So, um, that's where.
Uh, google search is a big deal, right?
(15:34):
Search ads are a huge one when,when people type in church near
me, do you pop up in the search?
Also, google, my business isbig.
This is what we call local SEO.
Um, your SEO in general makesit easier for you to be found
road signage, believe it or not,as a big deal, right, because
you're driving.
Oh, I'm looking for a church,there's one, right?
So that actually makes adifference.
So the next audience, then ispeople that are looking for
(15:57):
stuff to do, looking forsomething fun, right.
So we get a huge number ofpeople in our ministry from two
big things that happen in theyear our Harvest Fest and our
VBS.
Lots of people coming to thoseevents that are just looking for
something to do.
Where can I go and take my kids?
Where it's A, it's safe, it'swholesome and they're going to
(16:18):
burn off a lot of energy, right?
So huge Events almost marketthemselves, right, they do, but
that's an example.
I'm looking for something to do.
And then the third audience thenis people looking for hope.
Now, of course, our ultimatehope is in Jesus, right.
But a lot of times the way thatthat hope question looks like
(16:39):
is more like hey, how do I fixmy broken marriage?
Or hey, how do I deal with,maybe in some cases, addiction,
or I just lost somebody.
I'm trying to figure out how todeal with the grief of losing
somebody.
So it's people who are lookingfor hope in the midst of their
hurts.
So they're searching abouttheir hurts.
So do you have a website that'sset up and programs that you
(17:00):
can invite people to thatespecially deals with the hurts
that they have and you can havemarketing for those specific
things and invite people tocommunity through those things.
It is what we call a side doorinto the church.
Speaker 2 (17:14):
Different social media campaigns that focus on
those three targets, leadingthem to your website, leading
them to, maybe, a specificlanding page for Harvest Fest or
(17:34):
whatever.
That's what drives that socialmedia engagement, but it's three
different types of audiences.
Let's be clear.
Speaker 3 (17:39):
Three different types of audiences.
So if you can thinkintentionally by that, so now
you're a senior leader and youcan say, okay, I'm going to hold
my marketing or my comms teamor my vendor accountable.
You know, let's lay out whatare we doing intentionally in
those three areas.
Speaker 2 (17:53):
right, all right, that gives you a way to work on
Amen.
So three core audiences.
Let's get into organic SEO,search engine optimization, yep.
Speaker 3 (18:03):
That's going to be huge with your inbound audience.
That's going to be really hugewith the people that are
searching for church.
So a person already says I knowI want to go to church.
I'm just trying to find theones that are near me that seem
to be good.
That's what your search engineoptimization is for.
It gets your website morevisible when people are
searching with the types ofministry services that you offer
(18:24):
, right.
So if you have content on yourwebsite about marriage ministry
and people are searching formarriage help, that'll help that
website be seen.
If you have blog posts abouttopics that people care about,
that's huge for search engineoptimization.
That's something that oftengoes neglected on websites.
(18:44):
And then what we talk about islocal SEO.
This would be the things likethe Google my Business, which is
huge.
When you search churches nearme and you see a little map pop
up and you see all the littledots that are near you that
Google has identified aschurches, you want to be sure
that you're up there with one ofthose that is being recommended
to people of blogs.
Speaker 2 (19:05):
really quick, jack, for the pastor who's like oh my
gosh, I don't have this muchtime, so what you could do this
is an appropriate use of AI.
Run your sermon through AI andask it to condense it and turn
it into a blog post with theappropriate headers.
Jack, what do you think?
Speaker 3 (19:24):
No, that's exactly what it is now AI is making.
This is the beauty of it.
I mean, there's tools thatexist right now that are
specifically for helpingchurches do this with their
content.
So think of that sermon now asthe content hub that things now
can spoke out of.
So, using AI, there's a reallygreat platform called Church
(19:45):
Tech that's kind of builtexplicitly to do this.
You put in a sermon video or asermon manuscript either way is
fine and it'll generate blogposts, it'll generate small
group curriculum, it'll generateall kinds of you know,
marketing posts and stuff likethat automatically for you so
that you can use it formarketing purposes, right?
(20:06):
So this is really cool this isone of the beautiful things with
AI and it's still your originalcontent, right?
I'm not saying you have towrite the sermon with AI, but
you write, you put the effortinto writing this beautiful
sermon and now you can recycleit in multiple ways and it does
the work of recontextualizing itand making it appropriate for
those different formats.
Speaker 2 (20:26):
Amen, I love it.
So organic SEO, let's move intoGoogle Grants, jack.
Speaker 3 (20:31):
So Google Grants is something that basically every
big church does and I think alot of tiny, very few tiny
churches do, because they don'tknow about it.
But basically what happens isGoogle, as part of its you know,
as a tax break, I suppose itsphilanthropy gives away search
(20:51):
ads to nonprofits, includingchurches, believe it or not, and
what that looks like is theywill give up to not guaranteed,
but they'll give up to $10,000 amonth in free Google search ads
to your ministry to addressspecific things.
They have guidelines on how touse it, but basically this is
(21:12):
free advertising.
You could increase, in theory,your marketing budget by, you
know, $120,000 a year.
You could be a tiny littlechurch with $100,000 budget and
have a $120,000 marketing budget.
So you can see how sometimes,how some churches can grow
really rapidly if they know whatthey're doing on the marketing
side of things.
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (21:32):
Now but a small, you should probably not try and do
this.
Speaker 3 (21:34):
I wouldn't do this yourself.
I would try and find a vendorthat would do this for you and a
lot of times vendors.
You know the cost can rangeanywhere between 300 and $500 a
month.
Still, the way you think aboutit is, I'm getting up to ten
thousand dollars a month in freeadvertising by paying an expert
five hundred dollars a month inadministrative costs to run
these programs for me, andthey'll do things like they'll.
(21:56):
They'll go through theapplication process and actually
get you qualified for it andand get you set up for that.
I'm not going to give specificrecommendations.
I will say that we worked withwell.
I will give a recommendation.
We had a great luck for a whileworking with a company called
Missional Marketing.
They were fantastic in thatarea.
They really specialized in thatarea.
I know there's a lot of othergreat ministry-oriented vendors
(22:19):
out there that will do the same,and what I would say is, as a
matter of accountability again,your goal is to get new users to
your website.
Really, look at how many newusers is that generating?
Some of the data I'm saying isthat, on average, churches can
get about 1,400 new users and Iwould say if you're executing
really, really well, you canprobably get more in the range
(22:41):
of 1,500 to 2,500 new users justfrom that program.
So it's a very, very efficientway to get more traffic per
month to your website.
Speaker 2 (22:50):
That's significant, All right.
So organic SEO largely forthose that are looking for
churches near them.
Who's Google Grants most for?
Is that for churches near it'sthe same thing.
Speaker 3 (23:00):
It's search, but it's also towards the people looking
for hope.
So, again, a really perfectthing for Google Grants is you
know how do I enrich my marriage, how do I improve my marriage?
Well, if you've got a marriageministry, you can get that
search ads tied to a landingpage.
This is the key thing with allof these things that you're
doing with social media orsearch ads is they come to your
website on a landing page,oftentimes a dedicated landing
(23:23):
page that you've created justfor that search, so that people
can get some free content onthat area.
You've created just for thatsearch, so that people can get
some free content on that areaand then decide if they want to
take their next step, toactually participate in a
ministry or come see you inperson on a Sunday.
So there should always be aclear next step for them
Something free that you'regiving Usually it could be a
blog post or some content orsome PDFs or whatever and then
(23:45):
something next that they coulddo if they want to tie in closer
to your community.
Speaker 2 (23:49):
Love it Organic SEO, Google Grants.
Now let's talk paid ads, yeahpaid ads then.
Speaker 3 (23:55):
So Google Grants you have to go through a bunch of
hoops to be able to qualify toget that and you'll get a
certain amount allotted to youbased on the quality of the ads.
When you pay for your own ads,a lot of those restrictions go
away.
So you have a lot more freedomwith the ads that you pay for
yourself and you're notnecessarily subject to kind of
meeting all of the requirementsthat they have to get those ads
(24:18):
shown.
So you can decide what it isthat you want to market with a
little bit more freedom.
And the cool thing is you don'tpay unless people click.
So that's the beauty.
Well, a lot of marketingformats If you buy a billboard,
you're going to pay for that,regardless of how many people
see that, right?
But with Google ads or otheronline social media ads, the pay
(24:41):
is for the click, so they clickthrough it Then you.
Then you're charged for it.
That means they're actuallycoming to your website and at
that point in time you're reallylooking at what kind of
campaign is getting me the mosttraffic for the least cost.
So I do recommend doing somesort of Google ad campaigns, but
we have actually found that themost efficient way is doing
(25:01):
social media ads.
This is where a really robustsocial media campaign comes in
place.
If we're marketing Christmas,most of our traffic for
Christmas is from Facebook orInstagram and that's either
viral posts that we've done orposts that we've paid to have
shown to a lot of people andwe're seeing that we can get
(25:22):
people in.
You know 50 cents a clickversus sometimes $2 a click on
Google or $1 a click on Google.
So sometimes we can get it forabout half the cost by doing
event marketing on Facebook.
So highly recommended and again, the best thing for the social
media ads would be reallyevent-based.
Christmas is an event inpeople's minds.
(25:43):
Easter is an event.
It's a worship service, but forthem that's an event because
it's a cultural thing.
Right, harvestfest, vbs, thesebig things are events.
A sermon series can be thoughtof as an event that you're
inviting people to based on thethemes of that sermon series.
Speaker 2 (25:59):
Hey, if there's a pastor listening right now we
got a lot of pastors and you'relike I don't really like this
content.
There's someone on your teamand or someones that will
Speaker 3 (26:10):
geek out on this.
Speaker 2 (26:12):
Yeah, yeah.
So invite them to listen andthen take your right next step,
Because I think a lot of timeswith this just pausing Jack,
this is great content is like ohmy gosh, this seems like it's
so much.
Speaker 1 (26:23):
Well, here's the thing.
Speaker 2 (26:23):
We weren't doing all of this when we started.
Nope, you just start baby steps, right, it's right.
So if someone's listening, likethey've heard, organic SEO,
google grants, paid ads likewhat's the lowest hanging fruit
here, jack?
If someone's just going tostart to implement one thing, I
would say well, you know?
Speaker 3 (26:40):
I would say, first and foremost, if you don't know
where to start, let's just sayyou're a sole pastor with a very
limited staff.
Right, that's just a scenario.
I would say your best bet is tofind a really good vendor and
get onto something that would beakin to like a subscription
model with them, where they goand they clean up your website
and they have a strategy forgiving you the best kind of
(27:01):
search engine optimization foryour website.
It may require redoing thewhole thing, depending on how
good it is to begin with, andthen have them in charge of your
Google grants campaign and thenset certain goals for external
marketing.
Hey, I've got a plan for eventsfor the year.
Work with the vendor, Let themdo the work.
(27:22):
But I would say here's a reallygood thing is make sure that
you're transparent with thegoals that you're setting.
Is make sure that you'retransparent with the goals that
you're setting.
You know, if you're that churchwith 500 people in worship and
you're trying to get 50,000 newusers, make sure you tell that
vendor that's my goal, and thenyou can work on a plan.
You can reverse engineer a planthat makes sense, and they can
actually we use the term clarityas kindness this is kindness
(27:46):
for a vendor or a staff personthat you have to help say, okay,
this is what we're going to doand we're going to clear the
field for anything that's notthat right.
We are going to reverseengineer I like to use that term
a lot.
We're going to try and think aswe're designing our events how
do we make it marketable, right?
How do we make our sermonseries marketable?
It's got to be greatdiscipleship, but there's also a
(28:14):
marketable piece to it, right.
And then you can hand that offto the vendor and we can say,
okay, here's the strategy.
You know 50,000 new users forthe year.
How do we get there?
So then you're meeting withthem, hopefully then monthly or
more often than monthly, to sayhow close are we to meeting this
goal?
Do we need to make anyadjustments?
Is there something that we needto shift with in terms of the
content that we have on thewebsite?
And all of this is achievable,right?
That's the cool thing.
Speaker 2 (28:33):
I got to draw some attention to this, Jack.
We have amazing theology.
Speaker 1 (28:38):
We do.
Speaker 2 (28:39):
Word and sacrament, the confessions, the whole.
You hear us talk about that alot we get and you may think
this is too harsh.
Maybe it is, but I don't thinkgenerally it is we get crushed
by the non-denom world.
We do.
In this game right here in thisarea.
Speaker 3 (28:58):
We don't have to Crushed.
We don't have to we don't haveto be right there's no rule.
Speaker 2 (29:02):
Why wouldn't we want to market the bejeebers out of a
confessional, missionalLutheranism?
That doesn't make any sense tome, but we don't.
We're like, wow, you know, thisis the first hour of stuff.
Well, okay, it is what it is.
But there are people that arelooking for churches, that are
going right past your church,going to a church down the road.
That's preaching decisiontheology, that's emotionalism.
Speaker 3 (29:22):
That all this kind of stuff, whatever that is,
whatever Right.
Speaker 2 (29:26):
So they're passing you up because you're not caring
about this.
Stuff like this is justunderstanding the times.
Jack, if we were in a differenttime we'd be talking about a
different thing.
But this is.
People interact with us, firstand foremost online, and are we
developing a good impression?
Speaker 3 (29:40):
of ourselves as if somebody was using the printing
press better than us, right Imean?
Yeah, let's go back in time tothat context, right?
So all right, all right, I'mdone off off my.
There is some shrewdness tothis.
Let's not get crushed.
Speaker 2 (29:48):
Yeah, let's go back in time to that context right
yeah, all right, all right, I'mdone Off off my-.
Speaker 3 (29:50):
There is some shrewdness to this right.
Let's not get crushed.
Speaker 2 (29:52):
There is some shrewdness to this.
Let's not get crushed on thisman.
So non-website marketing talkabout what non-web?
Because this is mostly websitedriven.
Speaker 3 (30:02):
but there's other marketing strategies, jack
(30:33):
no-transcript ahead on onlinemarketing as we are now.
But at that point in time, 50%of the people enrolled because
they saw our building.
So they were driving by andthey saw our building and it
said it's a school.
Oh, it's a school.
I mean, go check it out, right?
So you can't neglect the powerof street visibility.
(30:57):
Street visibility is a big dealand it will always continue to
be a big deal.
Look at your campus from thelens of an outsider.
We tend to always look at.
This is the thing I would sayhappens a lot is we tend to
think about our website, not ourwebsite, our campus, through
the lens of somebody who's justcomfortable with the stuff being
here.
But what would it look like ifyou look at it with a different
(31:19):
lens?
Think of yourself as a guest,and how would you evaluate the
quality, the visibility, thesignage, the upkeep of your
campus?
Is it a guest-friendlyappearance?
Is the signage reallyaccessible to people?
Tim, we have two worship spaces.
People have to go decide whichside of the courtyard they're
(31:42):
going to go to.
How easy is it for people tounderstand that?
I know what that is, but abrand new guest they could
easily be confused by that.
So we have to have really greatsignage to make it very clear
to people.
And the same thing is true tothe signage on the road.
Right, does the signage on theroad invite people in?
Does it clearly say yourworship times?
Right, so that every time theydrive by it's a billboard that
(32:04):
you don't have to pay for?
Right?
Well, this is a raw one for us.
We've had the same sign outthere for a long time.
I know we're trying to get alarger sign.
I don't need to go into it.
We're going through somepermitting issues right now.
Speaker 2 (32:18):
There's some permitting issues that we're
walking through, so so good, hey, final comments, though, as you
wrap this one up.
Speaker 3 (32:33):
Jack, this has been good, yeah.
So final comments.
You know where do we go fromhere, wrapping this up.
Like I said, if you're new tothis, if you don't have a
communications department whichis probably 90% of churches out
there you know the focus onhaving a really good vendor,
find a vendor who can, whoactually cares about ministry.
I mean, there are website andmarketing vendors that
specialize on church andministry marketing.
I would work with them.
First and foremost, budget forit.
(32:54):
You are going to have to budgetfor it.
I would say our rule, you know,as I've done the analysis on it
, we have to probably alwaysdepend on the idea that we're
spending about 1% of our annualgiving, you know, on marketing,
and when I say on marketing Imean buying ads.
That's above and beyond thecost of running our comm team
(33:16):
and running a website and allthat kind of stuff is like
actually just buying advertisingto bring people onto the web.
Speaker 2 (33:22):
So for us roughly a $2 million plus budget.
Speaker 3 (33:26):
We're spending $20K in these $20 to $25K per year on
ads is enough to get us ourgoal, and so people would know.
Our goal is to get 85,000people to visit our website for
the first time, and we'retracking that every single month
.
So when we do our MetricsMonday, part of Metrics Monday
for us is how many new users arecoming to the website.
(33:49):
Are we meeting our goals or notmeeting our goals in that area?
Speaker 2 (33:52):
Everybody on our team gets super stoked when Metrics
Monday comes around.
No, it's good, it's necessary.
Jack, I'm not being silly.
I actually get stoked becausehere's the reality I'm a
competitor and I want to winMore than that.
Speaker 1 (34:07):
I think Jesus is competitive.
Speaker 2 (34:09):
He wants more people to have an experience with him,
to come into a saving At the endof the day.
You may think this is all aboutthe metric numbers $80, blah,
blah, blah.
No, no, no, it's about the oneperson that comes onto your
campus that experiences the loveand the hospitality of Christ,
hears the word and, just likeyesterday, a baptismal
invitation comes out and theysay, yeah, what's to prohibit me
(34:32):
from receiving the waterconnected to the word we just
had that?
Yeah, that's so, so exciting.
The Lord is at work inbeautiful ways.
And really, this is about the 1%.
Are you getting 1% better as itrelates to your marketing and
brand strategy every single day,every single year?
If you're just making thoseincremental steps, you'll look
back and say, wow, remember whenwe used to have those
(34:52):
conversations.
Now we're having theseconversations.
I think this driving to thewebsite first time, 100 folks to
one visitor, the guest thatcomes onto your campus that's a
great metric that should be astaple for us across all of our
congregations in the LCMS.
Any final comments?
Jack, this has been fun, no.
Speaker 3 (35:11):
I mean this is bringing to conclusion our talk
about marketing.
Again.
We had kind of an expert onwebsites on a recent episode
here, so we encourage youchecking that out.
On our next two episodes, we'regoing to be talking about
invitation strategies, so we'retaking things to the next level
now.
We were just talking aboutmarketing, now we're going to
(35:31):
talk about invitation and thenwe're going to talk about
hospitable tracking systems,which is kind of fun, but that's
going to be the whole packagehere.
When we talk about, you'regoing to go through the series,
you're going to know everythingthat you need to know about
attracting people to your church.
Speaker 2 (35:44):
Amen, amen.
It's a good day.
Go, make it a great day.
Please like, subscribe, commentwherever it is you take these
in, and having conversationsaround brand and marketing is
not liberal Doesn't mean we'recompromising anything related to
theology.
We're just understanding thetimes and we want to reach as
many people as possible with thegospel.
Jesus loves you so much and gowith his joy, go with his love,
(36:06):
go with his peace as you lead alearning organization, a humble
learning organization called thechurch, seeking to bring more
people into a savingrelationship with Jesus.
It's a good day.
Go and make it a great day.
Speaker 1 (36:16):
Wonderful work, jack Take care and, god bless, you've
been listening to Lead Time, apodcast of the Unite Leadership
Collective.
The ULC's mission is tocollaborate with the local
church to discover, develop anddeploy leaders through biblical
Lutheran doctrine and innovativemethods To partner with us in
this gospel message.
Subscribe to our channel, thengo to theuniteleadershiporg to
(36:39):
create your free login forexclusive material and resources
and then to explore ways inwhich you can sponsor an episode
.
Thanks for listening and staytuned for next week's episode.
This is Lead Time.
Speaker 2 (00:03):
Welcome to Lead Time, tim Allman here with Jack
Kauberg.
This is episode two of fourepisodes.
Part two talking aroundmarketing branding.
Bringing more people to church.
Speaker 3 (00:16):
I think that's a good thing to talk about.
Speaker 2 (00:17):
Yeah, like the church is advancing, the cause of
Jesus, the kingdom of God isadvancing out and we as God's
people, through word andsacrament, are called to be
about the sending, the sendingnature of God, and we are sent
as we gather.
We are then scattered.
So I think, yeah, bringingpeople to church to be baptized,
(00:38):
to hear the word of God, to bereminded their sins are forgiven
through the Lord's Supper, very, very necessary.
So before we get into theconversation for today, I've
been blessed.
Coming off of Best PracticesConference, I got to play in the
alumni basketball game in StLouis.
Went there with mybrother-in-law, tim Lawson, and
the old guys pulled out asqueaker.
(01:00):
It was pretty fun.
And yeah, shout out Dr Veltz,jack, I know that name maybe
doesn't ring a bell to you, butmaybe it does.
He's one of our kind offoremost exegetes.
I'm looking on my Greek wherehe's got a new book coming out.
He's been a guest on my podcast.
So Veltz was my coach when I wasat seminary for two of the four
(01:22):
years, two of the three yearswhen we were there, and he got
to coach our alumni team.
It was super fun and got to hita shot toward the end to help
seal the deal.
It was super fun.
Anyway, the reason I'm bringingthat up is I get to talk to so
many students at the seminaryand maybe new grads who are in
the trenches right now these newgrads and they're just trying
(01:43):
to figure it out and got to hearI talked to a couple guys that
were like well, thanks for whatyou're doing, you're setting up
good conversations and I lovethis.
I don't agree with everythingyou say and I don't know if I
said this in the moment, but I'mlike that's good, because I
don't agree with everything,like we're testing out different
ideas here, right, I mean we'reworking it out through the word
(02:07):
.
So you got to figure out whatworks in your context.
There are some established bestpractices which we try to bring
out on our show, but we reallyjust want to partner with you
and celebrate all that God isdoing across the spectrum in the
Lutheran Church Missouri Synodand it is quite a spectrum, from
rural to suburban to urban tosmall town.
(02:27):
And I think the biggest thing,we're developing a community
conversation that lets everybodyknow your voice is valuable.
We need to understand what itlooks like in your context to
reach people with the gospel andwe don't need to compromise
good Lutheran theology to do soat all.
This is first article realitystuff.
Well, you've probably longsince stopped listening to lead
(02:49):
time if you don't believe thatGod wants to work through first
article means, which means Godis a creator, we are his
creation and his cause isadvancing.
And there are different likedoing ministry today with the
technology that we have today,the marketplace that we have
today, the marketplace that wehave today remarkably different
than the fifties and sixtiesthrough the growth seasons of
(03:11):
the Lutheran church Missourisynod.
So we're simply trying to beresponsible, understanding the
times.
Speaker 3 (03:16):
Let's take it back in time.
Let's take it back in time, tim.
Uh.
Martin Luther knew that heneeded to use technology to get
the word out.
He used the printing press, andhe was a master of it.
Right, exactly so Lutherans canadapt.
Speaker 1 (03:30):
If Luther can do it so can we today.
Speaker 2 (03:33):
So, all right, let's get in, let's get into it.
You want, you want people tocome to church.
Duh, yes, there are three kindof established ways that bring
people into church.
Let's start there, jack.
Speaker 3 (03:44):
Yeah, so the three ways are announcements, and so
if you're going to bring morepeople in, you need to do
announcements.
And just a quick FYIannouncements means marketing.
I'm making an announcement tothe community about something
they can be a part of, whetherit's come to church on Sunday or
come to our big event.
(04:04):
That's an announcement, andusually what we think about is
marketing is makingannouncements to the community.
Speaker 2 (04:11):
So that's social media, that's any.
That's going to be a newspaperad.
It could be anything that'sexternal that people could just
run, run across.
Speaker 3 (04:18):
Yeah, good, okay, and then the next is invitations.
So this is one person invitinganother person to come check
this place out, or come check tocheck out this event hey, I
think you'd love our HarvestFest.
Or hey, we've got a veryinteresting sermon topic.
That's a series that we'regoing to and maybe really
relevant to you, so why don'tyou come check it out?
So people inviting theirfriends.
(04:39):
And then the third is what wecall hospitality systems.
That also result in good datacapture, right?
So having really goodhospitality that gets a hold of
people's information so that youcan follow up with them.
So those are what I'd say kindof your three most important
things.
Now, all of those arepredicated on an idea first of
(05:01):
all, that you have a goal set onhow many new people that you're
trying to bring in for the year, and then also that you have a
really good brand for yourchurch.
So that's where we would say,right now, this is part two of
the series of bringing morepeople to church.
Right, if you haven't watchedpart one, I'd say pause this
episode, go watch that first, sothat this episode will make a
(05:21):
lot more sense, because we'rebuilding on what we talked about
in the first episode aboutbranding.
Does that make?
Speaker 2 (05:26):
sense?
Yeah, absolutely, it's sonecessary.
So let's talk about the websitebeing the front door for all of
our new guests, and there is alot of work that can be done.
We did a masterclass episodewith, was it?
Jeremy?
We've talked to so many peoplerecently.
(05:47):
Jeremy up in the Midwest why amI drawing a blank?
Tim Seleska, jeremy Seleskathere we go.
Seleska's got his thing going,and he talked a lot on that
episode about website.
Anything more to say, though,about the website?
Speaker 3 (06:02):
Yeah, what I thought was a really great takeaway from
that episode is how do we thinkabout the website?
Well, first and foremost, let'sthink of the website as your
digital welcome booth, right?
So if you thought about hey,people are just coming into the,
into the Narthex or thecourtyard or the lobby of your
church, whatever, and you wantto welcome people with a welcome
(06:22):
booth that has all of theanswers that people would have
about your church, that's reallywhat you're trying to do with
your website.
You're trying to engage thesame people that have the same
questions, and you want todesign the website to be, first
and foremost, to function thatway, right?
So let's stay right there for aminute, tim.
What are the types of questionspeople would bring to a welcome
(06:44):
booth?
New people coming in?
They're going to the welcomebooth because they got questions
.
What are the questions thatthey're asking?
What do you believe?
What do you believe and whatdoes this church believe, right,
yeah?
Speaker 2 (06:55):
Hey, I'm just curious Exactly what are some of the
ways, ministries, ways I couldget involved potentially?
How can I get connected?
Are my kids probably a betterone?
Yeah, Are my kids going toenjoy it here?
What's a kid been like?
Speaker 3 (07:09):
Yeah, yeah, well, you guys have Sunday school, and
where do I drop my kids off andwhat can they expect?
What kind of experience arethey going to have, right?
These are all very reasonablequestions.
People are going to have Otherquestions.
Do you guys have any fun eventscoming up, right?
What would it look like?
You know, hey, let's just say Ireally like this place.
What would it look like tobecome a member here?
(07:29):
I mean, these are just basicquestions that people would have
.
That's really what your websiteneeds to be doing.
It's kind of that digital again, the digital welcome booth.
That's welcoming people andgiving people the answers that
they need to.
What it's not, what it's notand what we need to avoid the
temptation for it to be.
Is the community bulletin board, right?
So the risk-?
(07:51):
The church community bulletinboard.
Yeah, the church's internalcommunity.
You know there's a need forthat.
There is a purpose for that.
These types of things are veryimportant.
What I recommend people woulddo is that that's more of
something you would do, eitheras a combination with social
media hey, join our Facebookpage and people can talk about
all the fun things that they'redoing or an internal website
(08:12):
would be your app.
Setting up an app that's justfor members and it's more of a
member experience with insiderstuff to help engage with them.
But externally facing, try tokeep your website clean and
really focused on people thatare brand new to the community,
that are just trying to figureout more about your community.
What is my worship experiencegoing to look like?
And people are just looking andyou want to accurately
(08:33):
represent your community.
You want to be authentic withit.
You don't want to use, you know, fake images from the not fake
images, but like pre-shot stockimages and say that that that's
what your church experience isgoing to look like.
Actually, have photos of yourreal campus with real people
doing real stuff, so you presenta real, authentic experience.
Speaker 2 (08:53):
Yeah that's good.
Hey, two things here.
I misspoke.
I knew I was wrong aboutSeleska.
It's James Seleska.
Speaker 3 (09:00):
James Seleska.
Speaker 2 (09:01):
Not Jeremy, I don't know what's wrong with me.
Anyway, we record these, westack our Mondays and Jack and I
are just coming off of ameeting lots of meeting Mondays,
so I'm starting to use adifferent part of my brain.
Well, let's get into theanalytics, jack.
I mean, there are reliable newuser to first-time guest data
that's out there.
This is kind of new.
We're trying to drivefirst-time users and this is
(09:22):
actually converting towardfirst-time guests on our campus.
Talk about that.
Speaker 3 (09:26):
Yeah.
So this might be fun for somefolks.
What I've discovered and I'mgoing to put a caveat in this I
assumed that the numbers weregoing to be something like this.
Based on previous jobs I've hadbefore getting into ministry, I
assumed that the ratio of newusers to the website was going
to be about 100 to 1, meaning100 new people come to our
website results in one personcoming to check us out as a
(09:49):
guest.
And, lo and behold, that isexactly what it is, and it stays
that way during seasons of youknow, like your high seasons,
like Easter and Christmas, andthen when you have dips, it's
the same thing dip in website,dip in guests and it's usually
very consistent, around 100 to 1.
Speaker 2 (10:05):
So you could see at Christmas, for instance,
Christmas Eve, that we saw ahuge spike in first-time users
and we obviously, like mostchurches, well over doubled our
normal Sunday attendance onChristmas Eve and so we doubled
new users to the website.
Basically, compared to a normalmonth, Tripled it, actually
Tripled it.
Speaker 3 (10:23):
But especially what was noticeable was the number of
new users that come.
So that was you know, you havekind of a baseline number of
people that are coming and everychurch website is going to have
people that you know, existing,pre-existing users that are
coming back for whatever reason.
You've got events on there soyour members are like, hey, what
time is that event?
So they go to your website tolook that up.
So there's a lot of naturaltraffic of people that are just
(10:45):
members of the church looking atthe website.
But we really want to look atis the new users right?
Because it's the new users whobecome the first time guests.
It's not the returning userthat comes back all the time
looking at your calendar.
That's not your first timeguest.
So the goal was to find theactual measurement that makes
sense for this type of activity.
Speaker 2 (11:03):
So you can get that data.
Go ahead, go ahead.
Yeah, I mean, this is kind ofgetting into the weeds.
You get into website analyticsto see do you have?
You don't know exactly who theyare.
And now I'm asking honestquestions.
We don't know who they areUnless they tell you on a form,
unless they tell you Right, yeah, right.
Speaker 3 (11:19):
Yeah, exactly, you can learn things about their
demographics and stuff.
So this is all, and I just wantto clarify things here.
Nobody's going to watch thisepisode and become an expert at
marketing.
My goal in this lead timeepisode is you're a senior
leader and you're trying tothink of this issue as a senior
leader.
How would I engage with avendor?
How might I engage with amarketing team if I had one?
(11:40):
How am I thinking from thesenior leader level?
So, as the senior leader, youneed data to hold people
accountable.
What is the data that you'regoing to hold a marketing team
or communications teamaccountable to?
In this case, I'm highlyrecommending that you would use
this metric called new users,and you can get that data
through Google Analytics.
You don't have to be an experton Google Analytics.
(12:00):
You can kind of watch videos onhow to set that up or work with
somebody who knows how to dothat, but that's where you would
get the data from.
You would have either.
There's a little code set up onyour website.
It sends its data to GoogleAnalytics and Google Analytics
creates all the reports and it'sall there prepackaged for you.
Speaker 2 (12:17):
Like even a pastor, could maybe figure this out.
Speaker 3 (12:20):
You just have to be able to log into it and see it.
Speaker 2 (12:24):
Maybe I'm glad you guys do it, but I trust the data
.
So let's talk about an annualgoal.
How would a team start to lookat an annual goal for new
website visitors turning intonew visitors on our campuses?
Speaker 3 (12:36):
So if you watched our first episode or listened to
our first episode, we talkedabout setting goal for new
guests to begin with.
So we call it the one-to-oneratio.
We call it the one-to-one ratioFor every one person that you
have in average weeklyattendance.
That's the same number ofpeople that you're trying to
attract in a year to become afirst-time guest.
So 500 in average weeklyattendance means that that
(13:00):
church should be setting a goalof 500 guests first-time guests
for a year in order to sustaingrowth in a way that's higher
than the amount of naturalattrition that the church has.
So that would keep you on asteady, healthy growth
trajectory.
Speaker 2 (13:14):
What is that rough?
I'm sorry to press into it, butwhat is a healthy growth
trajectory?
Do you think to replace peoplemoving and dying?
10%.
Speaker 3 (13:22):
So the natural attrition of a church that's not
losing people to other churches.
Let's just say people arecontent with your church, you're
still going to be losing aboutroughly 5% per year due to death
and people moving right.
So if you don't add any newguests, you're just going to
slowly die as a church justbecause people die right.
So now you have to bring peoplein.
(13:44):
How many people do you need tobring in?
Well, if you bring in thatone-to-one ratio let's say you
bring in 500, on average you'llretain about 15% of that right.
15% of those new guests willbecome new members of the church
.
So let's just say you lose 5%,you gain 15, you're netting 10.
So that would put you on a 10%annual growth rate and you could
(14:06):
sustain that year after year ifyou're being very intentional
about it.
Speaker 2 (14:09):
Love.
It All right, let's get moreinto the weeds here.
How?
Speaker 3 (14:12):
do you?
Speaker 2 (14:12):
actually get new yeah .
Before summarizing, before wego yeah, real quick.
So how does that?
Speaker 3 (14:15):
translate to new users on the website.
So you take that number, youmultiply it times 100.
So in this church that needs500 guests.
That means they need 50,000 newusers coming to their website
in a year to reverse engineerinto that number of 500 guests.
Speaker 2 (14:32):
So we need 80.
And the cool thing is, you canactually do that there's things
that you can do to actually makethat happen.
Well, that's what we're goingto talk about.
So we need like 80,000 firsttimers to continue on a healthy
growth trajectory, praise God.
So how do you do that?
How do you get those new usersto your website?
What are some strategies there?
Speaker 3 (14:51):
Well, the first thing to know is that you're online,
you're engaging with three typesof audiences.
So these different types ofaudiences are people that are
telling themselves they have afelt need.
That's kind of the theme intheir head, and those felt needs
are people that are looking forchurch.
And those felt needs are peoplethat are looking for church.
So this would be the type ofperson that goes on online and
says, hey, I'm new in the town,or hey, I'm in a new phase of
(15:14):
life or whatever, or maybe I'mdiscontent from this church, I'm
looking for a different one.
So they're basically sayingwhat are the churches near me?
They're searching for it.
So they've already identifiedthey're looking for a church's
your goal.
So, um, that's where.
Uh, google search is a big deal, right?
(15:34):
Search ads are a huge one when,when people type in church near
me, do you pop up in the search?
Also, google, my business isbig.
This is what we call local SEO.
Um, your SEO in general makesit easier for you to be found
road signage, believe it or not,as a big deal, right, because
you're driving.
Oh, I'm looking for a church,there's one, right?
So that actually makes adifference.
So the next audience, then ispeople that are looking for
(15:57):
stuff to do, looking forsomething fun, right.
So we get a huge number ofpeople in our ministry from two
big things that happen in theyear our Harvest Fest and our
VBS.
Lots of people coming to thoseevents that are just looking for
something to do.
Where can I go and take my kids?
Where it's A, it's safe, it'swholesome and they're going to
(16:18):
burn off a lot of energy, right?
So huge Events almost marketthemselves, right, they do, but
that's an example.
I'm looking for something to do.
And then the third audience thenis people looking for hope.
Now, of course, our ultimatehope is in Jesus, right.
But a lot of times the way thatthat hope question looks like
(16:39):
is more like hey, how do I fixmy broken marriage?
Or hey, how do I deal with,maybe in some cases, addiction,
or I just lost somebody.
I'm trying to figure out how todeal with the grief of losing
somebody.
So it's people who are lookingfor hope in the midst of their
hurts.
So they're searching abouttheir hurts.
So do you have a website that'sset up and programs that you
(17:00):
can invite people to thatespecially deals with the hurts
that they have and you can havemarketing for those specific
things and invite people tocommunity through those things.
It is what we call a side doorinto the church.
Speaker 2 (17:14):
Different social media campaigns that focus on
those three targets, leadingthem to your website, leading
them to, maybe, a specificlanding page for Harvest Fest or
(17:34):
whatever.
That's what drives that socialmedia engagement, but it's three
different types of audiences.
Let's be clear.
Speaker 3 (17:39):
Three different types of audiences.
So if you can thinkintentionally by that, so now
you're a senior leader and youcan say, okay, I'm going to hold
my marketing or my comms teamor my vendor accountable.
You know, let's lay out whatare we doing intentionally in
those three areas.
Speaker 2 (17:53):
right, all right, that gives you a way to work on
Amen.
So three core audiences.
Let's get into organic SEO,search engine optimization, yep.
Speaker 3 (18:03):
That's going to be huge with your inbound audience.
That's going to be really hugewith the people that are
searching for church.
So a person already says I knowI want to go to church.
I'm just trying to find theones that are near me that seem
to be good.
That's what your search engineoptimization is for.
It gets your website morevisible when people are
searching with the types ofministry services that you offer
(18:24):
, right.
So if you have content on yourwebsite about marriage ministry
and people are searching formarriage help, that'll help that
website be seen.
If you have blog posts abouttopics that people care about,
that's huge for search engineoptimization.
That's something that oftengoes neglected on websites.
(18:44):
And then what we talk about islocal SEO.
This would be the things likethe Google my Business, which is
huge.
When you search churches nearme and you see a little map pop
up and you see all the littledots that are near you that
Google has identified aschurches, you want to be sure
that you're up there with one ofthose that is being recommended
to people of blogs.
Speaker 2 (19:05):
really quick, jack, for the pastor who's like oh my
gosh, I don't have this muchtime, so what you could do this
is an appropriate use of AI.
Run your sermon through AI andask it to condense it and turn
it into a blog post with theappropriate headers.
Jack, what do you think?
Speaker 3 (19:24):
No, that's exactly what it is now AI is making.
This is the beauty of it.
I mean, there's tools thatexist right now that are
specifically for helpingchurches do this with their
content.
So think of that sermon now asthe content hub that things now
can spoke out of.
So, using AI, there's a reallygreat platform called Church
(19:45):
Tech that's kind of builtexplicitly to do this.
You put in a sermon video or asermon manuscript either way is
fine and it'll generate blogposts, it'll generate small
group curriculum, it'll generateall kinds of you know,
marketing posts and stuff likethat automatically for you so
that you can use it formarketing purposes, right?
(20:06):
So this is really cool this isone of the beautiful things with
AI and it's still your originalcontent, right?
I'm not saying you have towrite the sermon with AI, but
you write, you put the effortinto writing this beautiful
sermon and now you can recycleit in multiple ways and it does
the work of recontextualizing itand making it appropriate for
those different formats.
Speaker 2 (20:26):
Amen, I love it.
So organic SEO, let's move intoGoogle Grants, jack.
Speaker 3 (20:31):
So Google Grants is something that basically every
big church does and I think alot of tiny, very few tiny
churches do, because they don'tknow about it.
But basically what happens isGoogle, as part of its you know,
as a tax break, I suppose itsphilanthropy gives away search
(20:51):
ads to nonprofits, includingchurches, believe it or not, and
what that looks like is theywill give up to not guaranteed,
but they'll give up to $10,000 amonth in free Google search ads
to your ministry to addressspecific things.
They have guidelines on how touse it, but basically this is
(21:12):
free advertising.
You could increase, in theory,your marketing budget by, you
know, $120,000 a year.
You could be a tiny littlechurch with $100,000 budget and
have a $120,000 marketing budget.
So you can see how sometimes,how some churches can grow
really rapidly if they know whatthey're doing on the marketing
side of things.
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (21:32):
Now but a small, you should probably not try and do
this.
Speaker 3 (21:34):
I wouldn't do this yourself.
I would try and find a vendorthat would do this for you and a
lot of times vendors.
You know the cost can rangeanywhere between 300 and $500 a
month.
Still, the way you think aboutit is, I'm getting up to ten
thousand dollars a month in freeadvertising by paying an expert
five hundred dollars a month inadministrative costs to run
these programs for me, andthey'll do things like they'll.
(21:56):
They'll go through theapplication process and actually
get you qualified for it andand get you set up for that.
I'm not going to give specificrecommendations.
I will say that we worked withwell.
I will give a recommendation.
We had a great luck for a whileworking with a company called
Missional Marketing.
They were fantastic in thatarea.
They really specialized in thatarea.
I know there's a lot of othergreat ministry-oriented vendors
(22:19):
out there that will do the same,and what I would say is, as a
matter of accountability again,your goal is to get new users to
your website.
Really, look at how many newusers is that generating?
Some of the data I'm saying isthat, on average, churches can
get about 1,400 new users and Iwould say if you're executing
really, really well, you canprobably get more in the range
(22:41):
of 1,500 to 2,500 new users justfrom that program.
So it's a very, very efficientway to get more traffic per
month to your website.
Speaker 2 (22:50):
That's significant, All right.
So organic SEO largely forthose that are looking for
churches near them.
Who's Google Grants most for?
Is that for churches near it'sthe same thing.
Speaker 3 (23:00):
It's search, but it's also towards the people looking
for hope.
So, again, a really perfectthing for Google Grants is you
know how do I enrich my marriage, how do I improve my marriage?
Well, if you've got a marriageministry, you can get that
search ads tied to a landingpage.
This is the key thing with allof these things that you're
doing with social media orsearch ads is they come to your
website on a landing page,oftentimes a dedicated landing
(23:23):
page that you've created justfor that search, so that people
can get some free content onthat area.
You've created just for thatsearch, so that people can get
some free content on that areaand then decide if they want to
take their next step, toactually participate in a
ministry or come see you inperson on a Sunday.
So there should always be aclear next step for them
Something free that you'regiving Usually it could be a
blog post or some content orsome PDFs or whatever and then
(23:45):
something next that they coulddo if they want to tie in closer
to your community.
Speaker 2 (23:49):
Love it Organic SEO, Google Grants.
Now let's talk paid ads, yeahpaid ads then.
Speaker 3 (23:55):
So Google Grants you have to go through a bunch of
hoops to be able to qualify toget that and you'll get a
certain amount allotted to youbased on the quality of the ads.
When you pay for your own ads,a lot of those restrictions go
away.
So you have a lot more freedomwith the ads that you pay for
yourself and you're notnecessarily subject to kind of
meeting all of the requirementsthat they have to get those ads
(24:18):
shown.
So you can decide what it isthat you want to market with a
little bit more freedom.
And the cool thing is you don'tpay unless people click.
So that's the beauty.
Well, a lot of marketingformats If you buy a billboard,
you're going to pay for that,regardless of how many people
see that, right?
But with Google ads or otheronline social media ads, the pay
(24:41):
is for the click, so they clickthrough it Then you.
Then you're charged for it.
That means they're actuallycoming to your website and at
that point in time you're reallylooking at what kind of
campaign is getting me the mosttraffic for the least cost.
So I do recommend doing somesort of Google ad campaigns, but
we have actually found that themost efficient way is doing
(25:01):
social media ads.
This is where a really robustsocial media campaign comes in
place.
If we're marketing Christmas,most of our traffic for
Christmas is from Facebook orInstagram and that's either
viral posts that we've done orposts that we've paid to have
shown to a lot of people andwe're seeing that we can get
(25:22):
people in.
You know 50 cents a clickversus sometimes $2 a click on
Google or $1 a click on Google.
So sometimes we can get it forabout half the cost by doing
event marketing on Facebook.
So highly recommended and again, the best thing for the social
media ads would be reallyevent-based.
Christmas is an event inpeople's minds.
(25:43):
Easter is an event.
It's a worship service, but forthem that's an event because
it's a cultural thing.
Right, harvestfest, vbs, thesebig things are events.
A sermon series can be thoughtof as an event that you're
inviting people to based on thethemes of that sermon series.
Speaker 2 (25:59):
Hey, if there's a pastor listening right now we
got a lot of pastors and you'relike I don't really like this
content.
There's someone on your teamand or someones that will
Speaker 3 (26:10):
geek out on this.
Speaker 2 (26:12):
Yeah, yeah.
So invite them to listen andthen take your right next step,
Because I think a lot of timeswith this just pausing Jack,
this is great content is like ohmy gosh, this seems like it's
so much.
Speaker 1 (26:23):
Well, here's the thing.
Speaker 2 (26:23):
We weren't doing all of this when we started.
Nope, you just start baby steps, right, it's right.
So if someone's listening, likethey've heard, organic SEO,
google grants, paid ads likewhat's the lowest hanging fruit
here, jack?
If someone's just going tostart to implement one thing, I
would say well, you know?
Speaker 3 (26:40):
I would say, first and foremost, if you don't know
where to start, let's just sayyou're a sole pastor with a very
limited staff.
Right, that's just a scenario.
I would say your best bet is tofind a really good vendor and
get onto something that would beakin to like a subscription
model with them, where they goand they clean up your website
and they have a strategy forgiving you the best kind of
(27:01):
search engine optimization foryour website.
It may require redoing thewhole thing, depending on how
good it is to begin with, andthen have them in charge of your
Google grants campaign and thenset certain goals for external
marketing.
Hey, I've got a plan for eventsfor the year.
Work with the vendor, Let themdo the work.
(27:22):
But I would say here's a reallygood thing is make sure that
you're transparent with thegoals that you're setting.
Is make sure that you'retransparent with the goals that
you're setting.
You know, if you're that churchwith 500 people in worship and
you're trying to get 50,000 newusers, make sure you tell that
vendor that's my goal, and thenyou can work on a plan.
You can reverse engineer a planthat makes sense, and they can
actually we use the term clarityas kindness this is kindness
(27:46):
for a vendor or a staff personthat you have to help say, okay,
this is what we're going to doand we're going to clear the
field for anything that's notthat right.
We are going to reverseengineer I like to use that term
a lot.
We're going to try and think aswe're designing our events how
do we make it marketable, right?
How do we make our sermonseries marketable?
It's got to be greatdiscipleship, but there's also a
(28:14):
marketable piece to it, right.
And then you can hand that offto the vendor and we can say,
okay, here's the strategy.
You know 50,000 new users forthe year.
How do we get there?
So then you're meeting withthem, hopefully then monthly or
more often than monthly, to sayhow close are we to meeting this
goal?
Do we need to make anyadjustments?
Is there something that we needto shift with in terms of the
content that we have on thewebsite?
And all of this is achievable,right?
That's the cool thing.
Speaker 2 (28:33):
I got to draw some attention to this, Jack.
We have amazing theology.
Speaker 1 (28:38):
We do.
Speaker 2 (28:39):
Word and sacrament, the confessions, the whole.
You hear us talk about that alot we get and you may think
this is too harsh.
Maybe it is, but I don't thinkgenerally it is we get crushed
by the non-denom world.
We do.
In this game right here in thisarea.
Speaker 3 (28:58):
We don't have to Crushed.
We don't have to we don't haveto be right there's no rule.
Speaker 2 (29:02):
Why wouldn't we want to market the bejeebers out of a
confessional, missionalLutheranism?
That doesn't make any sense tome, but we don't.
We're like, wow, you know, thisis the first hour of stuff.
Well, okay, it is what it is.
But there are people that arelooking for churches, that are
going right past your church,going to a church down the road.
That's preaching decisiontheology, that's emotionalism.
Speaker 3 (29:22):
That all this kind of stuff, whatever that is,
whatever Right.
Speaker 2 (29:26):
So they're passing you up because you're not caring
about this.
Stuff like this is justunderstanding the times.
Jack, if we were in a differenttime we'd be talking about a
different thing.
But this is.
People interact with us, firstand foremost online, and are we
developing a good impression?
Speaker 3 (29:40):
of ourselves as if somebody was using the printing
press better than us, right Imean?
Yeah, let's go back in time tothat context, right?
So all right, all right, I'mdone off off my.
There is some shrewdness tothis.
Let's not get crushed.
Speaker 2 (29:48):
Yeah, let's go back in time to that context right
yeah, all right, all right, I'mdone Off off my-.
Speaker 3 (29:50):
There is some shrewdness to this right.
Let's not get crushed.
Speaker 2 (29:52):
There is some shrewdness to this.
Let's not get crushed on thisman.
So non-website marketing talkabout what non-web?
Because this is mostly websitedriven.
Speaker 3 (30:02):
but there's other marketing strategies, jack
(30:33):
no-transcript ahead on onlinemarketing as we are now.
But at that point in time, 50%of the people enrolled because
they saw our building.
So they were driving by andthey saw our building and it
said it's a school.
Oh, it's a school.
I mean, go check it out, right?
So you can't neglect the powerof street visibility.
(30:57):
Street visibility is a big dealand it will always continue to
be a big deal.
Look at your campus from thelens of an outsider.
We tend to always look at.
This is the thing I would sayhappens a lot is we tend to
think about our website, not ourwebsite, our campus, through
the lens of somebody who's justcomfortable with the stuff being
here.
But what would it look like ifyou look at it with a different
(31:19):
lens?
Think of yourself as a guest,and how would you evaluate the
quality, the visibility, thesignage, the upkeep of your
campus?
Is it a guest-friendlyappearance?
Is the signage reallyaccessible to people?
Tim, we have two worship spaces.
People have to go decide whichside of the courtyard they're
(31:42):
going to go to.
How easy is it for people tounderstand that?
I know what that is, but abrand new guest they could
easily be confused by that.
So we have to have really greatsignage to make it very clear
to people.
And the same thing is true tothe signage on the road.
Right, does the signage on theroad invite people in?
Does it clearly say yourworship times?
Right, so that every time theydrive by it's a billboard that
(32:04):
you don't have to pay for?
Right?
Well, this is a raw one for us.
We've had the same sign outthere for a long time.
I know we're trying to get alarger sign.
I don't need to go into it.
We're going through somepermitting issues right now.
Speaker 2 (32:18):
There's some permitting issues that we're
walking through, so so good, hey, final comments, though, as you
wrap this one up.
Speaker 3 (32:33):
Jack, this has been good, yeah.
So final comments.
You know where do we go fromhere, wrapping this up.
Like I said, if you're new tothis, if you don't have a
communications department whichis probably 90% of churches out
there you know the focus onhaving a really good vendor,
find a vendor who can, whoactually cares about ministry.
I mean, there are website andmarketing vendors that
specialize on church andministry marketing.
I would work with them.
First and foremost, budget forit.
(32:54):
You are going to have to budgetfor it.
I would say our rule, you know,as I've done the analysis on it
, we have to probably alwaysdepend on the idea that we're
spending about 1% of our annualgiving, you know, on marketing,
and when I say on marketing Imean buying ads.
That's above and beyond thecost of running our comm team
(33:16):
and running a website and allthat kind of stuff is like
actually just buying advertisingto bring people onto the web.
Speaker 2 (33:22):
So for us roughly a $2 million plus budget.
Speaker 3 (33:26):
We're spending $20K in these $20 to $25K per year on
ads is enough to get us ourgoal, and so people would know.
Our goal is to get 85,000people to visit our website for
the first time, and we'retracking that every single month
.
So when we do our MetricsMonday, part of Metrics Monday
for us is how many new users arecoming to the website.
(33:49):
Are we meeting our goals or notmeeting our goals in that area?
Speaker 2 (33:52):
Everybody on our team gets super stoked when Metrics
Monday comes around.
No, it's good, it's necessary.
Jack, I'm not being silly.
I actually get stoked becausehere's the reality I'm a
competitor and I want to winMore than that.
Speaker 1 (34:07):
I think Jesus is competitive.
Speaker 2 (34:09):
He wants more people to have an experience with him,
to come into a saving At the endof the day.
You may think this is all aboutthe metric numbers $80, blah,
blah, blah.
No, no, no, it's about the oneperson that comes onto your
campus that experiences the loveand the hospitality of Christ,
hears the word and, just likeyesterday, a baptismal
invitation comes out and theysay, yeah, what's to prohibit me
(34:32):
from receiving the waterconnected to the word we just
had that?
Yeah, that's so, so exciting.
The Lord is at work inbeautiful ways.
And really, this is about the 1%.
Are you getting 1% better as itrelates to your marketing and
brand strategy every single day,every single year?
If you're just making thoseincremental steps, you'll look
back and say, wow, remember whenwe used to have those
(34:52):
conversations.
Now we're having theseconversations.
I think this driving to thewebsite first time, 100 folks to
one visitor, the guest thatcomes onto your campus that's a
great metric that should be astaple for us across all of our
congregations in the LCMS.
Any final comments?
Jack, this has been fun, no.
Speaker 3 (35:11):
I mean this is bringing to conclusion our talk
about marketing.
Again.
We had kind of an expert onwebsites on a recent episode
here, so we encourage youchecking that out.
On our next two episodes, we'regoing to be talking about
invitation strategies, so we'retaking things to the next level
now.
We were just talking aboutmarketing, now we're going to
(35:31):
talk about invitation and thenwe're going to talk about
hospitable tracking systems,which is kind of fun, but that's
going to be the whole packagehere.
When we talk about, you'regoing to go through the series,
you're going to know everythingthat you need to know about
attracting people to your church.
Speaker 2 (35:44):
Amen, amen.
It's a good day.
Go, make it a great day.
Please like, subscribe, commentwherever it is you take these
in, and having conversationsaround brand and marketing is
not liberal Doesn't mean we'recompromising anything related to
theology.
We're just understanding thetimes and we want to reach as
many people as possible with thegospel.
Jesus loves you so much and gowith his joy, go with his love,
(36:06):
go with his peace as you lead alearning organization, a humble
learning organization called thechurch, seeking to bring more
people into a savingrelationship with Jesus.
It's a good day.
Go and make it a great day.
Speaker 1 (36:16):
Wonderful work, jack Take care and, god bless, you've
been listening to Lead Time, apodcast of the Unite Leadership
Collective.
The ULC's mission is tocollaborate with the local
church to discover, develop anddeploy leaders through biblical
Lutheran doctrine and innovativemethods To partner with us in
this gospel message.
Subscribe to our channel, thengo to theuniteleadershiporg to
(36:39):
create your free login forexclusive material and resources
and then to explore ways inwhich you can sponsor an episode
.
Thanks for listening and staytuned for next week's episode.
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