March 27, 2024 • 39 mins
Ever felt the frustration of marketing campaigns that don't quite hit the mark in promoting your church's mission? Our latest episode zooms in on the critical issue of marketing accountability, especially within the context of church growth. We unravel the mystery behind why content should do more than just exist—it needs to breathe life into your audience and cultivate genuine engagement. Addressing the elephant in the room, we confront the fear of accountability that holds back many from results-based analysis and share insights into how enhanced inter-departmental communication can propel a church toward collective success.
Our conversation takes a compelling turn as we grapple with the delicate dance between faith and strategic marketing in expanding church communities. Can you strike a balance between trusting in divine providence and harnessing the power of advertising to reach new souls? We examine the missed opportunities churches face by not jumping onto the digital bandwagon sooner and the exciting potential that AI-enhanced marketing holds.
Wrapping up our discussion, we simplify the complex world of church marketing and operations, debunking myths about the necessity for a full-time marketing role within your church. We explore the clever use of fractional expertise to deliver effective digital marketing and share innovative strategies for repurposing existing content. The episode also demystifies the intricacies of media buying, the benefits of agency partnerships, and culturally savvy marketing tactics. Join us as we navigate the evolving landscape of church marketing, where the goal is not only to attract visitors but to nurture a thriving, hope-filled community.
Show Notes
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Justin Price (00:00):
I think every client asks us how much am I
going to pay and what am I goingto get, and how are you going
to quantify if that's valuableor not?
That's really what they want toknow.
They'll ask it a thousanddifferent ways, yeah tell me,
tell me, how Cool Mo.
And when we were talking aboutsome of the problems with
marketing and why I'm empatheticto a lot of pastors who have
(00:22):
dealt with marketers who havemaybe felt like I don't know if
I really got that much from it,I paid this guy to do one thing
or another.
I've been paying this.
You know, a lot of leadersdon't even really like talking
to their marketing team becauseleaders are looking for results
and the marketing team islooking for doing the work.
Like they want to make thecontent and say that's enough,
(00:46):
but that's not marketing, that'snot the end of content
marketing.
Good content marketers shouldbe looking at the results from
the marketing, meaning whathappened?
Did people share it?
Did people comment?
Did they engage with it?
If it's just content strategylike, did you grow the audience
with the content or is theaudience shrinking because the
(01:07):
content sucks and because you'renot really doing that good of a
job or you're not really intouch with the market that's
listening to your content, sothey stop listening because it's
not in touch.
I've noticed that a lot of usin the marketing space are
afraid of accountability andwill shy away from really strict
(01:28):
results because the resultsthat we're looking at don't tell
the whole story, because theresults that we're looking at
aren't enough of a clear story,and they're typically you're
focused on a small part of thewhole user experience, or you're
focused on a small part of thewhole organization's marketing
strategy, and so it's either sosiloed that people don't even
(01:52):
have access to what other peopleare working on.
We were in a phenomenal church,a church that's distributing
content across 90 somethingcountries 93 countries.
Heredes (02:01):
93 countries, I didn't know there was that many
countries.
Outro (02:06):
They create countries to be able to listen.
Heredes (02:08):
It's a geography podcast 93 countries broadcast.
Crazy content Daily amounts ofhours and hours of content.
Justin Price (02:17):
Beautiful TV studio, beautiful radio studio,
beautiful quality content andthe people who are responsible
for social are not even talkingto the people who are
responsible for the website.
The people who are looking atthe website analytics are not
even in communication with theprogramming people who are
(02:37):
distributing the content.
There's no connectivity betweenYouTube, the website and a
broadcast distribution in 92countries.
A church with we're talkingabout there's a church that is
having like 50 to 100 salvationsa weekend.
A weekend Like doing somethingincredible.
I mean, that's really amazing.
(02:59):
That gets me super pumped tohear of a church.
That's like having that levelof impact and really like good
longstanding.
This isn't a flash in a panchurch.
This is a church that's been inthe community for a long time
and worked really hard to get towhere they're at today, but
because they're communicationspeople and they're marketing
people are not even talking.
They're not even sharinganalytics and they're not even
(03:21):
looking at collective goals,because this is all new, because
there's so many things thatdon't work.
It's like, well, I don't wantto get tripped up on the thing
that's not working and lose myjob For somebody.
I don't want to be accountablefor these numbers over here.
What happens is people just tryto hide the analytics.
They try to hide the numbers.
(03:42):
They try to just focus onsomething they can actually see,
that's tangible, like, well,here's a video, like producing
10 videos a week.
So we're doing a good job.
We're communications.
We're not marketing that, though, and so bridging that gap takes
some guts.
It takes being brave, and italso takes stability from your
(04:03):
leadership, one of the biggestthings we talk about here.
At first, because we'reconstantly having to try things
that fail.
We're constantly trying to pushthe boundaries for our clients
because that's what they reallyneed us to be doing, and so
we've got to fail.
If we're not failing, thenwe're missing out big time on
whatever is happening that isnew, and we've got to be failing
(04:27):
if we are trying new thingsthat are going to be taking some
risks.
Now I try to take the leastamount of risks that we can with
clients' time and efforts andas much with ours.
The reality is is like if you'renot in a stable organization,
if your leadership isn't stablewhich maybe your organization's
gone through some changes withleadership you're not going to
(04:49):
be taking those risks.
You don't want that level ofaccountability for the risks you
are taking because you mightnot feel like you're in a stable
organization.
So I would just say that's abig part of what we see on a
regular basis when we come intoan organization is that you've
got really good, hard peoplewith really hardworking ethics
(05:13):
and it's a lot of it's beingwasted because they're not
working together and there's nocentral connectivity, there's no
accountability, and so what wetry to do typically is get past
all that crap and we try to getpeople to let go of their egos
and also bring some stability tosay, hey, I mean, we're working
with, we're spending tens ofmillions of dollars on ads
(05:33):
nationwide.
We're spending, we're runninglots and lots of accounts.
We can give you a ton of goodnational data and we can
actually tell you guys where youshould be, what kind of metrics
you should be hitting, whatkind of conversion rates should
you expect.
Meaning, like, if you're runningan ad, it costs $250 to get a
new family to come into yourchurch and the reality is is
(05:56):
that half of those families arenot going to stay at your church
.
They're going to check you out,they're going to try it and
then you're not going to be theright church for them.
So the real number is for a lotof churches it costs $500 to
get a family to walk in.
The crazy thing is is thatthey're spending $5,000, $4,000
(06:16):
to maintain serving the familiesthey've got and they're not
willing to spend $500 to getanother family in, meaning like
that church that is spending $2million to serve four or 500
families.
That's $4,000 a year just tomaintain those families, but
they've got the facility tohandle three times that.
(06:38):
So for like 2.2, they could beserving a thousand.
Heredes (06:45):
Justin, let me ask you this question as a follow-up.
I'm gonna put the pastor's haton here.
They didn't teach me this stuffin seminary.
Are we just trying to play Godhere?
Doesn't God increase the church?
God's gonna bring the people.
Justin, am I buying?
I'm buying families.
Now, are you crazy?
What?
Justin Price (07:00):
are you doing?
It doesn't sound good, does?
Heredes (07:01):
it.
It doesn't sound good, so butlet's talk about it because they
think that that's number one.
Number two is and address thisbecause I feel better about
seeing the billboard, because Ican see it.
I feel better about even thoughI've got capacity in this
building, I can still grow this,I can still guess what.
At the round table with theother pastors, it's kinda sexier
to say that I'm launching a newthing over there and I'm doing
(07:23):
this thing over here and I'mdoing something that feels good
to me, feels better to talkabout.
But when you track data, whenyou actually look at the numbers
, what is it gonna cost to reachthat neighborhood, those
families, without consideringthe low-hanging fruit or the
foundation of what's availablethrough marketing, through
digital, which a lot of churchesmiss on social media wave when
(07:43):
they came like well, no, it'sjust a kid's toy kids.
Too late, right?
Because if you try to catch upnow, those who got on same thing
with marketing, right, it's oldnews in some way, because
brands and business are selling,we're being sold to, we're
being, but to not leverage itfor the gospel, for the good
news, to reach the millions thatneed to hear, need to taste and
(08:05):
see, it's a miss, right, that'swhy we get passionate about it.
And now even further right,because we're chasing.
We still talk about this, butwe're an AI-enhanced marketing
agency leveraging that and notafraid of it to find solutions
for churches, for nonprofits,for businesses.
So, and it saddens me when youget the rhetoric of like AI, no,
dude, ai, no, it's the end.
Boom over devil.
(08:26):
So I time out yeah, same thing.
The printing press when thatcame out, same rhetoric, right?
No, what?
They're gonna print the word ofGod and prostitute it?
No, you kidding me, it's whatwe're called to do.
I know it's a mouthful, what's?
Outro (08:43):
your commentary.
Justin Price (08:44):
Listen, I said I don't think this is a great
analogy, but I said it when wewere in Miami and it was like
this I firmly believe that thereare things that are incredibly
meaningful and if we're justtalking about church for a
second, I can send you aninvitation a thousand different
(09:09):
ways to come to an incredibleparty, or let's just call it a
dinner.
And if the main course sucksand I just serve, if I just
serve you some tofu, or if I'mgonna open up some canned meat
and I'm gonna put it on a plateand it's gonna be cold and
that's the main course for theevent, doesn't really matter how
I got you there, doesn't reallymatter what other the sides
(09:32):
were Like.
If the thing you came for, orwhat we would call the center
part of that meal, was junk,you've missed it.
You've missed it.
You put all the energy in thewrong place, you ran out of time
, whatever your excuse is, wehave all these excuses.
(09:53):
There is absolutely nosubstitute for the power of God
at a church.
The church isn't a nightclub,it's not a country club and
there's a lot of churches who donightclub and country club
things really, really well.
But the thing that makes thechurch, the most successful
(10:14):
organization in the last 2000years, and that is not needed
marketing and is not needed anytechnology.
To grow and be successful andto thrive and live is not
anything that we're talkingabout.
That is the meat and thepotatoes, the main course all
day, every day.
That's what it is, and if yourchurch doesn't have that or if
(10:37):
you're losing sight of that,that it is God.
That you are absolutely 100%trying to deliver to somebody
who doesn't know God and is farfrom God, and you're trying to
deliver a nightclub or you'retrying to deliver a country club
experience and that's the thingthat you think is gonna help
your church grow.
Like that's not at all we'retalking about, and so I would
(11:02):
say no, I'm not playing God.
I would say I think that whatGod offers through the church is
a beautiful thing, and I thinkthat what Jesus built as the
church that we have today is thehope that we have in this world
that we live in right now, andI'm really passionate about
people who don't have that hope,experiencing that hope.
(11:27):
And so, as a creative pastor, asa worship pastor, as a person
who has suffered greatly in myown personal life and through my
own experiences.
I want the work that we're doingto mean something, and to mean
(11:49):
something to the people who alsoare suffering, who are also
hurting and going through theirown things without that same
hope that I've had, without thecommunity that I've had around
me.
I want them to be able toexperience that, and so for me,
there's a lot of ways that youcould get them to that party,
cause I think that the maincourse that most churches have
(12:12):
to offer up is really it's muchbetter than anything else that
we can find in the world, andthat's even when we do a bad job
of offering it up, cause it'sthat good, you don't have to
suss it up.
So that's, I think that's not.
I'm not playing God I believein.
I believe in what the church inActs is about, and I've
(12:35):
experienced it personally andit's what keeps me going, and so
I think I just using the giftsthat I was given to help people
understand how we canexponentially spread that.
Collin (12:51):
I hope that's a refreshing perspective to hear.
I know it is for me, cause Ithink you, I think there you do
kind of sometimes have thisfilter that you have to work
through for some people to getpast, like it's the salesman
filter, to get past like theokay, this person just wants my
money.
But to be able to hear someonewho's saying no, no, no, that's
(13:14):
not what it's about for me.
So what about this?
What about people who would saylike well, it just feels
manipulative, it just feelsdeceitful.
Shouldn't the message itself?
Like you just said, the messageitself is the really attraction
thing, is the power you know,like, how do you, how do you
respond to that?
Who say like I feel like we'remaybe not being so true or not
(13:34):
being so authentic.
Justin Price (13:35):
Yeah, no, if everybody who believed what I
believe went out and talked totheir neighbors, we'd be fine.
But the reality is I've talkedto my neighbors like twice.
They don't really want to talkto me.
Post COVID.
We're in a different community.
I don't have the same likepersonal interactions that maybe
(13:56):
some communities do have.
But I, you know, I go to work,I pick up my daughter from
school, I go home like we makedinner, like we don't do a ton
of extracurricular things likein the community.
So my opportunities to talk tomy neighbors are way smaller.
I'm not gonna.
It's weird to go door knockingand to invite them to church.
(14:18):
Like that would be super weird.
I like a few years ago thoughit would have been let's just
even just say like 10 years agoit would not have been like
weird to knock on my neighbor'sdoor and be like hey, I like
made you some cookies and then,like a couple of weeks later,
like invite them over for dinner.
I've invited some of myneighbors over for dinner and
(14:38):
like that's it's a challenge.
Like it is a challenge to getthem to say yes to come.
It's a long game, like you know, living out that faith and
that's one person like I've gotyou know three or four neighbors
.
You know that I see on aregular basis and I like my
neighbors and they're super niceand I, like you know I live in
like a very blue collarneighborhood where everybody
(14:58):
it's pretty like down to earthbut it's like maybe five or six
families.
If everybody did that everybodylistened to the Great Commission
and spread the word byinteracting with other people,
we would probably have a problemwith capacity at churches.
Like churches would struggle tohave enough seats and parking.
(15:22):
But the reality is is likewhere we're at in our culture
today is that as pastors, we canpreach that all day long, like
from church.
Like we can say you got toinvite your friends, you've got
to invite your neighbors, you'vegot to get people to come in
these doors.
But when we look at the realityof people who have non-weird
(15:45):
opportunities and the amount ofpeople they have non-weird, like
we could be really weird aboutit and awkward and have these
inauthentic turn off kind of youknow circumstances and turn
people off from the idea of likegoing to church Cause like that
weird guy keeps bringing overyou know weird gross cookies.
Collin (16:04):
That's what they're all like.
Justin Price (16:06):
Yeah, I'm not going to that.
So like if we wanted to createthat, we could.
And I think historically, youknow, even especially in the U S
like we had way differentcommunities, structures, but
we're very silent in ourcommunities now and then we
don't communicate that way andin fact our culture has become a
(16:26):
post-Christian culture.
And this is what I mean by likeyou've gotta build some
relational equity before youjust go talking about your faith
to people if you want them tolisten, because it's offensive
to some people.
Right, it's an immediate wallright now.
It wasn't when we were prayingin public school 20 years ago.
(16:46):
It wasn't when we were singingChristian words, like in our
national anthems, but we'recutting all that stuff out and
we're now, in the first timesince the founding of this
country, we're not saying thatthat is OK within our
communities and we're sayinglike, hey, I'm going to shut you
(17:08):
down, I'm going to reject youand you're not going to get
another shot.
And so, as a mature Christianwho wants to actually do follow
the Great Commission, thoseopportunities, the windows are
way harder than they used to be.
Let's take that one stepfurther Social media when it
started 10 years ago, we all hadFacebook pages.
(17:29):
We had when Instagram startedto take off.
Heredes (17:32):
Myspaces.
Justin Price (17:33):
We had even.
Well, we'll leave the MySpacepeople alone for right now, but
like we could say, we wereChristians and we could talk
about God and we could invitepeople to the thing, we could
share religious things.
But in the last like five to 10years it has gotten so heated
that I know elders, I knowreally great scholarly
(17:54):
Christians who are just saidfirst of all, I'm not even going
to talk, I'm not even going topost on social media and, second
of all, I'm not going to, I'mjust going to leave this topic
off because it's a heated,debatable conversation.
That's not healthy on socialmedia and my point is not to
offend and piss other people offabout my faith.
My point is to be open and beloving and caring.
(18:15):
But the medium of social mediais not conducive in the culture
that we have today.
So if you take those two verylike small examples and we could
sit here for an hour and comeup with like 100 examples of
where the things have changedwith maybe when somebody started
a church 20 years ago or 30years ago, to where we're at
(18:37):
today and why I don't think thatwhat we're doing here is all
that crazy and why I'm notsaying that we're playing God.
It is saying as a church or evenas like Christians like for the
church to say what they believeinto and make these outgoing
social media videos content andto post what it is that they do
(19:02):
inside of their church and tonow start to reach out with that
content through advertising.
That is a way in which you gointo the cell phone, you go into
the home, you go into the car,just like a broadcast television
evangelist would have, likeBilly Graham would have at a
crusade.
They went out of the walls ofthe church, they went into a
(19:23):
community and they distributedthe gospel in the ways that they
had the technology to do inthose days, and my grandparents
are a result of that.
My faith is strong because of aBilly Graham crusade, but today
we're not doing crusades likethat.
Our communities are notreceptive to that.
(19:44):
But we can now go out into thecommunity in an advertisement
and we can pay a small amount ofmoney and if we do it well, we
can send out a message that'sauthentic and true, that is
scripturally based and that iswell representing an
organization like a church andwe can put a message in front of
(20:04):
somebody who might be lookinglike searching for hope on
Google at one o'clock in themorning when your church staff
is asleep and they can find alanding page and they can
actually see like, hey, theremight be something here at this
church that I've been lookingfor.
And I believe that if we coulddo that well, that it is just
(20:27):
taking the opportunity in ourculture today and doing what we
were called to do 2,000 yearsago and that we've been trying
to do as an organization, as achurch big C church and what I
think a lot of people have tried, a lot of different ways from
puppet ministry.
I know, colin, you had the feltboard, that's you just got rid
of it.
Collin (20:47):
You attribute your strength of faith to your
grandfather and Billy Crusade.
Mine's the puppet ministry.
Heredes (20:53):
You know what got me there?
Collin (20:54):
I would not be where I would be.
Heredes (20:55):
It was the hand belt.
Justin Price (20:57):
The what?
The hand belt choir, hand beltchoirs, oh man.
Heredes (21:00):
And when they did the Christmas special.
The Coldplay cover.
Collin (21:07):
Which bell were you?
You got saved.
I was C sharp.
Which one were you?
Heredes (21:10):
I was C sharp minor 7th .
Justin Price (21:13):
I was a complex bell.
Yeah, he played in the jazzbells, justin, jazz bells.
Heredes (21:19):
Not calling it the jazz hands, the jazz bells, the jazz
bell, you wow, that's great,brought to you by Christian
memescom.
Collin (21:27):
The jazz bells.
Heredes (21:28):
Justin, when you talk.
Justin Price (21:32):
Have you convinced you that?
No, I'm trying.
Heredes (21:35):
I'm here.
It sounds pretty when you talkand if you put some music
underneath him, like I could becompelled emotionally, ok, it's
just still like I don't have theright people, like dude I know,
and how do I?
It's too much out there.
It's about the Bible, it'sabout worship.
It's simple.
New Testament church isfreaking simple.
Now you're just complicating itand it feels just like business
(21:55):
and it feels like thesecularism, capitalism is
encroaching in gut.
It's the same.
That's what Pastor AridusRebeiro, the, but, as you is
thinking, and then I don't havethe people I don't have.
I have to go hire these people.
I need to be paying.
We're starting churches inNicaragua and I need the
seminary student to learn Hebrew.
How do I get there?
(22:15):
Because I'm trying to get whatyou're saying.
I'm still skeptical.
I'm still not sure We've beengrowing fine, we're still open,
right, like there's people.
You know, I baptized a kidthree years ago and it's great.
So how do you reconcile?
How do you talk to that pastor?
How do you talk to that?
Like what?
Collin (22:33):
Do you talk to that?
Outro (22:34):
pastor.
Heredes (22:34):
And let me ask you this yeah, no.
And then the challenge and forme it's just shifting the
thinking here and the frameworkand the mindset, because it took
me I'm a forward thinker, earlyadopter and personally for me
it took a while to grab andobviously we're role playing
here, if you haven't figuredthat out yet and listen, it took
(22:54):
me a while to understand that,oh, I don't need to hire someone
, because hiring somebody, theacquisition of getting and
hiring somebody, a staff member,the lifetime value of a staff
member, if you're doing itproperly, it's not just their
annual salary, from onboardingto the lifetime, to years, to
you're talking million plusYou're talking million plus,
boom off the bat if a healthyculture, if you actually want to
(23:16):
retain somebody, so off the bathiring.
I'm gonna write off the idea ofdigital marketing because we
just can't hire I can't rightnow.
But there's another way.
There's a solution to actuallynot having to and sometimes it's
gonna require the hiring and weencourage it because we're
believers in it and, dependingon your size and your scale, you
should have dedicated folks inthe field, expertise that's
(23:36):
still of God and that are forthe church to be doing the work
of God.
Talk to me.
Talk to me, then, because Ithink you helped me understand
and see how, from fractional tosegment to getting expertise
from a team, it's still possible.
You don't need somebody 40hours to scale you right, but if
a team is dedicatingcollectively that amount of time
, it could be affordable.
Talk to that pastor who'sthinking right now.
Justin Price (23:58):
Well, I mean, this is like it goes back to the
challenge of, like we hired amarketing person once and they
didn't get us the results and itwas like, well, they might've
been good at one part ofmarketing.
You know, most of the campaignsthat we're running for a client
might take like three to fivepeople.
So somebody who's really goodat setting schedules, project
(24:20):
managing it, making sure thatall the data's accurate, making
sure everything is working right, making sure communications are
really good, making sure thatwe're checking in that
everything is aligned right withthe church, that's just a
project manager, that's amanagement role.
They make sure everybody'sdoing their job and that the
results are coming in.
You've got a copywriter.
(24:41):
You've got a graphic designer,a motion graphic artist.
You've got potentially likevideo content that needs to be
edited, it needs subtitles, itneeds to be translated to
multiple languages, whatever itis that we're trying to do with
the content, or it needs to becreated in the first place.
Most churches are really good atcreating content, so for us
it's usually just manipulatingsomething they've already made,
(25:03):
like a sermon video or a welcomevideo or anything like that.
Then you need a media buyer toactually do the media buying.
That's probably the mostchallenging one for most
churches.
They got project managers, theygot content people, but they
don't have media buyers.
That's who is actually takingthat concept, understanding that
there's, you know, typicallyanywhere between like 30 and 100
(25:25):
attributes and a media packagethat you're gonna particularly
like find to find the rightperson that fits the persona for
your church.
Meaning like the first stepwould be like just zip code,
like just hit everybody withinyou know we used to do postcards
like and sometimes we still dobut hit everybody.
That's within a mile of mychurch With the you know.
Outro (25:46):
So this is zip code.
Justin Price (25:46):
That's just one demographic point right of data,
but, like a media, buyer isgonna look at like a hundred and
they're gonna look at thingslike this person does actually
live here and it's validated andthey're also part of this
community.
We do things like we, you know,we'll look at hundreds of
attributes of the people whocurrently follow you and then
we'll build lookalike audiencesand we'll market to people who
(26:07):
don't currently follow you butthey look like the people who do
and they're within that zipcode.
Or maybe you say like I reallywanna grow my family ministry
and so we're gonna work on not alookalike audience, because
you're 70 and up that's stilljust hanging on at your church,
but you want those youngerfamilies.
So we will take the family youknow versions of the audience
(26:29):
that will best fit you and thenwhere your strengths are, we'll
typically look at.
Like you know, we'll have astrategist say evaluate your
strengths within your space.
So, like we were talking aboutthe meat and potatoes earlier,
yeah, about ultimately like Godis the thing that you're showing
up here.
That's the differentiator aboutyour church and about that
community is God.
But every church has got itsown unique flavor, like its own
(26:52):
sauce, its own seasoning for themeat and potatoes.
And that's what I love aboutserving a bunch of different
churches.
You know, even in being inMiami last week or this week in
talking to Spanish speakingchurches, that like that's just
it gets me stoked because, likethere's, we got a lot of
diversity within our culturesand so they're bringing this
great meat and potatoes but it'slike it's seasoned different
(27:13):
everywhere and I love that aboutit.
But, like, the advertisingneeds to understand that.
So the strategist is gonna comein, who has tried a ton of
different angles, a ton ofdifferent ways of looking at it,
and so they're gonna speak intothe formula and how it is that
you reach that audience best,because they're based on the age
(27:34):
, based on the demographic,urban, non-urban, what is
happening in the culture, andwhat all of those data points
actually tell, what story theyall tell for the way that we
could best reach them and bestconvert them to actually getting
somebody who is the rightperson to walk in your doors.
And then, when that's all saidand done, you got also data
analysts.
(27:55):
So you have a strategist who'slike a dreamer and then an
analyst who's like the buttkicker, who's like, hey, this is
reality.
Look, that's what's going on inthe data side.
Let's look at your churchdemographics.
Let's look at your data.
Let's clean your stuff up andsee what's really happening
under the hood with all of thedata that you guys have right
now and go this is how we'regonna actually grow, based on
(28:18):
all of that data.
So that's a small sampling plusa creative director, typically,
and maybe somebody who's evenlike just overall, managing that
account and its performance.
So that whole team.
Just that's tough for churchesto get that's an expensive team.
It's an expensive team.
It's about.
It's typically it's about five$100,000 in salaries for a small
(28:44):
version and about a milliondollars in salaries for a large
version, if you look at any whatyou call like a full marketing
suite.
But there is, there's plenty ofpeople.
We, what we have found is likewe will do as much, as little,
as like we will just handle yourad buying, because that's by
far the most challenging, youknow it's.
It's hard to even just have theability to buy or have the
(29:06):
knowledge or the right it takesthe most expertise it takes
those expertise time.
And also like, because we buy somuch media, we can get media at
a lower cost, right?
So because we have like a large, you know.
Collin (29:19):
We're like the Costco of media buying.
Justin Price (29:22):
Because we say if you're doing thirty million
dollars for Domino's this year,you're getting that media at a
lower price per click thansomebody who's buying $300 for
their small, for their onechurch, and so we're able to
typically find that our cost perclick is much lower With within
our media packages because wedo so much buying for profits
(29:45):
and also for nonprofits, so thatone we do a lot of like
Fractionally where it's justlike hey, your team makes the
content, we work with you, puttogether content, we were on
them, we were on your mediapackages and we'll help you with
your conversion pages, which islike typically when someone
clicks on the media, where dothey go?
They go to your website andthey what do they find in their
(30:07):
website does not make them wantto come to your church.
Unfortunately that we see thatway too often.
It's good stuff and it's notnecessarily like wrong about
your church, but it's certainlyalmost never written with the
Unchurched person in mind, andso we'll typically help like
just massage through wherethey're actually going and
landing, and then that you knowthat at a small engagement age
(30:31):
that's that's what people can dois you can hire a, an
advertising agency, to buy themedia for you and you can have
your team do it and then you cango all the way from like my
team doesn't have to be anexpert out of that at all.
Let me hire out like all of theservices will create the
content, will be responsible forthe SEO, will be responsible
for, you know, the updates tothe website to make sure that
(30:54):
everything's functioningcorrectly, and they add buying
and the reporting.
And we're checking in and we'rechecking in with you guys
quarterly and we're, you know,we're meeting with the creative
team, we're meeting with theleadership team.
One of my favorite things to dois to talk to executive
leadership teams who are doing alot of Crazy things and when
they make a decision, it's not a$5,000 decision, you know.
(31:18):
It's like it's a hundredthousand dollar or two hundred
thousand dollar decision andthey want so they want to know
that there's, you know, multiplechecks and balances on that
choice.
Yeah, so so it goes all the wayto Fractionally leading on an
executive level, all the waydown to just having a creative
director.
You guys do the media by.
Heredes (31:39):
Justin.
Okay, so I'm a little moreconvinced.
I'm getting there.
I'm getting there, okay.
Um, I Want, I want to know whatyou, what am I gonna get, what
am I getting?
So I want some guarantees.
Can you guarantee somethinghere?
I mean, we're storing people'smoney here.
This is not.
I'm not bankrolling this thing.
This is not.
Can you guarantee anything?
What am I getting?
I can put 10k a month on thisthing.
(32:00):
That's all I got.
I can hire 11 people and burnthem.
Yeah or that's what I got, andit's gonna be difficult to 10k.
I Need some guarantees.
Justin Price (32:10):
Talk to me.
Yeah, the guarantee is like youtake experience, you take the
amount of time and the integrityof the team that you're working
with and the last thing we'lltypically do is if we're giving
you guys really conservativenumbers and you think that
you're Like that the numbers allmake sense for your church and
what your expectations are likein essence, you're like I'm
(32:32):
gonna spend twenty five thousanddollars in ads.
I want, I expect to see ahundred people.
Hmm, that's, we're good.
We're gonna go to write acontract and we're gonna say,
hey, if we're not on track forthat, for based on the monthly
and weekly Expectations, thenyou can just cancel.
Like you know, I'm not gonnahold you to a year or two years
(32:54):
or I'm not gonna hold youhostage to to that strategy.
However, if you come in in ourfirst conversation, you're like
I'm gonna spend twenty fivethousand dollars, I want to see
twenty five thousand people comein.
We're not gonna over promisethat and put ourselves in that
position where you're gonna beupset.
So it's pretty advantageous ifwe stay open-handed with the
(33:14):
relationship, knowing that, hey,this is sensitive and you know,
church growth is sensitive andthere's a lot of moving pieces
to it, meaning like.
Sometimes those moving piecesare like hey, we're at eighty
five percent capacity, I don'treally want to spend money to
grow in that service, but couldyou help do something else?
Well, that's a shift that mighttake a little bit of time to to
(33:36):
make that shift happen,especially if we've had momentum
going on, the thing that got usto eighty five percent capacity
, but you're like I'm out ofparking.
You know this is creating a lotmore tension than it was worth.
Let's dial it back down.
Let's let's let's keep thingsrunning at a much lower level.
Let's pick up the lowesthanging fruit.
Our cost per conversion mightbe more like a hundred on the
(33:59):
lowest hanging fruit and thenwe're maintaining that level
Because people do move away,people do come and go, people's
lives, seasons change.
Also, you know there's culturalchanges too.
We've seen a lot of people whoare like we have way more
capacity to our church Becausepeople are only coming once or
twice a month now instead ofthree to four times a month.
So I think, like the average in2019, we saw about 20 to 30
(34:24):
percent more consistency inattendance, meaning our capacity
limitations with the samecongregation.
Today we have 30 percent morecapacity just because of the way
the culture is running.
People are more happy to justwatch online or catch the sermon
in between weeks or travelafter they didn't travel for a
little while, and so it goesthrough to Ebs and F Flows.
(34:49):
It flows around and there's notenough time for us to cover all
of the changes, which is whereI'm going.
Like, hey, you just needsomebody who knows what they're
doing enough to be able to lookat the data and figure out what
to do next.
And but I would say that mostpeople are not even willing to
(35:10):
open their eyes to see the data.
There's a lot of marketers anda lot of people who are doing
I'm doing air quotes, since thisis audio Mark it, it's not very
good, but they're doing quoteunquote like marketing.
They're doing communications andthey don't really want to look
at the accountable number sideof it because they don't have
(35:30):
enough experience or it's justtoo hard to understand what to
do with that data.
Or they'll just look at thevanity metrics, like just
traffic, or they'll just look atlike how many people
impressions did I get onInstagram and Facebook this
month?
We've got 20 millionimpressions and pastors are
sitting there going like Ididn't see a single new face at
(35:53):
church this month.
What the heck.
Heredes (35:55):
I'm going to make an impression in your face.
Collin (35:58):
I'll end it there.
I'll end it with Chris, and.
Heredes (36:01):
I'll equate it to this because and we'll end it here
Justin, because that's goodinsight and I don't know how our
listeners are receiving it.
If this even called Justin,we'll put his number here,
Flash's number, at the end here.
But it's equivalent, right?
I think you wouldn't wantsomebody, whether it's without
the proper training, handlingthe teaching, the preaching
(36:22):
God's word, and so we entrustand we prepare.
So you want to put an expertand somebody called to it In the
same manner, to steward all ofit.
Well, you want to positionsomebody who has the expertise
and has the knowledge tomaximize the tools, techniques,
the latest and everything fromthe law that's going on with
(36:42):
marketing and social too, trendsand what's a fad.
And why wouldn't you, why wouldyou just give it?
Now, while I'm about people andwe've developed we've all been
in mega churches on staff andmassive I'm about building
people, training.
I mean we got all our trainingwithin the church we grew up,
and the internship and thevolunteer programs, but to not
(37:06):
the same way you wouldn't putthe intern to preach on a Sunday
morning.
It's like we need to kind ofhold this as, hey, you're
stewarding God's word and thegospel, getting out there and
people to see and to know aboutthe bride of Christ, Give it the
attention, give it theresources, give it the expertise
and needs Cause, if not, we'rebeing bad stewards.
I think then we are truly notstewarding God's word and the
(37:29):
calling he's given us.
So I know it's been a passionof mine and, as I've seen it,
and I hope it connects with ourlisteners and pastors who are
seeking praying and have thesame heart to reach their city,
their neighborhood and see morepeople in heaven.
Collin (37:46):
So yeah, this has been amazing.
It's been amazing.
The conversation is not done.
We're just pausing it righthere for now.
We've got more coming up,talking more about marketing,
about branding, so keep an eyeout.
Thank you so much for joining,for listening each week.
We appreciate you all and wewill see you next time on the
nonprofit Renaissance.
Outro (38:05):
Thanks again for listening to the nonprofit
Renaissance.
We hope it ignites aRenaissance in you and helps you
go further and grow faster.
Be sure to share, rate andsubscribe, and if you'd like to
recommend or be a guest on ourshow, send us an email at
podcastatfirstcreativecom.
I think every client asks us how much am I
going to pay and what am I goingto get, and how are you going
to quantify if that's valuableor not?
That's really what they want toknow.
They'll ask it a thousanddifferent ways, yeah tell me,
tell me, how Cool Mo.
And when we were talking aboutsome of the problems with
marketing and why I'm empatheticto a lot of pastors who have
(00:22):
dealt with marketers who havemaybe felt like I don't know if
I really got that much from it,I paid this guy to do one thing
or another.
I've been paying this.
You know, a lot of leadersdon't even really like talking
to their marketing team becauseleaders are looking for results
and the marketing team islooking for doing the work.
Like they want to make thecontent and say that's enough,
(00:46):
but that's not marketing, that'snot the end of content
marketing.
Good content marketers shouldbe looking at the results from
the marketing, meaning whathappened?
Did people share it?
Did people comment?
Did they engage with it?
If it's just content strategylike, did you grow the audience
with the content or is theaudience shrinking because the
(01:07):
content sucks and because you'renot really doing that good of a
job or you're not really intouch with the market that's
listening to your content, sothey stop listening because it's
not in touch.
I've noticed that a lot of usin the marketing space are
afraid of accountability andwill shy away from really strict
(01:28):
results because the resultsthat we're looking at don't tell
the whole story, because theresults that we're looking at
aren't enough of a clear story,and they're typically you're
focused on a small part of thewhole user experience, or you're
focused on a small part of thewhole organization's marketing
strategy, and so it's either sosiloed that people don't even
(01:52):
have access to what other peopleare working on.
We were in a phenomenal church,a church that's distributing
content across 90 somethingcountries 93 countries.
Heredes (02:01):
93 countries, I didn't know there was that many
countries.
Outro (02:06):
They create countries to be able to listen.
Heredes (02:08):
It's a geography podcast 93 countries broadcast.
Crazy content Daily amounts ofhours and hours of content.
Justin Price (02:17):
Beautiful TV studio, beautiful radio studio,
beautiful quality content andthe people who are responsible
for social are not even talkingto the people who are
responsible for the website.
The people who are looking atthe website analytics are not
even in communication with theprogramming people who are
(02:37):
distributing the content.
There's no connectivity betweenYouTube, the website and a
broadcast distribution in 92countries.
A church with we're talkingabout there's a church that is
having like 50 to 100 salvationsa weekend.
A weekend Like doing somethingincredible.
I mean, that's really amazing.
(02:59):
That gets me super pumped tohear of a church.
That's like having that levelof impact and really like good
longstanding.
This isn't a flash in a panchurch.
This is a church that's been inthe community for a long time
and worked really hard to get towhere they're at today, but
because they're communicationspeople and they're marketing
people are not even talking.
They're not even sharinganalytics and they're not even
(03:21):
looking at collective goals,because this is all new, because
there's so many things thatdon't work.
It's like, well, I don't wantto get tripped up on the thing
that's not working and lose myjob For somebody.
I don't want to be accountablefor these numbers over here.
What happens is people just tryto hide the analytics.
They try to hide the numbers.
(03:42):
They try to just focus onsomething they can actually see,
that's tangible, like, well,here's a video, like producing
10 videos a week.
So we're doing a good job.
We're communications.
We're not marketing that, though, and so bridging that gap takes
some guts.
It takes being brave, and italso takes stability from your
(04:03):
leadership, one of the biggestthings we talk about here.
At first, because we'reconstantly having to try things
that fail.
We're constantly trying to pushthe boundaries for our clients
because that's what they reallyneed us to be doing, and so
we've got to fail.
If we're not failing, thenwe're missing out big time on
whatever is happening that isnew, and we've got to be failing
(04:27):
if we are trying new thingsthat are going to be taking some
risks.
Now I try to take the leastamount of risks that we can with
clients' time and efforts andas much with ours.
The reality is is like if you'renot in a stable organization,
if your leadership isn't stablewhich maybe your organization's
gone through some changes withleadership you're not going to
(04:49):
be taking those risks.
You don't want that level ofaccountability for the risks you
are taking because you mightnot feel like you're in a stable
organization.
So I would just say that's abig part of what we see on a
regular basis when we come intoan organization is that you've
got really good, hard peoplewith really hardworking ethics
(05:13):
and it's a lot of it's beingwasted because they're not
working together and there's nocentral connectivity, there's no
accountability, and so what wetry to do typically is get past
all that crap and we try to getpeople to let go of their egos
and also bring some stability tosay, hey, I mean, we're working
with, we're spending tens ofmillions of dollars on ads
(05:33):
nationwide.
We're spending, we're runninglots and lots of accounts.
We can give you a ton of goodnational data and we can
actually tell you guys where youshould be, what kind of metrics
you should be hitting, whatkind of conversion rates should
you expect.
Meaning, like, if you're runningan ad, it costs $250 to get a
new family to come into yourchurch and the reality is is
(05:56):
that half of those families arenot going to stay at your church
.
They're going to check you out,they're going to try it and
then you're not going to be theright church for them.
So the real number is for a lotof churches it costs $500 to
get a family to walk in.
The crazy thing is is thatthey're spending $5,000, $4,000
(06:16):
to maintain serving the familiesthey've got and they're not
willing to spend $500 to getanother family in, meaning like
that church that is spending $2million to serve four or 500
families.
That's $4,000 a year just tomaintain those families, but
they've got the facility tohandle three times that.
(06:38):
So for like 2.2, they could beserving a thousand.
Heredes (06:45):
Justin, let me ask you this question as a follow-up.
I'm gonna put the pastor's haton here.
They didn't teach me this stuffin seminary.
Are we just trying to play Godhere?
Doesn't God increase the church?
God's gonna bring the people.
Justin, am I buying?
I'm buying families.
Now, are you crazy?
What?
Justin Price (07:00):
are you doing?
It doesn't sound good, does?
Heredes (07:01):
it.
It doesn't sound good, so butlet's talk about it because they
think that that's number one.
Number two is and address thisbecause I feel better about
seeing the billboard, because Ican see it.
I feel better about even thoughI've got capacity in this
building, I can still grow this,I can still guess what.
At the round table with theother pastors, it's kinda sexier
to say that I'm launching a newthing over there and I'm doing
(07:23):
this thing over here and I'mdoing something that feels good
to me, feels better to talkabout.
But when you track data, whenyou actually look at the numbers
, what is it gonna cost to reachthat neighborhood, those
families, without consideringthe low-hanging fruit or the
foundation of what's availablethrough marketing, through
digital, which a lot of churchesmiss on social media wave when
(07:43):
they came like well, no, it'sjust a kid's toy kids.
Too late, right?
Because if you try to catch upnow, those who got on same thing
with marketing, right, it's oldnews in some way, because
brands and business are selling,we're being sold to, we're
being, but to not leverage itfor the gospel, for the good
news, to reach the millions thatneed to hear, need to taste and
(08:05):
see, it's a miss, right, that'swhy we get passionate about it.
And now even further right,because we're chasing.
We still talk about this, butwe're an AI-enhanced marketing
agency leveraging that and notafraid of it to find solutions
for churches, for nonprofits,for businesses.
So, and it saddens me when youget the rhetoric of like AI, no,
dude, ai, no, it's the end.
Boom over devil.
(08:26):
So I time out yeah, same thing.
The printing press when thatcame out, same rhetoric, right?
No, what?
They're gonna print the word ofGod and prostitute it?
No, you kidding me, it's whatwe're called to do.
I know it's a mouthful, what's?
Outro (08:43):
your commentary.
Justin Price (08:44):
Listen, I said I don't think this is a great
analogy, but I said it when wewere in Miami and it was like
this I firmly believe that thereare things that are incredibly
meaningful and if we're justtalking about church for a
second, I can send you aninvitation a thousand different
(09:09):
ways to come to an incredibleparty, or let's just call it a
dinner.
And if the main course sucksand I just serve, if I just
serve you some tofu, or if I'mgonna open up some canned meat
and I'm gonna put it on a plateand it's gonna be cold and
that's the main course for theevent, doesn't really matter how
I got you there, doesn't reallymatter what other the sides
(09:32):
were Like.
If the thing you came for, orwhat we would call the center
part of that meal, was junk,you've missed it.
You've missed it.
You put all the energy in thewrong place, you ran out of time
, whatever your excuse is, wehave all these excuses.
(09:53):
There is absolutely nosubstitute for the power of God
at a church.
The church isn't a nightclub,it's not a country club and
there's a lot of churches who donightclub and country club
things really, really well.
But the thing that makes thechurch, the most successful
(10:14):
organization in the last 2000years, and that is not needed
marketing and is not needed anytechnology.
To grow and be successful andto thrive and live is not
anything that we're talkingabout.
That is the meat and thepotatoes, the main course all
day, every day.
That's what it is, and if yourchurch doesn't have that or if
(10:37):
you're losing sight of that,that it is God.
That you are absolutely 100%trying to deliver to somebody
who doesn't know God and is farfrom God, and you're trying to
deliver a nightclub or you'retrying to deliver a country club
experience and that's the thingthat you think is gonna help
your church grow.
Like that's not at all we'retalking about, and so I would
(11:02):
say no, I'm not playing God.
I would say I think that whatGod offers through the church is
a beautiful thing, and I thinkthat what Jesus built as the
church that we have today is thehope that we have in this world
that we live in right now, andI'm really passionate about
people who don't have that hope,experiencing that hope.
(11:27):
And so, as a creative pastor, asa worship pastor, as a person
who has suffered greatly in myown personal life and through my
own experiences.
I want the work that we're doingto mean something, and to mean
(11:49):
something to the people who alsoare suffering, who are also
hurting and going through theirown things without that same
hope that I've had, without thecommunity that I've had around
me.
I want them to be able toexperience that, and so for me,
there's a lot of ways that youcould get them to that party,
cause I think that the maincourse that most churches have
(12:12):
to offer up is really it's muchbetter than anything else that
we can find in the world, andthat's even when we do a bad job
of offering it up, cause it'sthat good, you don't have to
suss it up.
So that's, I think that's not.
I'm not playing God I believein.
I believe in what the church inActs is about, and I've
(12:35):
experienced it personally andit's what keeps me going, and so
I think I just using the giftsthat I was given to help people
understand how we canexponentially spread that.
Collin (12:51):
I hope that's a refreshing perspective to hear.
I know it is for me, cause Ithink you, I think there you do
kind of sometimes have thisfilter that you have to work
through for some people to getpast, like it's the salesman
filter, to get past like theokay, this person just wants my
money.
But to be able to hear someonewho's saying no, no, no, that's
(13:14):
not what it's about for me.
So what about this?
What about people who would saylike well, it just feels
manipulative, it just feelsdeceitful.
Shouldn't the message itself?
Like you just said, the messageitself is the really attraction
thing, is the power you know,like, how do you, how do you
respond to that?
Who say like I feel like we'remaybe not being so true or not
(13:34):
being so authentic.
Justin Price (13:35):
Yeah, no, if everybody who believed what I
believe went out and talked totheir neighbors, we'd be fine.
But the reality is I've talkedto my neighbors like twice.
They don't really want to talkto me.
Post COVID.
We're in a different community.
I don't have the same likepersonal interactions that maybe
(13:56):
some communities do have.
But I, you know, I go to work,I pick up my daughter from
school, I go home like we makedinner, like we don't do a ton
of extracurricular things likein the community.
So my opportunities to talk tomy neighbors are way smaller.
I'm not gonna.
It's weird to go door knockingand to invite them to church.
(14:18):
Like that would be super weird.
I like a few years ago thoughit would have been let's just
even just say like 10 years agoit would not have been like
weird to knock on my neighbor'sdoor and be like hey, I like
made you some cookies and then,like a couple of weeks later,
like invite them over for dinner.
I've invited some of myneighbors over for dinner and
(14:38):
like that's it's a challenge.
Like it is a challenge to getthem to say yes to come.
It's a long game, like you know, living out that faith and
that's one person like I've gotyou know three or four neighbors
.
You know that I see on aregular basis and I like my
neighbors and they're super niceand I, like you know I live in
like a very blue collarneighborhood where everybody
(14:58):
it's pretty like down to earthbut it's like maybe five or six
families.
If everybody did that everybodylistened to the Great Commission
and spread the word byinteracting with other people,
we would probably have a problemwith capacity at churches.
Like churches would struggle tohave enough seats and parking.
(15:22):
But the reality is is likewhere we're at in our culture
today is that as pastors, we canpreach that all day long, like
from church.
Like we can say you got toinvite your friends, you've got
to invite your neighbors, you'vegot to get people to come in
these doors.
But when we look at the realityof people who have non-weird
(15:45):
opportunities and the amount ofpeople they have non-weird, like
we could be really weird aboutit and awkward and have these
inauthentic turn off kind of youknow circumstances and turn
people off from the idea of likegoing to church Cause like that
weird guy keeps bringing overyou know weird gross cookies.
Collin (16:04):
That's what they're all like.
Justin Price (16:06):
Yeah, I'm not going to that.
So like if we wanted to createthat, we could.
And I think historically, youknow, even especially in the U S
like we had way differentcommunities, structures, but
we're very silent in ourcommunities now and then we
don't communicate that way andin fact our culture has become a
(16:26):
post-Christian culture.
And this is what I mean by likeyou've gotta build some
relational equity before youjust go talking about your faith
to people if you want them tolisten, because it's offensive
to some people.
Right, it's an immediate wallright now.
It wasn't when we were prayingin public school 20 years ago.
(16:46):
It wasn't when we were singingChristian words, like in our
national anthems, but we'recutting all that stuff out and
we're now, in the first timesince the founding of this
country, we're not saying thatthat is OK within our
communities and we're sayinglike, hey, I'm going to shut you
(17:08):
down, I'm going to reject youand you're not going to get
another shot.
And so, as a mature Christianwho wants to actually do follow
the Great Commission, thoseopportunities, the windows are
way harder than they used to be.
Let's take that one stepfurther Social media when it
started 10 years ago, we all hadFacebook pages.
(17:29):
We had when Instagram startedto take off.
Heredes (17:32):
Myspaces.
Justin Price (17:33):
We had even.
Well, we'll leave the MySpacepeople alone for right now, but
like we could say, we wereChristians and we could talk
about God and we could invitepeople to the thing, we could
share religious things.
But in the last like five to 10years it has gotten so heated
that I know elders, I knowreally great scholarly
(17:54):
Christians who are just saidfirst of all, I'm not even going
to talk, I'm not even going topost on social media and, second
of all, I'm not going to, I'mjust going to leave this topic
off because it's a heated,debatable conversation.
That's not healthy on socialmedia and my point is not to
offend and piss other people offabout my faith.
My point is to be open and beloving and caring.
(18:15):
But the medium of social mediais not conducive in the culture
that we have today.
So if you take those two verylike small examples and we could
sit here for an hour and comeup with like 100 examples of
where the things have changedwith maybe when somebody started
a church 20 years ago or 30years ago, to where we're at
(18:37):
today and why I don't think thatwhat we're doing here is all
that crazy and why I'm notsaying that we're playing God.
It is saying as a church or evenas like Christians like for the
church to say what they believeinto and make these outgoing
social media videos content andto post what it is that they do
(19:02):
inside of their church and tonow start to reach out with that
content through advertising.
That is a way in which you gointo the cell phone, you go into
the home, you go into the car,just like a broadcast television
evangelist would have, likeBilly Graham would have at a
crusade.
They went out of the walls ofthe church, they went into a
(19:23):
community and they distributedthe gospel in the ways that they
had the technology to do inthose days, and my grandparents
are a result of that.
My faith is strong because of aBilly Graham crusade, but today
we're not doing crusades likethat.
Our communities are notreceptive to that.
(19:44):
But we can now go out into thecommunity in an advertisement
and we can pay a small amount ofmoney and if we do it well, we
can send out a message that'sauthentic and true, that is
scripturally based and that iswell representing an
organization like a church andwe can put a message in front of
(20:04):
somebody who might be lookinglike searching for hope on
Google at one o'clock in themorning when your church staff
is asleep and they can find alanding page and they can
actually see like, hey, theremight be something here at this
church that I've been lookingfor.
And I believe that if we coulddo that well, that it is just
(20:27):
taking the opportunity in ourculture today and doing what we
were called to do 2,000 yearsago and that we've been trying
to do as an organization, as achurch big C church and what I
think a lot of people have tried, a lot of different ways from
puppet ministry.
I know, colin, you had the feltboard, that's you just got rid
of it.
Collin (20:47):
You attribute your strength of faith to your
grandfather and Billy Crusade.
Mine's the puppet ministry.
Heredes (20:53):
You know what got me there?
Collin (20:54):
I would not be where I would be.
Heredes (20:55):
It was the hand belt.
Justin Price (20:57):
The what?
The hand belt choir, hand beltchoirs, oh man.
Heredes (21:00):
And when they did the Christmas special.
The Coldplay cover.
Collin (21:07):
Which bell were you?
You got saved.
I was C sharp.
Which one were you?
Heredes (21:10):
I was C sharp minor 7th .
Justin Price (21:13):
I was a complex bell.
Yeah, he played in the jazzbells, justin, jazz bells.
Heredes (21:19):
Not calling it the jazz hands, the jazz bells, the jazz
bell, you wow, that's great,brought to you by Christian
memescom.
Collin (21:27):
The jazz bells.
Heredes (21:28):
Justin, when you talk.
Justin Price (21:32):
Have you convinced you that?
No, I'm trying.
Heredes (21:35):
I'm here.
It sounds pretty when you talkand if you put some music
underneath him, like I could becompelled emotionally, ok, it's
just still like I don't have theright people, like dude I know,
and how do I?
It's too much out there.
It's about the Bible, it'sabout worship.
It's simple.
New Testament church isfreaking simple.
Now you're just complicating itand it feels just like business
(21:55):
and it feels like thesecularism, capitalism is
encroaching in gut.
It's the same.
That's what Pastor AridusRebeiro, the, but, as you is
thinking, and then I don't havethe people I don't have.
I have to go hire these people.
I need to be paying.
We're starting churches inNicaragua and I need the
seminary student to learn Hebrew.
How do I get there?
(22:15):
Because I'm trying to get whatyou're saying.
I'm still skeptical.
I'm still not sure We've beengrowing fine, we're still open,
right, like there's people.
You know, I baptized a kidthree years ago and it's great.
So how do you reconcile?
How do you talk to that pastor?
How do you talk to that?
Like what?
Collin (22:33):
Do you talk to that?
Outro (22:34):
pastor.
Heredes (22:34):
And let me ask you this yeah, no.
And then the challenge and forme it's just shifting the
thinking here and the frameworkand the mindset, because it took
me I'm a forward thinker, earlyadopter and personally for me
it took a while to grab andobviously we're role playing
here, if you haven't figuredthat out yet and listen, it took
(22:54):
me a while to understand that,oh, I don't need to hire someone
, because hiring somebody, theacquisition of getting and
hiring somebody, a staff member,the lifetime value of a staff
member, if you're doing itproperly, it's not just their
annual salary, from onboardingto the lifetime, to years, to
you're talking million plusYou're talking million plus,
boom off the bat if a healthyculture, if you actually want to
(23:16):
retain somebody, so off the bathiring.
I'm gonna write off the idea ofdigital marketing because we
just can't hire I can't rightnow.
But there's another way.
There's a solution to actuallynot having to and sometimes it's
gonna require the hiring and weencourage it because we're
believers in it and, dependingon your size and your scale, you
should have dedicated folks inthe field, expertise that's
(23:36):
still of God and that are forthe church to be doing the work
of God.
Talk to me.
Talk to me, then, because Ithink you helped me understand
and see how, from fractional tosegment to getting expertise
from a team, it's still possible.
You don't need somebody 40hours to scale you right, but if
a team is dedicatingcollectively that amount of time
, it could be affordable.
Talk to that pastor who'sthinking right now.
Justin Price (23:58):
Well, I mean, this is like it goes back to the
challenge of, like we hired amarketing person once and they
didn't get us the results and itwas like, well, they might've
been good at one part ofmarketing.
You know, most of the campaignsthat we're running for a client
might take like three to fivepeople.
So somebody who's really goodat setting schedules, project
(24:20):
managing it, making sure thatall the data's accurate, making
sure everything is working right, making sure communications are
really good, making sure thatwe're checking in that
everything is aligned right withthe church, that's just a
project manager, that's amanagement role.
They make sure everybody'sdoing their job and that the
results are coming in.
You've got a copywriter.
(24:41):
You've got a graphic designer,a motion graphic artist.
You've got potentially likevideo content that needs to be
edited, it needs subtitles, itneeds to be translated to
multiple languages, whatever itis that we're trying to do with
the content, or it needs to becreated in the first place.
Most churches are really good atcreating content, so for us
it's usually just manipulatingsomething they've already made,
(25:03):
like a sermon video or a welcomevideo or anything like that.
Then you need a media buyer toactually do the media buying.
That's probably the mostchallenging one for most
churches.
They got project managers, theygot content people, but they
don't have media buyers.
That's who is actually takingthat concept, understanding that
there's, you know, typicallyanywhere between like 30 and 100
(25:25):
attributes and a media packagethat you're gonna particularly
like find to find the rightperson that fits the persona for
your church.
Meaning like the first stepwould be like just zip code,
like just hit everybody withinyou know we used to do postcards
like and sometimes we still dobut hit everybody.
That's within a mile of mychurch With the you know.
Outro (25:46):
So this is zip code.
Justin Price (25:46):
That's just one demographic point right of data,
but, like a media, buyer isgonna look at like a hundred and
they're gonna look at thingslike this person does actually
live here and it's validated andthey're also part of this
community.
We do things like we, you know,we'll look at hundreds of
attributes of the people whocurrently follow you and then
we'll build lookalike audiencesand we'll market to people who
(26:07):
don't currently follow you butthey look like the people who do
and they're within that zipcode.
Or maybe you say like I reallywanna grow my family ministry
and so we're gonna work on not alookalike audience, because
you're 70 and up that's stilljust hanging on at your church,
but you want those youngerfamilies.
So we will take the family youknow versions of the audience
(26:29):
that will best fit you and thenwhere your strengths are, we'll
typically look at.
Like you know, we'll have astrategist say evaluate your
strengths within your space.
So, like we were talking aboutthe meat and potatoes earlier,
yeah, about ultimately like Godis the thing that you're showing
up here.
That's the differentiator aboutyour church and about that
community is God.
But every church has got itsown unique flavor, like its own
(26:52):
sauce, its own seasoning for themeat and potatoes.
And that's what I love aboutserving a bunch of different
churches.
You know, even in being inMiami last week or this week in
talking to Spanish speakingchurches, that like that's just
it gets me stoked because, likethere's, we got a lot of
diversity within our culturesand so they're bringing this
great meat and potatoes but it'slike it's seasoned different
(27:13):
everywhere and I love that aboutit.
But, like, the advertisingneeds to understand that.
So the strategist is gonna comein, who has tried a ton of
different angles, a ton ofdifferent ways of looking at it,
and so they're gonna speak intothe formula and how it is that
you reach that audience best,because they're based on the age
(27:34):
, based on the demographic,urban, non-urban, what is
happening in the culture, andwhat all of those data points
actually tell, what story theyall tell for the way that we
could best reach them and bestconvert them to actually getting
somebody who is the rightperson to walk in your doors.
And then, when that's all saidand done, you got also data
analysts.
(27:55):
So you have a strategist who'slike a dreamer and then an
analyst who's like the buttkicker, who's like, hey, this is
reality.
Look, that's what's going on inthe data side.
Let's look at your churchdemographics.
Let's look at your data.
Let's clean your stuff up andsee what's really happening
under the hood with all of thedata that you guys have right
now and go this is how we'regonna actually grow, based on
(28:18):
all of that data.
So that's a small sampling plusa creative director, typically,
and maybe somebody who's evenlike just overall, managing that
account and its performance.
So that whole team.
Just that's tough for churchesto get that's an expensive team.
It's an expensive team.
It's about.
It's typically it's about five$100,000 in salaries for a small
(28:44):
version and about a milliondollars in salaries for a large
version, if you look at any whatyou call like a full marketing
suite.
But there is, there's plenty ofpeople.
We, what we have found is likewe will do as much, as little,
as like we will just handle yourad buying, because that's by
far the most challenging, youknow it's.
It's hard to even just have theability to buy or have the
(29:06):
knowledge or the right it takesthe most expertise it takes
those expertise time.
And also like, because we buy somuch media, we can get media at
a lower cost, right?
So because we have like a large, you know.
Collin (29:19):
We're like the Costco of media buying.
Justin Price (29:22):
Because we say if you're doing thirty million
dollars for Domino's this year,you're getting that media at a
lower price per click thansomebody who's buying $300 for
their small, for their onechurch, and so we're able to
typically find that our cost perclick is much lower With within
our media packages because wedo so much buying for profits
(29:45):
and also for nonprofits, so thatone we do a lot of like
Fractionally where it's justlike hey, your team makes the
content, we work with you, puttogether content, we were on
them, we were on your mediapackages and we'll help you with
your conversion pages, which islike typically when someone
clicks on the media, where dothey go?
They go to your website andthey what do they find in their
(30:07):
website does not make them wantto come to your church.
Unfortunately that we see thatway too often.
It's good stuff and it's notnecessarily like wrong about
your church, but it's certainlyalmost never written with the
Unchurched person in mind, andso we'll typically help like
just massage through wherethey're actually going and
landing, and then that you knowthat at a small engagement age
(30:31):
that's that's what people can dois you can hire a, an
advertising agency, to buy themedia for you and you can have
your team do it and then you cango all the way from like my
team doesn't have to be anexpert out of that at all.
Let me hire out like all of theservices will create the
content, will be responsible forthe SEO, will be responsible
for, you know, the updates tothe website to make sure that
(30:54):
everything's functioningcorrectly, and they add buying
and the reporting.
And we're checking in and we'rechecking in with you guys
quarterly and we're, you know,we're meeting with the creative
team, we're meeting with theleadership team.
One of my favorite things to dois to talk to executive
leadership teams who are doing alot of Crazy things and when
they make a decision, it's not a$5,000 decision, you know.
(31:18):
It's like it's a hundredthousand dollar or two hundred
thousand dollar decision andthey want so they want to know
that there's, you know, multiplechecks and balances on that
choice.
Yeah, so so it goes all the wayto Fractionally leading on an
executive level, all the waydown to just having a creative
director.
You guys do the media by.
Heredes (31:39):
Justin.
Okay, so I'm a little moreconvinced.
I'm getting there.
I'm getting there, okay.
Um, I Want, I want to know whatyou, what am I gonna get, what
am I getting?
So I want some guarantees.
Can you guarantee somethinghere?
I mean, we're storing people'smoney here.
This is not.
I'm not bankrolling this thing.
This is not.
Can you guarantee anything?
What am I getting?
I can put 10k a month on thisthing.
(32:00):
That's all I got.
I can hire 11 people and burnthem.
Yeah or that's what I got, andit's gonna be difficult to 10k.
I Need some guarantees.
Justin Price (32:10):
Talk to me.
Yeah, the guarantee is like youtake experience, you take the
amount of time and the integrityof the team that you're working
with and the last thing we'lltypically do is if we're giving
you guys really conservativenumbers and you think that
you're Like that the numbers allmake sense for your church and
what your expectations are likein essence, you're like I'm
(32:32):
gonna spend twenty five thousanddollars in ads.
I want, I expect to see ahundred people.
Hmm, that's, we're good.
We're gonna go to write acontract and we're gonna say,
hey, if we're not on track forthat, for based on the monthly
and weekly Expectations, thenyou can just cancel.
Like you know, I'm not gonnahold you to a year or two years
(32:54):
or I'm not gonna hold youhostage to to that strategy.
However, if you come in in ourfirst conversation, you're like
I'm gonna spend twenty fivethousand dollars, I want to see
twenty five thousand people comein.
We're not gonna over promisethat and put ourselves in that
position where you're gonna beupset.
So it's pretty advantageous ifwe stay open-handed with the
(33:14):
relationship, knowing that, hey,this is sensitive and you know,
church growth is sensitive andthere's a lot of moving pieces
to it, meaning like.
Sometimes those moving piecesare like hey, we're at eighty
five percent capacity, I don'treally want to spend money to
grow in that service, but couldyou help do something else?
Well, that's a shift that mighttake a little bit of time to to
(33:36):
make that shift happen,especially if we've had momentum
going on, the thing that got usto eighty five percent capacity
, but you're like I'm out ofparking.
You know this is creating a lotmore tension than it was worth.
Let's dial it back down.
Let's let's let's keep thingsrunning at a much lower level.
Let's pick up the lowesthanging fruit.
Our cost per conversion mightbe more like a hundred on the
(33:59):
lowest hanging fruit and thenwe're maintaining that level
Because people do move away,people do come and go, people's
lives, seasons change.
Also, you know there's culturalchanges too.
We've seen a lot of people whoare like we have way more
capacity to our church Becausepeople are only coming once or
twice a month now instead ofthree to four times a month.
So I think, like the average in2019, we saw about 20 to 30
(34:24):
percent more consistency inattendance, meaning our capacity
limitations with the samecongregation.
Today we have 30 percent morecapacity just because of the way
the culture is running.
People are more happy to justwatch online or catch the sermon
in between weeks or travelafter they didn't travel for a
little while, and so it goesthrough to Ebs and F Flows.
(34:49):
It flows around and there's notenough time for us to cover all
of the changes, which is whereI'm going.
Like, hey, you just needsomebody who knows what they're
doing enough to be able to lookat the data and figure out what
to do next.
And but I would say that mostpeople are not even willing to
(35:10):
open their eyes to see the data.
There's a lot of marketers anda lot of people who are doing
I'm doing air quotes, since thisis audio Mark it, it's not very
good, but they're doing quoteunquote like marketing.
They're doing communications andthey don't really want to look
at the accountable number sideof it because they don't have
(35:30):
enough experience or it's justtoo hard to understand what to
do with that data.
Or they'll just look at thevanity metrics, like just
traffic, or they'll just look atlike how many people
impressions did I get onInstagram and Facebook this
month?
We've got 20 millionimpressions and pastors are
sitting there going like Ididn't see a single new face at
(35:53):
church this month.
What the heck.
Heredes (35:55):
I'm going to make an impression in your face.
Collin (35:58):
I'll end it there.
I'll end it with Chris, and.
Heredes (36:01):
I'll equate it to this because and we'll end it here
Justin, because that's goodinsight and I don't know how our
listeners are receiving it.
If this even called Justin,we'll put his number here,
Flash's number, at the end here.
But it's equivalent, right?
I think you wouldn't wantsomebody, whether it's without
the proper training, handlingthe teaching, the preaching
(36:22):
God's word, and so we entrustand we prepare.
So you want to put an expertand somebody called to it In the
same manner, to steward all ofit.
Well, you want to positionsomebody who has the expertise
and has the knowledge tomaximize the tools, techniques,
the latest and everything fromthe law that's going on with
(36:42):
marketing and social too, trendsand what's a fad.
And why wouldn't you, why wouldyou just give it?
Now, while I'm about people andwe've developed we've all been
in mega churches on staff andmassive I'm about building
people, training.
I mean we got all our trainingwithin the church we grew up,
and the internship and thevolunteer programs, but to not
(37:06):
the same way you wouldn't putthe intern to preach on a Sunday
morning.
It's like we need to kind ofhold this as, hey, you're
stewarding God's word and thegospel, getting out there and
people to see and to know aboutthe bride of Christ, Give it the
attention, give it theresources, give it the expertise
and needs Cause, if not, we'rebeing bad stewards.
I think then we are truly notstewarding God's word and the
(37:29):
calling he's given us.
So I know it's been a passionof mine and, as I've seen it,
and I hope it connects with ourlisteners and pastors who are
seeking praying and have thesame heart to reach their city,
their neighborhood and see morepeople in heaven.
Collin (37:46):
So yeah, this has been amazing.
It's been amazing.
The conversation is not done.
We're just pausing it righthere for now.
We've got more coming up,talking more about marketing,
about branding, so keep an eyeout.
Thank you so much for joining,for listening each week.
We appreciate you all and wewill see you next time on the
nonprofit Renaissance.
Outro (38:05):
Thanks again for listening to the nonprofit
Renaissance.
We hope it ignites aRenaissance in you and helps you
go further and grow faster.
Be sure to share, rate andsubscribe, and if you'd like to
recommend or be a guest on ourshow, send us an email at
podcastatfirstcreativecom.
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