Church Communications by Chuck Scoggins

I recently saw a quote on Twitter from KISS rock star (and marketing genius) Gene Simmons:

You have to understand that nothing appeals to everybody.

This is a very true statement. The first thing I teach my students in the classes I teach at Lindenwood University is that they have to identify a target audience if the want to design well. After all,

If you aim at nothing, you will hit it every time. -Zig Ziglar

The challenge for churches (and church communications folks) is how to balance this idea with the felt-need to “be all things to all people” (1 Cor 9:22).

It is a very real paradox and a tension we must embrace if we are to fulfill the specific call God has called our local church.

How does your church address this tension?

Image credit: marmit / stock.xchng

Recently I purchased a cable at Best Buy. It was a typical pleasant experience except when I got home it was the wrong cable. So, back to the store I ran to quickly exchange my cable. Upon my arrival, I noticed that the returns line was unusually long. Forty five minutes later, I finally got the chance to exchange the $15 cable.

To say I was fuming would be a major understatement. I composed myself and asked to speak to the manager – and that’s where my experience really went down hill. The store manager was rude and unapologetic. He chalked up the wait to it being the middle of the day on President’s Day. 

In today’s “thank you” economy the store’s chief customer service officer forgot the most important thing…the user experience.

It got me to thinking…how is my user experience? How is yours? When someone walks through the doors at your church or office or your store what are they experiencing? We are all the chief customer service officer in our organization and we have to make sure that none of our customers are waiting in line for 45 minutes…to return a cable.

Do the people in your congregation have a tendency to wait until the last minute to register for events? This is a phenomenon that is common in many churches and something that plagues communications directors. Late sign ups make planning the event tough and also makes measuring the effectiveness of the marketing efforts difficult.

I have a theory about why last minute registrations happen. It is based on my experience…no scientific research involved. It comes down to two things:

• Too many church activities, and
• Promoting the event too early

The quantity of church activities is a controversial topic and something I’ll address at another time. What I want to briefly delve into today is the timing of event promotion.

In my experience, promoting an event too far in advance causes people to have this line of thinking (usually at a subconscious level):

“That event is something I’d like to participate in, but I’ve got a month (or two months or six months) before I have to sign up. I’ll register for it a little closer to the deadline.”

Then, because their lives are busy and they get hundreds of media messages shouted at them every day, they ignore all of subsequent mentions of it. Three weeks pass and suddenly the person thinks, “Shoot! I was going to sign up for that event! I better do it today!” Boom! You have a plethora of last-minute sign ups.

How can we prevent the last minute rush? We have to find the sweet spot in timing the promotion of upcoming events, which will vary greatly from event to event. People tend to plan their lives two to three weeks out. If we go further out than that in promoting an event, we get the “I’ll sign up later” effect. Any shorter than that and you’re probably not giving them enough time.

There are certainly events where people need more advanced notice, such as events where travel might be necessary, where a long term absence might need to be accounted for, or where a large sum of money might need to be raised (think missions trips). However, for the majority of events, that “sweet spot” time frame will work better.

The point isn’t necessarily the specific time frame…it will vary based on context…but rather the fact that we might be causing our own demise.

What are your thoughts? Have you found a “sweet spot” time frame for promotion of ministry events?

I recently read an article on Copyblogger titled, There Is No ROI in Social Media. It gave me some amazing insights and new things to think about. I definitely recommend that you go check it out.

Here are a few of my favorite quotes and take-aways:

• “Social media marketing is never going to produce an ROI. No marketing will.”
• “Marketing activity is not an investment. Marketing is an expense, and goes on the Profit & Loss statement.” It’s just like email in that it’s something that is vital to the function of business, but it how do you measure the gain achieved from it? You can’t. “The real measurement of marketing is comparing the net income (revenue minus expenses) by the total revenue generated — in other words, your Profit Margin.”
• Forget ROI and focus on profits (by leveraging social media to reduce expenses and increase revenue).
• Marketing is not some kind of frosting you put on top of the business. It is the business.