Reaching your community shouldn’t be a shotgun effort. You should have a pointed, carefully executed strategic plan to get your message to the right people.

I’ll ask the question posed in our previous post, “What do those 7 encounters look like for your organization?”

Your strategy should include a mixture of mediums that are broad enough to reach your audience multiple times, multiple ways. Keep in mind, the goal is to not only stand out amongst the 5,000 marketing messages our culture encounters. Your goal is to be remembered. Here is a quick checklist for your organization:

1.  Take a few minutes to write out every form of marketing and outreach your church currently employs. How many ways can the same person see or hear your message?

2.  Now ask yourself, “What is communicated across all of those channels?”

• Is it the same message? Is the messaging even similar? 
• Do you have brand cohesion or brand confusion across all of your outreach mediums?
• Are any of your marketing/outreach promotions centered around who you are and your vision, rather than an event?

3.  While thinking through what your main communication point is across all of your marketing, consider what call-to-action is on each of your outreach mediums.

• What do you ask of your audience? What do you instruct them to do?
• How clear is that request?                 
• Is that call-to-action the same on all of your messaging?

One important call-to-action across all of your marketing materials is for people to visit your website. Today, 85% of people will visit your website before attending in person.

According to UseIt.com, users will leave a webpage in 10-20 seconds unless their attention is captured.

Churches can spend thousands, even millions on outreach and marketing, but until there is a process in place to grab a guest’s attention and connect them to your church, those resources are wasted.

• Your marketing should all funnel to your website
• Your website should reflect the quality of your ministry
• Create your website as the front door of your church, with visitors in mind

If you’d like to have an Online Strategy Review of your church’s marketing and communication efforts, give us a call at 877.703.2484 and press 2, or request  a quote for your church.

Here are some additional ways faithHighway partners with your church to help you attract visitors and close the back door:

• Church Marketing to build connections
• Web Design to attract more visitors
• Church Management Software to increase retention and engagement
• Church Commercials to reach more people
• Sermon Streaming to take your message beyond the Sunday experience
• Church Planting Resources for an affordable, successful launch

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 This is a sponsored post from faithHighway, one of my ministry partners on TonyMorganLive.com

Interview Highlights

• Find out why Michael started blogging.
• Watch Michael and me discuss who has had the more boring profession.
• Hear what Michael has to say about the role of traditional publishers.
• Learn how to encourage more conversation around your content.

Interview Links

• Platform: Get Noticed in a Noisy World
• Michael Hyatt
• Pete Wilson

If you plan to attend my workshop, feel free to download the notes and follow along. I’ve also provided links for additional reading.

National Conference on Preaching Workshop Session

Title: Finding Your Communications Focus
Whether you know it or not, your church is probably bowing down to the perceived power of the “giant inflatable blue monkey.” It’s impacting how you define and communicate your discipleship strategy. It’s impacting how you promote what’s happening at your church. And, it’s impeding your ability to help people take their next steps toward Christ. I will help you discover a few simple strategies to deflate the giant blue monkeys lurking in your ministry.

Time: Tuesday 4:00-5:00pm

> Download the Notes

For further reading:

• When Preaching Doesn’t Work
• 10 Ways to Keep Me Engaged in Your Message
• 5 Steps to Streamline Your Series Planning
• Your Message

Many leaders are secretly insecure about their creativity. They develop solid, accurate content but it doesn’t really inspire. Typically, the missing ingredient is a good hook. The hook is the central metaphor that holds up your entire idea. It’s the key to making any idea extraordinary. Creating compelling hooks is not a master skill. Any leader can learn to do it with practice. Here are a few tips to creating a good hook:

1. Make It Exact. Good hooks start with specific concepts. They provide tangible solutions to market and emotional needs. A market need is a problem that needs to be addressed. An emotional need is the gut feeling, often fear, that drives your audience. Always ask yourself, “What problem does this idea solve?”
2. Make It Visual. A Japanese-American leader compiled a document to improve the leadership skills of the pastors in his care. The document read like a dissertation. The concepts were helpful but boring. One key concept repeatedly surfaced in the material: leadership can be improved. While exploring ways to visualize the key idea, I remembered the word kaizen, a post-World War II corporate concept that many credit with the resurrection of Japan. It is a compound word: the first symbol, 改, “kai,” means “to change, to correct;” the second symbol, 善, “zen,” means “good.” Together, kaizen roughly means, “continuous correction and improvement.” The key theme quickly became, “Spiritual Kaizen: How to Become a Better Church Leader.” We used Japanese symbols to create striking images that helped the leaders remember the key message.
3. Make It Intriguing. Offer just enough to capture a person’s interest. Don’t waste time explaining every idea. Raise questions rather than answering them. Hooks intrigue people and make them come back for more.
4. Make It Authentic. The hook needs to be indigenous to you and to your audience. The same concept may not work with different audiences.

Visit Len’s blog to find out more about his ministry. You can also follow Len on Twitter.

Having worked with tens of thousands of churches, we have seen, firsthand, the desire for improved branding and audience exposure. FaithHighway wants to help ministries maximize the effectiveness of each encounter with the church’s brand.  

We’ve come up with a formula to make it easy for churches to understand what elements encompass a brand:

In other words… Everything Is Branding. From the receptionist that answers the phone to indoor/outreach signage, and the online web presence to church events, everything that shapes the perception of the church within the community is building the brand and, in turn, reaching the community.

How to Define Your Brand

Americans encounter 5000 marketing messages daily.  Your brand should communicate what is unique to you and what you offer to your community.  Leaders need to have the following questions clearly identified and outlined:

• What is your organization’s mission? What is the core story?
• What are the unique advantages (points of difference) to your organization?
• What are the similarities to other brands in your area (points of parity)?
• What is the “Heart and Soul” of who you are? Try to define these in 3 to 5 key phrases.

From there, take the time to get feedback and think through these points.

• New Visitor perception of your brand.
  • What do your visitors and members already think about your organization?
  • If a new entity, what qualities do you want them to associate with your church/ministry?

• Community awareness and responsiveness to your brand.
  • What presence do you currently have in the community?
  • What perceptions do those in your community already have about your organization?

Branding Resources for Your Church

We’ve aggregated our advertising and marketing data to help organizations maximize their church branding and marketing efforts! This free eBook is available to all ministry leaders and covers the following information:

• Common Marketing Terms
• Getting the Most Out of Your Website
• Deciding Which Medium Is Right for You

We’ll be continuing this conversation on branding for churches in a couple of weeks. In the meantime, share your branding secrets below!

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 This is a sponsored post from faithHighway, one of my ministry partners on TonyMorganLive.com

Mark Beeson

I spent about nine years being mentored by Mark Beeson at Granger Community Church. In that time, we never had formal one-on-one mentoring sessions, but I was constantly observing how he lived life and led the church. I learned a lot in that season that still shapes who I am today.

I remember one time as I was getting ready to share a few announcements in one of our services, Mark was standing beside me. As I was preparing to go up on the platform, Mark leaned over to me and told me to “Make sure you tell a story.”

If you know Mark, you know that he’s a very gifted story-teller. I am not. I have to discipline myself to do that. I’m naturally more about the information. I’m good at details. What Mark understood, though, was that people would tune me out if I just gave them information. The only way they would engage is if I shared a story.

Jesus told stories.

Jesus, of course, modeled this. He was constantly sharing stories. They’re referred to as parables in the Bible. One day, his disciples were kind of perplexed with the way Jesus was communicating. I bet they were details guys like me. It appears they were frustrated that Jesus wasn’t teaching verse by verse. Because they weren’t hearing the teaching they expected, they asked Jesus about it.

“Later, when Jesus was alone with the twelve disciples and with the others who were gathered around, they asked him what the parables meant. He replied, “You are permitted to understand the secret of the Kingdom of God. But I use parables for everything I say to outsiders.” (Mark 4-10-11, NLT)

It turns out that Mark was telling me the same thing Jesus told the disciples. If you want people to engage the truth, you have to tell a story. This is especially important for people who are “outsiders” — those who we hope will take a next step toward Christ.

• If you want people to connect with your vision, tell a story.
• If you want people to engage in worship, tell a story.
• If you want people to understand the truth found in Scripture, tell a story.
• If you want people to give financially, tell a story.
• If you want people to take their next step toward Christ, tell a story.

Are you sharing stories?

Here’s what I believe about the Church today: We’re good at sharing information, but we are poor at telling stories. We see stories being told in culture all around us, but in the church we’ve lost the art. It’s not our focus. Here are a few questions to help you assess your ministry in this area:

• Is your Sunday service more focused on sharing information or telling stories?
• Is your weekly program more focused on sharing information or telling stories?
• Is your website more focused on sharing information or telling stories?
• Are your small groups or Sunday school classes more focused on sharing information or telling stories?

Are you praying people will take their next step toward Jesus? If so, make sure you tell a story.

Between my junior year of high school and my senior year of college, I spent many weekends speaking to high school students. I’ll never forget watching the yawns and disinterested looks when I stood up to speak. I quickly realized that I only had about 30 seconds to capture their attention. If this didn’t happen, they would simply turn to the person next to them and start talking (Today, they prefer Facebook and Twitter). You have to love teenagers.

If I didn’t create a reason for them to listen in the first 30 seconds, I was done. It didn’t matter how true, Biblically accurate or compelling the message was, I only had 30 seconds.

Years later when I started helping friends with their business presentations, I realized the same was true for them. You will lose your audience if you don’t give them a reason to listen in the first part of your message.

This is why I tell communicators to pretend that the audience doesn’t care about what you are about to say. Your job is to convince them otherwise. People often say that we live in the “Information Age.” This couldn’t be further from the truth. We live in the “Attention Economy.” Your job as a communicator is to capture your audience’s attention.

The next time you stand up to speak, look at your audience and remember this one rule:

You only have 30 seconds.

The fact that you and I are given a microphone to speak is a huge privilege and opportunity. It’s one of the many reasons we’re creating a community of communicators to coach, encourage, and develop your speaking skills. It’s what Preaching Rocket is all about.

Join us on our first step toward creating this community at a free online event called Preach Better Sermons on March 15^th from 1-4 PM ET. This free conference features some of the best communicators in business, preaching, teaching and comedy.

Jeff Henderson is the Lead Pastor of Gwinnett Church, the most recent multi-campus location of North Point Ministries. Prior to Gwinnett Church, Jeff served as the Lead Pastor of Buckhead Church, North Point’s first multi-site location for seven years. He spent 21 years in marketing, working most recently for Chick-fil-A, before beginning his roles with North Point Ministries. Jeff will talk about how effective preparation leads to powerful messages. He will also serve as the host for the entire event.

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This is a sponsored post from Preaching Rocket, one of my ministry partners on TonyMorganLive.com

If the apostles were alive today, I bet they would use social media to spread the Gospel and disciple congregations. The potential for these tools goes far beyond free advertising. Fundamentally, social media is about communicating with people, as opposed to talking at them. It can reach people while they wait in line at Walmart or during a 15-minute break at the office. With that kind of reach, churches should take seriously their plan for using social media.

As a public relations professional, I counsel clients on how to make social media work for their communities. I see some of the same mistakes being made by churches that I see in corporations. What if the church made social media more about ministry and less about marketing? A few thoughts on using social media for ministry:

• Start with prayer, just like you would do for any other ministry. Pray over what to post on Facebook, what questions to ask, and what verses to share.
• Ask questions when you post. Ministry only happens when people open up. If your communication is one-way, you’ll have a hard time gauging your impact in this space. Pay special attention to asking questions when posting video content. This dramatically increases sharing and engagement.
• Allow for anonymity when addressing sensitive topics. Possibly start the conversation on Facebook but offer a way to take it offline. Take advantage of the fact that people are often more comfortable discussing difficult subjects online than in person.
• Create a new page for members of your church to share the ways they minister in the community. Nothing motivates people to get involved like realizing they have support. Demonstrating firsthand the ways your church is making a difference is a great way to foster excitement for outreach. The things people share could also help you identify stories to highlight in future videos or more in-depth pieces for your website.
• Mix up the content. Share information that interest the young, middle-aged and older crowds. According to a recent Pew Research Center study, people ages 65 and older are the fastest-growing group of social networking users. Your church Facebook page has the potential to reach many different people if you are intentional about creating content that relates to the different stages in life.

I’m sure some of you are already using social media as a ministry tool. How is your church creatively using social media for more than just marketing?

Tiffany Deluccia

Tiffany Deluccia handles social media consulting and media relations at Jeff Dezen Public Relations in Greenville, SC. She graduated from Clemson University and has experience working with various nonprofits and churches on social media strategy and content creation. Email Tony if you’d like to become a contributing writer.

Let’s not forget, though, you’re the professional. I am not. You know more than I do. Just because you’re smart doesn’t mean you are effectively sharing that wisdom. I’ve tuned out a lot of smart people in my life. You can blame me for not staying engaged in your message. (I’m sure your problem is really my problem.)

Just in case you want my advice, though, I found this list in my archives. I wrote this several years ago, but the principles still apply. Here’s some advice to keep guys like me (who aren’t as smart as guys like you) stay engaged in your message.

10 Ways to Keep Me Engaged in Your Message

1. Be real. Let people see the actual human inside you. Most times that will occur through your personal stories.
2. Talk like normal people talk. I didn’t grow up in the church, so I don’t understand when you talk with a Christian accent.
3. Use humor. If you don’t make me laugh, I’m probably going to tune you out. By the way, the best humor is revealed through your everyday life.
4. Don’t tell me what to think. Lead me on the journey toward truth, but let me reach my own conclusions. In other words, don’t try to sell it.
5. Be honest. If I think you’re credible, there’s a better chance I’ll think your message is credible.
6. Avoid being too polished. In fact, I love it when you leave your prepared statements and share anything off the cu
7. Reveal your weaknesses. As silly as it may seem, it makes me smile when I hear about your mistakes. It helps me to respect the areas where you are gifted.
8. Be brief. Shorter is better. I’m probably only going to remember one or, at the most, two things that you say.
9. Make me smart. I don’t care how smart you are, but I like it when you make me feel smart. That’s easier when you use small words and make it easy for me to apply what you’re teaching.
10. Tell me why I should care. Help me understand why I should listen. If you don’t help me understand why it’s relevant to my life, I’ll to be thinking about my next blog post or my next tee time or my favorite 80s slow dance songs.

I’ve never had a seminary course on preaching, so I really don’t know anything about what it takes to prepare a good sermon. I think I’m pretty knowledgeable, though, when it comes to keeping people like me alert and engaged. Hopefully this helps you help people like me.