Promoting Your Church Inexpensively with a Web Site
October 22, 2005 - updated
By Robert Thoelen III
President
RTCubed Consulting, LLC
Most churches advertise in the yellow pages, but how many churches really know how well that is working for them? Do visitors comment on "seeing your ad" or listing when they visit? If your advertising is working, then don't change anything. You are doing something that is getting results, and that is the important thing. However, if you are spending money every month on advertising, but don't know if it is working, that is where reading this article may help you.
Timeout for a second!
First of all, let me say this upfront: The goal behind this article is to show how you can track your advertising, and understand how people find your church. These methods will not necessarily mean that you will have more people that will start attending, or will trust in Christ. By applying these techniques to your website, you can be a better steward of God's money, and understand how effective your church advertising is. The first goal in your advertising is to get people to visit, but if you have problems or drive people away, none of what I say will work for you.
Get a church web site
A web site, designed thoughtfully, can help people acquire more knowledge about your church or outreach ministry before visiting. A yellow page ad can only tell so much information, unless you want to spend lots of money for a half or full page ad. I know in this area of the country, ad space is VERY expensive. What may work well is designing a web site with lots of information about your church, its ministries, and doctrinal positions, and then pointing people to it through the ad. That way interested people can understand exactly what your church is about, and walk into your church, already knowing much more than if they walked in off the street.
The reason why a web site for a church is important is that over a period of time, I've noticed more people searching and finding my church's web site with a search engine. People are searching by type of church and town. For example, they may type a phrase into Google like "baptist church hartford, ct". If you have a properly designed web site, you will be on the first page of listings in Google. This can help increase publicity for your church, and remember some visitors may not ever use the phone book to find you. If they can't find you online, they may never know anything about your church.
Strategies for tracking your other advertising
Don't just design a web site for your church and point people to it without tracking how people visit the site! Here are some strategies:
1. If you already have a web site, you can install a log file analyzer. This computer program will record and analyze the visitors to your site, and can be very revealing about the way people find your site. Do they just type in your web address into their browser? Do they click on a church directory on the internet? Or maybe do they visit from print advertising? This strategy can also tell you what pages people are interested in.
2. You can put unique web addresses (URLs) in each of your ads in print. The big companies that successfully use direct marketing do this. Do you ever get direct mail or "junk mail" that has "priority codes" or "reservation numbers" on it? Don't kid yourself: these companies are tracking what sales letters work using these codes, and you should do the same if you want to understand what advertising works for your church. You can accomplish this in two ways. The easy way is to add a question mark and small code after it in the web address (URL) like this:
http://www.yourgreatchurchsite.org?hc
The "hc" after the question mark could be the initials of a paper or yellow page book that you advertise in. This, along with a good log file analyzer (mentioned above), can track how people visit your site. This requires no extra pages, and no modifications to what you currently have.
You can also make "landing pages", which are individual directories with their own index page, designed to display information specific to the medium in which they saw the ad. For example:
http://www.yourgreatchurchsite.org/hc
Again, the "hc" part of the address could be a code for how they saw your ad.
No matter which method you use, the key is in the other print advertising you do, don't just use the base web address of your site. Instead, give a unique URL for each ad you place, either in the newspaper, yellow pages, radio, public access cable channels, etc. This one technique alone can be very telling about how people visit your web site.
Conclusion and Additional Thoughts
These techniques should work well for churches in metropolitan areas and areas dense with people that are technology oriented. I can't emphasize enough that I speak from the perspective of being in the "liberal" northeast, in fact, right in the middle between Boston and New York City (each about 2 and 1/2 hours away). You may be called to minister in other areas of the country in which people won't use the internet much to find a church. If your current members don't use the Internet much, then you probably should find other ways to promote your church.
If you are interested in these techniques, but not sure how to implement them with success, you can call me toll-free at (860) 849-1101. I can discuss with you how we can set up a system to track visitors to your web site, and make your advertising more effective. I won't charge you for the initial consultation. We can work out a price if you choose to have me help you, and as always, I charge 50% less that my business to business rates for churches and qualifying ministries.
Again, I'm not saying that if you do these things, you will become a megachurch, or more people will trust in the Lord. That is a supernatural work that God does, and it doesn't matter how clever you are. You can, however, measure the effectiveness of your advertising, to be a better steward of the money that your church spends, and you can gain more publicity for your church this way.
October 22, 2005 - updated
By Robert Thoelen III
President
RTCubed Consulting, LLC
Most churches advertise in the yellow pages, but how many churches really know how well that is working for them? Do visitors comment on "seeing your ad" or listing when they visit? If your advertising is working, then don't change anything. You are doing something that is getting results, and that is the important thing. However, if you are spending money every month on advertising, but don't know if it is working, that is where reading this article may help you.
Timeout for a second!
First of all, let me say this upfront: The goal behind this article is to show how you can track your advertising, and understand how people find your church. These methods will not necessarily mean that you will have more people that will start attending, or will trust in Christ. By applying these techniques to your website, you can be a better steward of God's money, and understand how effective your church advertising is. The first goal in your advertising is to get people to visit, but if you have problems or drive people away, none of what I say will work for you.
Get a church web site
A web site, designed thoughtfully, can help people acquire more knowledge about your church or outreach ministry before visiting. A yellow page ad can only tell so much information, unless you want to spend lots of money for a half or full page ad. I know in this area of the country, ad space is VERY expensive. What may work well is designing a web site with lots of information about your church, its ministries, and doctrinal positions, and then pointing people to it through the ad. That way interested people can understand exactly what your church is about, and walk into your church, already knowing much more than if they walked in off the street.
The reason why a web site for a church is important is that over a period of time, I've noticed more people searching and finding my church's web site with a search engine. People are searching by type of church and town. For example, they may type a phrase into Google like "baptist church hartford, ct". If you have a properly designed web site, you will be on the first page of listings in Google. This can help increase publicity for your church, and remember some visitors may not ever use the phone book to find you. If they can't find you online, they may never know anything about your church.
Strategies for tracking your other advertising
Don't just design a web site for your church and point people to it without tracking how people visit the site! Here are some strategies:
1. If you already have a web site, you can install a log file analyzer. This computer program will record and analyze the visitors to your site, and can be very revealing about the way people find your site. Do they just type in your web address into their browser? Do they click on a church directory on the internet? Or maybe do they visit from print advertising? This strategy can also tell you what pages people are interested in.
2. You can put unique web addresses (URLs) in each of your ads in print. The big companies that successfully use direct marketing do this. Do you ever get direct mail or "junk mail" that has "priority codes" or "reservation numbers" on it? Don't kid yourself: these companies are tracking what sales letters work using these codes, and you should do the same if you want to understand what advertising works for your church. You can accomplish this in two ways. The easy way is to add a question mark and small code after it in the web address (URL) like this:
http://www.yourgreatchurchsite.org?hc
The "hc" after the question mark could be the initials of a paper or yellow page book that you advertise in. This, along with a good log file analyzer (mentioned above), can track how people visit your site. This requires no extra pages, and no modifications to what you currently have.
You can also make "landing pages", which are individual directories with their own index page, designed to display information specific to the medium in which they saw the ad. For example:
http://www.yourgreatchurchsite.org/hc
Again, the "hc" part of the address could be a code for how they saw your ad.
No matter which method you use, the key is in the other print advertising you do, don't just use the base web address of your site. Instead, give a unique URL for each ad you place, either in the newspaper, yellow pages, radio, public access cable channels, etc. This one technique alone can be very telling about how people visit your web site.
Conclusion and Additional Thoughts
These techniques should work well for churches in metropolitan areas and areas dense with people that are technology oriented. I can't emphasize enough that I speak from the perspective of being in the "liberal" northeast, in fact, right in the middle between Boston and New York City (each about 2 and 1/2 hours away). You may be called to minister in other areas of the country in which people won't use the internet much to find a church. If your current members don't use the Internet much, then you probably should find other ways to promote your church.
If you are interested in these techniques, but not sure how to implement them with success, you can call me toll-free at (860) 849-1101. I can discuss with you how we can set up a system to track visitors to your web site, and make your advertising more effective. I won't charge you for the initial consultation. We can work out a price if you choose to have me help you, and as always, I charge 50% less that my business to business rates for churches and qualifying ministries.
Again, I'm not saying that if you do these things, you will become a megachurch, or more people will trust in the Lord. That is a supernatural work that God does, and it doesn't matter how clever you are. You can, however, measure the effectiveness of your advertising, to be a better steward of the money that your church spends, and you can gain more publicity for your church this way.