churchrelevance.com

Recently, I had the opportunity to discuss the future of church websites over a video conference with Cleve Persinger and the team at The Chapel (Libertyville, IL). I spent some time sharing my thoughts on effective SEO church marketing, and Cleve was kind enough to archive the talk for your enjoyment.
[pardon the rocky audio]

To sum it up, optimize your church website content by using the keywords that are most often searched by the people your are called to reach. You can research these keywords with Google AdWords Keyword Tool.

For Discussion:
- What is your church marketing SEO strategy?

One of the most intriguing and challenging books for me in recent years is Shane Hipps’ Flickering Pixels. It takes a fascinating look at how media affect content and faith. It is a bit of a big concept, so I will use some of Shane’s words to give you a glimpse of what is all about.

It is commonly assumed that as long as we protect the unchanging message of the gospel, the method of communicating doesn’t much matter.

The logic is pretty straightforward. Unfortunately, that doesn’t make it true.

If the first truth is that our methods necessarily change, the second truth is whenever our methods change, the message automatically changes along with them. You can’t change methods without changing your methods - they’re inseparable.

Throughout the book, Shane discusses the complexities of how the medium affects the content and the audience. For example, Shane writes:

Images focus our attention on the realm of cosmetics. Often, it is for the sake of showcasing beauty and talent.

The radio returned our culture to the experience of the tribal campfire with its shared stories, songs, and banter.

The Internet has a natural bias towards exhibitionism and thus the erosion of real intimacy.

Printing put the left hemisphere of the brain on steroids.

If you communicate with people through any medium, you need to understand the pros and cons of that medium and how it influences your communication. You are just as much responsible for the medium you choose as you are for the words you use (or whatever content you communicate).

Here is the review of the most interesting links of 2009’s 5th week (my picks).

DESIGN

• 22 Most Used Free Fonts By Professional Designers [iShift]
• 50 Must-Have Photoshop Brushes [Smashing Magazine]

MARKETING

• 5 Steps to Going Viral on Twitter [Copyblogger]
  (1) Call to action. (2) Timing. (3) Links. (4) Social Proof. (5) Value.
• The Do’s and Don’ts for Expanding Into the Hispanic Market [Chief Marketer]
• Top Tactics for 2009 [eMarketer]

RESEARCH

• 2009 Facebook Demographics and Statistics Report: 276% Growth in 35-54 Year Old Users [iStrategyLabs]
• Boys With Unpopular Names More Likely to Break Law [LiveScience]
  Boys in the United States with common names like Michael and David are less likely to commit crimes than those named Ernest or Ivan.
• Income Distribution Within U.S. Religious Groups [The Pew Forum]
• Infants Draw On Past To Interpret Present, Understand Other People’s Behavior [ScienceDaily]
  University of Washington psychologists have learned that 10-month-old infants use their prior exposure and understanding of familiar actions by a person to unravel novel actions. However, this ability is limited by the location in which the new action is performed.
• Remember That Time? New Study Demystifies Consumer Memory [ScienceDaily]
  Our findings suggest that marketers may engineer experiences to maximize customer enjoyment by improving the most memorable events. For long-term customer enjoyment, marketers should attempt to make consumers’ initial experiences with a service or product very positive.
  
• Repeat abortions among teenage girls have risen by 70% [Daily Mail]
  In 2007, 5,897 girls under 20 had their second, third or even fourth termination. Sixteen years earlier, in 1991, the figure stood at just 2,934, the journal Contraception reported. Abortions in the UK have reached record levels.
• Teens and Cell Phone Use [Harris Interactive]
  40% say they would die without their phone. 42% say they are able to text blindfolded!
• Video games linked to poor relationships [TechRadar.com]
  Researchers at Brigham Young University in Utah talked to 813 university students across the US and found that as the amount of time the students spent playing video games went up, the quality of their relationships with friends and family suffered. The more people play videogames, the more frequent their involvement in ‘risky’ behaviours such as drinking and drug abuse.

THE REVIEW OF 2008
Jan. 28th - How to be a Better Listener in 3 Easy Steps
Jan. 29th - 7 Church Leadership Mistakes to Avoid

THE REVIEW OF 2007
Jan. 26th - Women Prefer Direct Mail More Than Email
Jan. 30th - 4 Things Young Adults Want in a Church
Jan. 31st - 4 Qualities of Successful, Growing Churches

At Innovation3, Stacy Spencer of New Directions Christian Church (Memphis, TN) discussed how to have a radically different church.

Radical differentiation is about finding a whole new market space. Your ministry brand is not who you say you are, it’s who they say you are.

How to Protect Your Brand

1. When you start growing… the more cream you add to the coffee, the weaker it gets. As your church grows, do not forget why you are called.
2. Protect against misalignment. Your vision is not in align with your values. You promise more in the showroom than you have in the stockroom.

Churches that zag can fill in the blank - “My church is the only church that _______.”

If you do what you are supposed to do, you will be blessed. When you get comfortable with who called has called you to be, you will be blessed.

The brand must be consistent with who you say you are. Whatever it is that called has called you to be, do it better than anyone else.

This morning I have the privilege of giving a creative marketing lecture at Oklahoma State University (Tulsa, OK). Here are a few thoughts from my talk.

WHAT IS CREATIVE MARKETING?

Typically, people think of advertising whenever they think of creative marketing. They think of Nike, Apple, and Crispin Porter + Bogusky’s Burger King ads. Reality is creative marketing is so much more.

WHAT IS MARKETING?

Marketing has four main areas, and you can be creative in all of them.

1. Promotion
   (i.e., advertising, direct marketing, interactive, personal selling, public relations, sales promotion)
   Example: Crispin Porter + Bogusky
2. Product (service)
   Example: Ideo
3. Price
   Example: Psychological Pricing
4. Place (distribution)
   Examples: Envirosell & UPS

Using these four marketing areas, your four-step goal is to create:

1. Awareness
2. Interest
3. Desire
4. Action

WHAT IS CREATIVITY?

Creativity is about ideas and concepts. You are a product of what your mind digests. If you want to be creative, fill your mind and surround yourself with a broad scope of excellence. Here is what the experts say:

When we remember something, that memory feels unified, but the reality is that you assemble each memory out of lots of different pieces. A tip-of-the-tongue state occurs when one of the pieces gets lost.
- Daniel Schacter :: Psychologist :: Harvard

When you need to tie together things that are distantly related, that’s exactly what an insight is. It’s tying together information that people already know, but they don’t recognize how they are related until that key moment.
- Mark Jung-Beeman :: Neuroscientist :: Northwestern University

Problem solving, whether creative or methodical, doesn’t begin from scratch when a person starts to work on a problem. His or her pre-existing brain-state biases a person to use a creative or a methodical strategy.
- John Kounios :: Psychology Professor :: Drexel University

New insights come from new people and new environments — any circumstance in which the brain has a hard time predicting what will happen next.
- Fast Company

Breakthrough insights are at the intersection of ideas, concepts, and cultures.
- Frans Johansson :: The Medici Effect

3 STEPS TO EFFECTIVE CREATIVE MARKETING

Creativity for creativity’s sake is worthless. Creative marketing must be effective and preferably efficient. Here are three essential steps:

1. Know your brand.
   What makes you unique? What is your mission? What are your core values? etc.
2. Understand culture.
   Understand the cultures of the people you want to reach and how those cultures are evolving.
3. Determine the best marketing route.
   There are hundreds of ways to connect your brand with your audience, but you need to determine which one will be most effective.

JUST THE BEGINNING

There is so much more research and best practices on each area that I have briefly discussed. If you are serious about being a creative marketer, deepen your studies and practice it.

John Saddington of ChurchCrunch recently asked me some good questions and posted my answers on his blog. If you want to read my opinion on the future of church marketing and on how technology and social media change and challenge traditional avenues, be sure to visit ChurchCrunch.com.

Here is a summary from my second session at the Internet Ministry Conference called “Tailored Internet Ministry.”

Ministry is exciting. I am excited and passionate about my own calling. And I get excited about other’s success stories as they pursue their own callings.

Yet with all of the excitement, I must be careful that my feelings do not make me think that what works for another ministry will automatically work for my ministry.

Just because someone else’s calling is exciting, does not mean that I should make their calling my calling.

I think we all can agree with that statement.

But unfortunately, this copying mindset often plagues ministries. I see too many churches and too many ministries pursuing the exciting, the successful, the cool, the hyped, the trendy, and any other shiny thing that catches their eye rather than pursuing something that is more aligned with their calling.

Copying is not a cure-all solution. Copying makes people say,

If we could just be like…

If our website was just like…

If our marketing was just like…

UNIQUE CALLINGS

Although there may be ministries similar to yours, keep in mind that there is no ministry that is an exact copy of your ministry. No other ministry has the same calling as your ministry. Your calling is a unique formula of your passions, gifts, values, abilities, timing, place, and people you will reach.

As 1 Corinthians 12:12-30 explains, we each have our own unique mission, our own unique role to play in the Body of Christ.

Imagine if your foot started doing the hand’s job. In the big picture, the master plan would fail because each part of the body has a specific function.

God has given each of you a gift from his great variety of spiritual gifts. Use them well to serve one another.
1 Peter 4:10

It does not say use someone else’s gift. It says use your gift.

3 REASONS NOT TO COPY

1. Copying limits you from reaching your full potential.
   If you are copying, your methods are not customized to your ministry’s unique context, and consequently, you will fall short of your full potential.
2. Copying can misguide you to someone else’s mission.
   Whether copying a church or a corporation, copying will likely give you the results for their mission. Copying something that you do not understand the reasoning behind is dangerous because you make be achieving the opposite of what you hope to achieve.
3. It may no longer work.
   (1) It may be oversaturated. If everybody is doing it, people have probably become desensitized to it. Oversaturated methods are just clutter and noise.
   (2) It may be obsolete. Because intersecting cultures create innovation which creates communication breakthroughs which creates more cultures and speeds up the evolution of cultures, what used to work may no longer work because it could be obsolete.

COPYING VS. TAILORING

Inspiration is good. But it is what you do with inspiration that matters.

You can copy what inspires you.
You can tailor what inspires you.

Some things can not be tailored. You need to understand the science behind things in order to know if it can be tailored to your ministry.

8 STEPS FOR TAILORING YOUR MINISTRY

1. Write your mission down.
2. Review your mission.
3. Study who God has called you to reach. (science of culture)
4. Determine the best ways to reach them. (science of methods)
5. Do it.
6. Reevaluate.
7. Tweak.
8. Repeat.

For more thoughts about Internet ministry, see the notes from my first session - “All You Need to Know About Internet Ministry Marketing in 72 Questions.”

Here is the outline from my first session at the Internet Ministry Conference. Stay tuned for the sequel to this session - “Tailored Internet Ministry.”

If you want to have great Internet marketing, ask yourself the following questions.

#1 :: How can I have great Internet marketing?

FUNDAMENTALS / BRANDING

#2 :: What is my brand?
#3 :: What is my ministry’s mission?
#4 :: What are my three most important goals?
#5 :: Who am I called to reach?
#6 :: Who are the most important audiences for me to reach?
#7 :: How do I want to be perceived by each audience?
#8 :: What is unique about my ministry?
#9 :: What are my ministry’s core values?
#10 :: If I could communicate a single message about my ministry, what would it be?

FUNDAMENTALS / BRANDING / LOGO

#11 :: Do I have a good logo?

Example: Church Relevance’s Top Church Logos

#12 :: Is my logo good looking?
#13 :: Does my logo look good in color and in black and white?
#14 :: Is my logo distinctive?
#15 :: Is my logo memorable?
#16 :: Is my logo timeless?
#17 :: Is my logo scalable
#18 :: Is my logo simple?
#19 :: Is my logo communicating my brand?

FUNDAMENTALS / MY AUDIENCE

#20 :: Do I understand the cultures I am trying to reach?

INTERNET MARKETING / TYPES OF PLATFORMS

#21 :: What is my platform for Internet ministry?
#22 :: Should I use a website?

Resource: Internet Evangelism Day’s Church Website Checklist

#23 :: Should I use email?
#24 :: Should I use a blog?
#25 :: Should I use podcasting?
#26 :: Should I use a vlog, vodcasting, or video sharing?
#27 :: Should I use livecasting?
#28 :: Should I use chat rooms?
#29 :: Should I use forums?
#30 :: Should I use a wiki?
#31 :: Should I use Second Life? (virtual reality)

Example: LifeChurch.tv’s Second Life Campus

#32 :: Should I use Flickr? (picture-sharing)

Example: Church Marketing Lab

#33 :: Should I use Twitter? (microblogging)
#34 :: Should I use Facebook? (social network)
#35 :: Should I use MySpace? (social network)
#36 :: Should I use Virb? (social network)

Example: Junky Car Club

#37 :: Should I use Ning?
#38 :: Should I develop my own social network?

Example: CreativeMYK.com
Example: ROOV.com

#39 :: Should I have a mixture of Internet platforms?

INTERNET MARKETING / MY PLATFORM’S QUALITY

#40 :: Does my platform reflect my brand?
#41 :: Is my platform good looking?

Example: Church Relevance’s Top Church Websites

#42 :: Does my platform have good coding?
#43 :: Is my platform user friendly?
#44 :: Does my platform have good copywriting?
#45 :: Is my platform optimized for search engines?

INTERNET MARKETING / MARKETING YOUR PLATFORM

#46 :: How can I get people to my platform?
#47 :: Am I remarkable?
#48 :: Should I have a marketing campaign?
#49 :: Should I use advertising?
#50 :: Should I use pay-per-click advertising?
#51 :: Should I use Facebook advertising?
#52 :: Should I use free directories?
#53 :: Should I create strategic partnerships?
#54 :: Should I use email?
#55 :: Should I comment on other people’s blogs?
#56 :: Should I network on social networks?
#57 :: Should I create an e-book?

Example: Tim Schmoyer’s “130 Youth Ministry Tips and Ideas”
Example: Chris Forbes’ “Facebook for Pastors”

#58 :: Should I use press releases?
#59 :: Should I contact bloggers?
#60 :: Should I use offline communications?

INTERNET MARKETING / MEASURING SUCCESS

#61 :: Is it effective?
#62 :: Should I use StatCounter?
#63 :: Should I use Google Analytics?
#64 :: Should I use Compete?
#65 :: Should I use Crazy Egg?
#66 :: Should I use Technorati?
#67 :: Should I use FeedBurner?
#68 :: Should I use Google Alerts?

INTERNET MARKETING / THE BIG PICTURE

#69 :: What would this all look like?
#70 :: Do I need to change anything?
#71 :: Do I need to change anything?
#72 :: Do I need to change anything? (because this is a neverending question)