Ben Arment, pastor of History Church, wrote a great post yesterday about learning how to market your church from car advertising. He wrote:

“A great advertising guy once asked me, “If your church were a car, what kind of car would it be?” He was getting at the fact that cars are marketed demographically and sociographically. So if we could figure out a good automobile equivalent for our church, we could look at how they advertise and what they advertise for clues on what we should be doing.”

There is a lot of truth in those statements.

First, automobile manufacturers invest a great deal of money and research into learning more about their target audiences and how to appeal to them. Your church can learn much from studying your congregation’s consumer preferences.

Second, notice the advertising guy said the how and what they advertise are clues. It can give inspiration. It can give direction, but it can’t be considered a solution. You must learn to take the conceptual and stylistic insights and customize them so that they work for your church. For instance, History Church has focused on the fun, youthful, community friendly sense of adventure that the Honda Element, and they have sought to create a brand that communicates “having fun in community.”

As a note of caution:
When studying a successful company’s marketing, purpose not only to study “how” they market themselves but “why” they do it. Not understanding the “why” can create problems. Obviously, they know (usually) how to appeal to people, but their approach will vary depending on the response they are looking for. Many car advertisements are created to reassure post-purchase consumers that they made the right decision. Some retail environments are designed to slow prospects down. If you glean inspiration for your church’s facility from retail environments, observe and study how people respond to the environment because the last thing you want is to cause unnecessary traffic problems. If possible, discover the “why” in addition to the “how”. Then you will know how to appeal to the target audience and create specific results.