When spreading the gospel is literally the job, it pays to make sure your word actually gets out. Marketing might seem a little…cynical for a church, but it’s also an essential way to invite new members into your flock, communicate with your congregation, and stay in touch with the greater community.

Church marketing can be effective in growing your congregation and getting the word out to the community. And it can even be fun to actively take your church to a higher form of communication. Here are some ideas for getting the word out about your good word.

1. Make a Marketing Plan

It sounds obvious, but building a plan for your church marketing strategies can save you time and money by ensuring that your resources are allocated the right way before you ever make a move. Many churches operate on a shoestring budget or simply don’t have much elbow grease to spread around, so make your plan based on what you have the ability and budget to do.

Will your church advertising take place mostly online? Shape your plan to those strengths. Is it going to be a little more grassroots in the physical world? Work that into the plan. Set goals, assign tasks, and allocate a budget. And most importantly, stick to what’s in the plan until you’re sure it’s time to update (and you’ve seen success from your current strategy).

2. Build Your Brand

Even a church needs a strong brand identity. But a brand is more than just a logo; it’s the look, feel, and attitude of your religious community. You want people to get a glimpse of your brand and know exactly what they’re in for. Is your personality fun and boisterous? Straightforward and stoic? Establishing your brand identity attracts the kind of people you want to attract.

Putting your brand identity in writing gives everyone who works on your marketing a guiding light. Every communication can be reviewed in the context of your brand identity to know that it’s “right.” This can manifest in practical terms such as a brand standards guide or document, which is a firm collection of your mission statement, chosen colors and fonts, logo usage types, and approved messages. Which brings us to our next strategy…

3. Develop a Message

Marketing is explicitly about communication, so taking steps to communicate the right message is the most important thing you can do.

After establishing your brand identity you should create an overarching message that properly conveys everything the church is about. This is the thing that tells your audience what sets your church apart from others. All church advertising and other communications should ladder back to this overall message.

Your message can be as simple as “All are welcome,” or as specific as “The largest congregation in the tri-state area,” as long as the message is the most important thing you want to say. Multiple messages can fold under the primary one, as long as they all work together.

4. Be Social

Now that your brand and messaging is in place, it’s time to get online and establish a church social media strategy. Yes, some congregations might be a little old school, but with nearly 92% of Americans using some sort of social media, it’s a safe bet that your audience will find you there. Plus, social media is (usually) a budget-friendly way to get your word out.

Your church social media strategy can be as simple or as elaborate as you’re able to handle. Simply by posting a few photos or videos every week on Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, Pinterest, or YouTube, you can reach hundreds or thousands of people you’d otherwise never talk to. Any social content is better than no social content.

5. Create Content

Ah, but what will I post on the socials? Great question. The answer is “almost anything,” because anything is better than nothing. That said, take photos! Photos of sermons. Events. Meetings. Older audiences love looking at photos, and Facebook and Instagram scratch that itch for them. Meanwhile, younger audiences lean toward video, which TikTok is great for. Adjust your strategy for the audience you’re trying to attract. Behind-the-scenes shots of all of the above can be big hits as well. Candid shots of your pastor preparing a sermon…the possibilities are endless.

If you’re feeling a little more advanced, shooting a video of all of the above is even better, and opens up even more social options like TikTok, Snapchat, and YouTube. With some simple content editing tools, you can spruce up your video and format it for specific channels pretty easily.

6. Broadcast Your Sermons

Not everyone is able to appear at church in person, so broadcasting your sermons can open them up to a larger audience. Recording audio and video for your sermons and events is essentially creating content for all your church’s channels while making your message accessible to all. It’s a win-win.

You don’t need to be a roadie for the Rolling Stones to film or record audio for your sermons. Your phone, a tripod, and a cheap microphone can get the job done, although if you have any audiophiles or tech folks in your congregation it’s not too difficult or expensive to upgrade to a dedicated camera and sound system to record and stream your sermons.

Recording your sermon and posting it on your website and social channels later is great, but livestreaming is even better and it allows you to also post it later. The YouTube channel ChurchSetup has a number of great videos detailing how to stream your sermons.

7. Transcribe Your Sermons

Videos make great content, but video alone doesn’t really help generate organic traffic to your website. That’s why you should transcribe your sermons.

A transcribed sermon is a keyword-rich source of content that can drastically boost your SEO. Sermon transcripts also allow you to caption your video, making them more accessible to all. Other reasons to transcribe your sermons include:

• Improved accessibility
• Broadened reach
• Reduced time your audience spends watching video
• Increased search friendliness
• Minimized language barriers with translated subtitles and transcripts

8. Build a Great Website

Digital marketing for churches requires a home base, and that base should be your website. Any ad or message you post online should point viewers to your website, which will ideally use your brand identity and messaging to tell them everything they need to know.

Your website is more than an online business card, though. It’s also a tool for generating traffic all by itself. With great content that’s optimized for search engines, local audiences will find you relatively easily. This is why you need to make sure your website is an accurate reflection of your church. That means making sure it’s on-brand and up-to-date at all times.

Building a website seems daunting and/or expensive, but many hosting sites like Squarespace, HostGator, and Wix offer free templates that are incredibly easy to use.

9. Keywords Are Your Gospel

Having content is a great start, but there are a few more steps to ensure that it’s actually picked up by search engines. First, you need to choose a few keywords you want to rank for. If you’re unsure, there are free tools like Semrush and Google Keyword Planner that can help.

Once you decide on keywords, you’ll need to implement them on your website.

To do this, you need to think from the top down, starting with the title tag. This tag is a large ranking factor for Google. It’s also what shows up in the search results, so it needs to entice visitors to click.

Title tags should be kept between 50-60 characters, include your keyword/topic at the front of the tag, and provide the church name at the end (for consistency). Just confirm that your keyword is relevant to the topic you’re discussing in the content. Your main priority should always be to optimize the site so it’s relevant to users, not search engines.

You should also optimize the URL of every page. Fortunately, this is a fairly simple task with many of today’s web-building platforms. When deciding on a URL, keep it as short as possible and include a variation of your target keyword. It’s as easy as that.

Just remember you want each URL on your site to be shareable, so the less number of characters you use the better.

10. Grab Your Google Place

If you’re an established business or nonprofit, chances are that Google has already made a listing for your location. You can claim your church’s Google listing and make yourself the “owner,” so that way you have total control over the details.

With a valid email address, you’ll be able to verify the location, phone number, and website of your church. You’ll also control hours of operations, gain the ability to add photos and videos, and interact with reviews.

11. Use SnailMail

While the vast majority of church marketing efforts are online, don’t sleep on good ol’ physical mailers. Older audiences still love direct mail and the United States Post Office offers “Every Door Direct” which is a simple way to target specific areas near your church. All you need is a message, some thick paper, and a design and you can be in thousands of mailboxes in a matter of days.

12. YouTube is Your Friend

We’ve talked a lot about social media channels for churches, but we want to stress the importance of YouTube in your church marketing strategy. Every recorded sermon should be uploaded to your YouTube channel complete with transcriptions, captions, and globally translated subtitles. This will drastically improve your reach and SEO, and provide your existing audience with hours and hours of content. YouTube also offers options for live streaming your sermons, too.

13. Enlist Volunteers

Creative church marketing requires a lot of talent. Copywriting, art direction, videography, and social media management all play a part. Church marketing can be a huge job, but you don’t have to wear all the hats. Churches run on the strength of their volunteers, so don’t hesitate to ask for help! You’ll be pleasantly surprised at the professional talents your flock will offer for free.

14. Blog About It

Another rich vein of content is your blog. If you don’t have one on your website, create one. Longform copy is a search engine’s best friend, so any topic you want to write about within your niche is up for grabs. Consider the keywords you’ve established when choosing topics, and write for those.

For example, if the search intent is “How to find a new church,” make sure you ask and answer that question in your blog. Your blog is also a great place to post transcripts of your sermons for all to read.

Church Marketing Resources

If you still need help with your ongoing church marketing efforts, here are a few resources that you can use again and again:

• Semrush’s blog is a great all-purpose tool for all things marketing.
• Rev’s blog covers dozens of marketing topics every month.
• Outreach.com offers a deep menu of tools for church marketing.
• ChurchCommunications.com is a comprehensive resource for all church marketing and communication needs.
• MissionalMarketing specializes in growing a church’s audience.

How Much Do Churches Spend on Marketing?

The U.S. Small Business Administration recommends that businesses spend seven to eight percent of gross revenue on marketing, and this stat applies to churches as well. Churches, in reality, spend as much on marketing as they can and need to in order to meet their goals.

Just like with the size of churches and congregations, this number can vary wildly depending on the church’s budget. This is why you make a marketing plan and stick to it. That church marketing plan will include your marketing budget, which will tell you how much you can spend on each avenue of marketing.

Your Church Marketing Ideas in Action

Whether your focus is on Christian marketing, non-denominational church marketing, or any other religion, your church needs to market itself. A huge part of that marketing will be online and today’s online marketing requires a lot of video.

When it comes time to turn that video into SEO-friendly content, Rev will be here to help. It’s so simple to place orders for church content transcription at Rev that you’ll be adding captions, subtitles, and full sermon transcriptions to your content before you can say “Hallelujah!”