You've tried everything you can think of to bring people in without seeing results; direct mail, rebranding and even re-decorating but the community didn’t break down the doors to get in. Most small churches share this struggle at o ne point or another, but there’s good news - Effective church marketing isn’t a mystery, it’s a process.

It’s a coordinated effort to attract and invite, then to welcome and inform and finally to inspire and engage your new visitors. By following these simple techniques you can bring more people to worship and set the stage for your ministry to take place.

Like building church attendance, which requires the coordinated efforts of attraction, assimilation and retention, building an effective church marketing strategy requires invitation, welcoming and engagement. Taking an integrated approach to all three facets of church marketing can help with the attraction part of the attendance equation, delivering active and curious minds to your church, and allowing your church leadership to address assimilation and retention. The simple goal of good church marketing is to get people in the doors and help them to feel open to receiving the message. Here’s how we suggest coordinating multiple levels of marketing to achieve that goal.

Invite your community.

The strongest way to make sure your neighborhood knows you’re there is to meet them where they live. There is a common misbelief that direct mail is going away and becoming irrelevant in today’s digitally-focused world. But the opposite is actually true. In a recent report by The Data & Marketing Association, direct mail has shown to be more effective in recent years with response rates increasing 43% from 2015 to 2016.

As overall household mail decreases year over year, the visibility of direct mail increases, meaning direct mail is still the most effective way to ensure everyone in your community receives and sees an invitation.

That’s not to say direct mail is the only invitational medium you should consider. A well rounded strategy may also include a social media campaign element like Outreach Social as well as in-person invitational techniques like door hangers and hand-delivered personal invitations to church.

Include an outdoor banner that is reminiscent of the invitation they received in the mail or in-person to remind them that your church is right in the neighborhood. Without this visual cue, your community may not make the connection that the invitation they received is from you.