We Have Shifted Our Method
For many years, we have equally promoted every weekend series. Every month we have introduced a new series, printed thousands of postcards, and mailed them to our community to invite them to join us.
That worked really well…for a long time. Our full-color postcards have been an effective invite tool for our people to hand to their friends.
But sometime last year we realized the effectiveness of that method was decreasing. Many of our people would get a postcard, glance at it, smile and throw it away. It had become just more noise in their life. It no longer grabbed their attention. It no longer motivated them to invite their friends. So, we stopped printing them.
That's right, we decided we could get more people to our series if we stopped spending so much money on advertising. So, for most series, that means we no longer print or mail the full-size color postcards.
Instead, we will put all of our advertising dollars into two series each year–we'll call them the "Big Deal" series. This year we are doing our first Big Deal series in March. Taking an idea from CedarCreek Church, we will make two series each year a big deal. And we'll ramp up everything we do to make a big deal out of our guests during those series.
This month our entire Go Fish series is for the purpose of preparing our congregation for the big deal series. You might say we are turning up the evangelism temperature in the church.
So what is the Big Deal series? I'm glad you asked…here is Mark Beeson introducing the idea to our crowd this past weekend.
Nearly 1100 people voted by text for the promotional graphic. Which idea would you have chosen?
Posted by Tim Stevens | 8 comments
Brad Ruggles
Ok, first of all, hats off you guys for recognizing that not every series or message is created equal and deserves equal promotion. That is a HUGE revelation to most churches. You’re doing the right and smart thing to put more time and money into the series that matter most and will get the most people in the door.
Second, what a great idea to make your church part of the creative process in choosing a series promo! After all, aren’t THEY the ones we will be asking to invite their friends? And making it available to text their vote makes it so easy and quick.
I’ll be praying for you, your church and this upcoming series.
By the way, I would pick Concept A. Clean, simple, eye-catching.
Alex
Tim,
Concentrating your marketing dollars on 2 series should allow you to have a bigger impact. At my church we are focusing our marketing efforts on the 4 attraction series we do each year. If you have found that postcards are losing effectiveness, what type of advertising are you planning on doing for this series?
Evan Courtney
Thanks for leading just not at your local church but for other churches.
I like that idea that if everything (every series) is important and nothing is important.
Passing this on to our leadership team.
Classic post Tim!
Jonathan
I agree with Brad, except that I would pick B. The reason? I just “feels right”…not a marketing guru.
On a side note: i’m amazed that Beeson’s writing and speaking seem totally different in presentation.
Enjoy watching and learning from you guys.
Tim Stevens
We’ll be relying heavily on radio for this series. Also be providing our people with a printed piece to use as an invite card. More on both those later.
Daniel D
Love it. I like A.
Any way to share more of what you guys will be doing to promote these BIG Deal series? I’d love to find out what type of promotion budget you allocate to these two series and how that budget for each gets spread across different mediums.
I’d be happy to take that response off the blog too if you aren’t able to share it with the world.
Sarah Keller
This is a great post Tim! We have a similar idea, we call it our “Big 3.” We are a much smaller church, so especially in a resource “scarce” environment, this helps us to put our efforts/money in concentrated areas!
We do one in the spring (Easter-ish), one in the summer (to combat the “down” time), & one in the fall (October is our growth time).
During our other series, we try to use inexpensive things like Facebook Messages, e-mail news (with video teasers), etc! It helps us a TON…and I appreciate being able to watch you guys and continue to learn from you!
This is one more area for us to watch now…thanks for the post!
Dennis
Tim,
I work in radio (not your market), & I would be very interested to know how the response is to your series. Did the reliance on radio pay off?