Reading: The Church Promotion Plan

Promotional Plan

Henry Reyenga

How The Early Church Word Spread

Engaging Story – Embodied Reality = Sharing with Others

Acts 13:48   And as the Gentiles heard this, they were glad, and glorified the word of God: and as many as were ordained to eternal life believed.  49 And the word of the Lord was spread abroad throughout all the region. 

Promotional Times

Your Calling

Your Vision

Your Recruitment for Leaders

Your Small Groups

Your Gathering

Your Building

Making Known Your Calling

Your Mentor, and/or Pastor

Your Family

Your Friends

Your Church

Your Acquaintances 

Social Media

Your Prospecting

Church Planting Promotion

Write down your vision and mission clearly.

Changing lives are your best promotion! 

Earn the respect and recommendation of your attendees. Hospitality offered by your leaders starts great conversations. 

Promotion is what you do, not what you say.

Frustrating comments by word of mouth are an opportunity. Listen and learn. 

Church Planting Promotion

The community is already talking. Your only option is to join the chat!

Be interesting and engaging in the conversations about faith. 

 If it’s not worth talking about, it’s not worth doing. 

Make the story of your new church a good one. 

It’s more fun to volunteer at a church that people want to talk about. 

Prayerful promotion makes a difference.

Church Promotion Plan

Publish and Apply Your Vision and Mission Clearly 

Website

Brochures

Mailings

Getting The Talkers Talking

Get your team to talk about how God has called them to plant this church and how God is changing their lives at the new church. 

1. Identify the right talkers. 

2. Create a communication channel to reach them regularly. 

3. Give them the topics to talk about. 

4. Keep them happy and motivated.

Sernovitz, Andy (2012-04-26). Word of Mouth Marketing: How Smart Companies Get People Talking (p. 70). PressBox. Kindle Edition. 2. 

Who Are The Right Talkers?

Leaders who will network

Leaders who are teachable 

Leaders who follow the Lord and the leaders God has placed at the church

Leaders who show evidence of a solid walk

Leaders who are positive about the new church

The Promotional Plan

Start the promotional wheels going and do not stop. Get the promotional DNA going from the very start and keep it going after the planting, in the various size stages, and in planting daughter churches, which will have that promotional DNA placed in them as well.  

Develop Your Communication Channels

Use Emails, Phone Calls, Mail, and Notes. 

Make a Barnabas Team and hold team meetings.

Develop Communication Just For Your Talkers

Design an email newsletter, community, blog, or paper newsletter just for your talkers. You can’t call them up every time you have a new topic to talk about. You need a simple, ongoing message-delivery system that they can tune in to.

Sernovitz, Andy (2012-04-26). Word of Mouth Marketing: How Smart Companies Get People Talking (p. 84). PressBox. Kindle Edition. 

Feed Your Talkers

 Talkers live on a diet of information. Keep them fed to keep them talking. The word of mouth stops when there is nothing to talk about. Talkers want to know what’s going on…They want to know what’s happening before anyone else does. Talkers maintain their expertise and status by being well informed and educated.

Sernovitz, Andy (2012-04-26). Word of Mouth Marketing: How Smart Companies Get People Talking (p. 85). PressBox. Kindle Edition. 

Here Is What Talkers Want To See

Detailed data. You’ll be surprised at how much of what you think of as mundane is of great interest to your team members. Talkers are hungry for detail.

Progress reports. Talk about future initiatives and events. Let them know what you’re working on. 

Church Family News. Remember, talkers want to be family members. Fill them in on the personalities and happenings at your future/new church.

Always Say “Yes” To A Volunteer. 

You can walk into any political campaign without an appointment and offer to volunteer, and there will always be a project waiting for you. The secret? Campaigns always save some work for volunteers. For example, when they send out a big direct mail campaign, they always leave a stack of envelopes to be stamped and sealed by hand. Have something ready when your talkers are ready.

Sernovitz, Andy (2012-04-26). Word of Mouth Marketing: How Smart Companies Get People Talking (p. 86). PressBox. Kindle Edition. 

Make Your Talkers Feel Important And Get Them Together

Find a way to make them feel like insiders (and let them show it off to their friends). A political candidate shakes as many hands in the office as on the campaign trail. I still get a holiday card every year from the senator for whom I volunteered in 1988. Show that you appreciate the talkers.

Sernovitz, Andy (2012-04-26). Word of Mouth Marketing: How Smart Companies Get People Talking (p. 86). PressBox. Kindle Edition. 

Make It Fun

Why in the world do we have those walkathons with the rigmarole of getting per-mile pledges? Isn’t there an easier way to raise money than selling cookies? It’s because these gimmicks are a lot more fun than going door to door with a tin cup.

Sernovitz, Andy (2012-04-26). Word of Mouth Marketing: How Smart Companies Get People Talking (p. 86). PressBox. Kindle Edition. 

Make Sure They Know Your Gratitude

Get good at making your talkers feel appreciated and recognized. They will talk ten times as often. You can never say thank you enough, and every thanks is a reason for them to talk even more.

Sernovitz, Andy (2012-04-26). Word of Mouth Marketing: How Smart Companies Get People Talking (p. 88). PressBox. Kindle Edition. 

The Messages Drive The Word Of Mouth

Great word of mouth topics are often hard for traditional marketers to see. They violate the rules of marketing. They aren’t planned, they aren’t corporate, and they are rarely official. It’s an exception when real people want to repeat your official company motto or carefully crafted theme. Instead, people latch onto the unexpected.

Sernovitz, Andy (2012-04-26). Word of Mouth Marketing: How Smart Companies Get People Talking (p. 100). PressBox. Kindle Edition. 

Messages Drive The Church Plant(s)

Authentic

Creative

Engaging

Life Changing

Epic

Searching For The Messages

Don’t overthink this. The topic that works best for you will be something so simple, and possibly so silly, that you may miss it. Good word of mouth topics are the kind of great, easy ideas that get buried by bureaucracy in a corporate planning session. 

Lower the bar, keep your mind open, and expect that it may be your intern who comes up with the most amazing word of mouth topic. There are three rules to developing a great topic: keep it simple, organic, and portable.

Sernovitz, Andy (2012-04-26). Word of Mouth Marketing: How Smart Companies Get People Talking (p. 101). PressBox. Kindle Edition. 

Portable Messages

There should never be an and anywhere near your topic. Topics don’t work as well when they become lists. (“Try us because we’re friendly, affordable, experienced, have great customer service, and give you free ice cream while you wait.”) Your topic should be repeatable within a second or so. (“We give you free ice cream while you wait.”) Otherwise, no one will remember it.

Sernovitz, Andy (2012-04-26). Word of Mouth Marketing: How Smart Companies Get People Talking (p. 103). PressBox. Kindle Edition. 

Test Your Topics

The only way to know if you’ve found a good topic is by trying it out in the real world. No amount of planning will help you know in advance. Test it. 

The telephone game. Can your topic get passed along from person to person at least three times and come back to you recognizable? 

The high-school test. Ask a teenager if you’re buzzworthy. A glimmer of interest means that you’re on to something good

Test Your Topics

The customer test. Leak your topic to a customer or two and watch what happens. Do they respond to it? Do they repeat it? Does anyone new come into the store and ask you about the topic?

Sernovitz, Andy (2012-04-26). Word of Mouth Marketing: How Smart Companies Get People Talking (p. 105). PressBox. Kindle Edition. 

Keep Things Fresh

Topics do go stale after a while. Unfortunately, the more people talk about something, the less interesting it is. Success can eat away at a topic’s effectiveness, because the motivation for word of mouth is often to share inside information.

Sernovitz, Andy (2012-04-26). Word of Mouth Marketing: How Smart Companies Get People Talking (p. 105). PressBox. Kindle Edition. 

Don’t Drop A Topic

Here’s something to watch out for: Once you have a successful topic that is creating good word of mouth, you have to keep it up. Your commitment to the topic will set you apart just as much as the topic itself.

Sernovitz, Andy (2012-04-26). Word of Mouth Marketing: How Smart Companies Get People Talking (p. 106). PressBox. Kindle Edition. 

The Power Of Testimonials

Whenever you can, have people talk about how they came to Christ and how your church is helping them advance in their walk with God. This creates a lot of word of mouth!