CEO of Chiropractic Advertising and Founder of LeadFlows.com. Author & expert in church, ministry, and nonprofit growth.
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For the first time ever, church membership has fallen below the majority. According to a Gallup poll, only 47% of U.S. adults said they belonged to a church, synagogue or mosque in 2020. Covid-19 has devastated churches and nonprofits, and in-person attendance is still down at many churches.
However, there are ways that you can use technology to help your organization recover. A few churches have actually grown their in-person attendance significantly amid the pandemic. Here are four practical things to start doing immediately.
1. Leverage Google Ad Grants
Churches and nonprofit organizations can get access to Google grants for $10,000 per month of free advertising. This will allow you to promote upcoming services and events and even fundraise when people search on Google for things relevant to your church or organization. Google asks that you create ads that are mission-based, have a high-quality website and have someone actively manage your grant to maximize its performance over time.
2. Consider Implementing Online Challenges
At a prominent digital marketing conference recently, it was announced that the fastest way to build a rapport with a cold audience is to run an online challenge. Businesses have to innovate to survive, and many are implementing these online challenges to grow their customer base. These challenges can help churches and nonprofits reach their communities as well.
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If you’re unfamiliar with what a challenge is, think of it as a multiday online conference focused on positively transforming the attendees in a specific area. For example, a church could run paid ads on social media to get local people to register for a three-day better parenting challenge. The last day could take place at your church instead of online. Invite everyone in attendance to your Sunday service taking place the next day. You could rotate these challenges each month to focus on different subgroups within your community, such as entrepreneurs, single people and those dealing with various addictions. I used this strategy to get over 1,000 people to register for an online Bible study in just three days.
A nonprofit could use this strategy to educate people on a topic they are passionate about and offer an opportunity to invest in their organization during the last couple of days of the event.
You will likely recoup ad costs as people begin to regularly attend your church, volunteer for your organization, and become tithers or donors.
3. Provide An Alternative To Physical Contact Cards
On your promotional materials, consider sharing a phone number that people can text to subscribe to your email and follow-up list. You can also leverage QR codes that link to an online form for first-time visitors and people you meet at promotional events. Include an option to sign up on your website as well. When auditing a church website recently, I found that the pastor had no clue that the online sign-up form was broken. Be sure to routinely test your sign-up processes to make sure they still work.
When I was working with a campus ministry at UCLA, it used to take forever to manually enter contact information we would receive from people after large events. Some people’s writing was illegible, resulting in people who were interested in our organization not getting updates. Having a digital way for people to sign up will remove this problem and save time. You can even have these online forms trigger a series of videos across multiple social media platforms inviting them to upcoming events.
4. Leverage Mass Texting In A Personalized Manner
Mass texting is becoming more prominent and should be used. But I think something is lost when you remove the personalized aspect of following up with visitors and people you’ve met at different events. I used to individually text people by name who I met at outreach events, but as my texting list grew, people inevitably fell through the cracks. By leveraging tools that provide automated two-way texting that’s personalized, you can address each person by their first name and respond to them immediately if they text back. If they call you, it can be routed to the appropriate person to answer the phone. They don’t have to know that you have a dedicated phone number that’s leveraging technology to reach out to them. You can even use mass texting to manage relationships with prospective donors at scale. This can become extremely powerful when you automate a series of personalized texting campaigns that are triggered at specific times after people fill out digital contact cards.
Conclusion
Lack of knowledge and lack of resources are usually the top reasons that churches and nonprofits don’t implement strategies like the ones mentioned above. I’ve taken 27 mission trips to Haiti and six to Vietnam, been to China and Europe, and traveled extensively throughout the United States working with churches and ministries. I had to raise the money for every trip abroad. In the same way, you can raise money to budget for these strategies.
Now that you know what you should do, I encourage you to reach out to some of your top tithers and donors. Share the vision of how you want to implement these ideas to grow, and invite them to invest specifically into the initiatives mentioned above. The Bible emphasizes the importance of asking. Regardless of your beliefs, there are people who believe in you. There are people you already know who are passionate and may be willing to finance your church or nonprofit. Don’t be afraid. Rise up, share the vision, boldly ask and then implement these strategies.
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Author: Bryan Citrin, Forbes Councils Member
