Creative tools and strategies for ministry
Ministry Marketing Coach is about to start a series of articles on marketing secrets for nonprofits. A few things you will learn:
You can follow the series by subscribing to the Ministry Marketing Coach RSS feed here.
Last night while visiting my local Barnes & Noble, which my wife and I enjoying doing often, I very much enjoyed eating a chocolate chuck cookie from Starbucks and read a lot of the book, Free Prize Inside: How to Make a Purple Cow by Seth Godin.
In his book, which is an easy read, he outlines how a company should rethink how they spend their money on advertising, doing BIG innovation projects and R&D. Instead they should focus on “soft innovations”. These are about small ideas that anyone in an organization can think of. It is all about what Godin calls, “making your product into a Purple Cow.”
You can apply this idea to your organization or church by creating an environment for your staff or congregation to be a “champion” of an idea they might have that can bring change or a great opportunity that can make an impact on your community, nation or world.
The other day I discovered a book written about The Starbucks Experience. There are five principles that transformed the company that can be beneficial to any church or ministry. They are:
Principle 1: Make It Your Own
Principle 2: Everything Matters
Principle 3: Surprise and Delight
Principle 4: Embrace Resistance
Principle 5: Leave Your Mark
How would you apply these principles to your situation (i.e. church, ministry or business)?
Ralph Wilson, who runs an excellent website and business about internet marketing is offering some “Christmas Marketing Goodies“to download for free. You can get them here, but only until December 31st.
Also, this month he has written a great article on doing keyword research. He highlights researching, selecting and optimizing your website with these keywords.
A new marketing book Pyro Marketing, by Greg Stielstra was recently released. It pinpoints on the use of word-of-mouth marketing. I highly recommend this book. It will help those who are doing ministry online and offline consider new ideas to promote their ministry to a wider audience. You can find out more about the book from Greg’s website. You can even listen to an audio version of the book at the website.
The music industry has been using “Street Teams” for some time now. Street teams are the use of volunteers to do grassroots marketing to promote a band or an album. Back in 1999 I volunteers to be part of the Caedmon’s Call Street Team to market their album “40 Acres”. I handed out cassette tapes and posters.
Some churches and ministries are using the “street team” approach to get the word out about their services and events. This has worked well for many of them.
To take it one step further, as Christians we should on the “Jesus Street Team”, sharing our faith in the power of the Holy Spirit and leaving the results up to God.
I have just started researching companies and websites the help or give information about marketing for ministries. There is a lot out there about church marketing, but not a ton on ministry marketing. I was excited to learn that there is a one day conference being held in Texas in November about this. Check out the 1st Annual Faith-Based Marketing Summit. It looks like it will be good, but I won’t be able to attend.
$100 will get you entrance into GodBlogCon 05
The 1st God Blog convention October 13th-15th
There is still space available. It is going to be
good. Meals are included.
I’ve seen free video and coffee given away at churches, but gas?
Read more here.
