Why Should a Church Use Digital Marketing?

Some church leaders ignore or resist the idea of digital marketing. Some don’t realize how effective or relatively inexpensive it can be. Some are more comfortable with what they can print and see and hold in their hands and deposit in a mailbox. They read their own mail and they’re certain everyone receiving their printed promotion will do the same.

But here are a few facts about digital marketing.

According to Nielsen.com, 43 percent of media consumption among young adults 18-34 is via a digital platform. Almost a third of their time with media (29 percent) is via apps or websites on their smartphones.

“It’s no secret,” the website reports, “that smartphones, with all their convenience and accessibility that literally fits in your pocket, are the engine that powers consumer usage of social media.”

Some more statistics from the same report: “According to the first-quarter 2018 Nielsen MediaTech Trender survey, 64 percent of adult smartphone users who view video content within social networking sites/apps do so at least once per day. That number jumps to 72 percent when looking at the enigmatic 18-34 demographic.”

You say you want to reach millennials? You say you want to reach young families? Digital marketing must be a part of your strategy.

Some will ask, “How many people will digital ads bring through our door?”

You cannot answer that question with a specific number. But you can guarantee that digital marketing reaches people where they are, for an incredibly low cost.

Here are our congregation’s stats for the Google ads we placed in January of this year.

6,600 different users clicked on the ads, resulting in

9,300 different visits to our website.

5,500 of these users were first-time visitors to our website. On average each of these visitors spent almost 1.5 minutes looking at the information we had posted there.

This means more people than ever are discovering our church, and we’re accomplishing this at a very low cost. And it is important to understand that “visitor” means more than “one person.” Many of these visits are from viewers who may influence their whole family to visit our church or consider Christ’s claim on their lives.

The point of this is simply to increase awareness. This is the goal of companies using digital marketing. The sale will come later. With digital marketing they are making consumers aware of their product and increasing community engagement with their company. We can reach the same two goals for our ministries by using digital marketing.