Free stuff (or schwag) doesn’t get folks to come to your church any more than that free stress ball got me to join GoDaddy.
It just doesn’t happen that way in most cases.
On the flip side, MediaSalt is powered by Dreamhost because of several close friends who told me about a crazy special they were running.
The past 50 years:
Though we just started calling it “marketing” within the past decade, the Church has always looked for methods to get folks through their doors.
Here’s the official marketing definition from the American Marketing Association.
“Marketing is the activity, set of institutions, and processes for creating, communicating, delivering, and exchanging offerings that have value for customers, clients, partners, and society at large.”
Consider these church marketing methods over the past 50 years — not a complete list. All worked at least one time and made other churches copy.
- Newspaper ads
- Phone book ads
- Catchy church sign sayings
- Revivals (definitely helped a lot folks come through doors)
- Door-to-door visits
- Postcards
- Billboards
- Yard signs (still work in a lot of areas)
Schwag, as a stand alone, is in extinction.
Schwag. It’s the free items your church gives away with your logo on it — potato chip bag clips, stress balls, t-shirts, etc.
Much like the items above that worked for a season, schwag is no exception. We’ve all experimented with promotional giveaways in recent years to just realize the return just isn’t there. I’m so guilty of this. It gets your church’s name out in the community, but it doesn’t create a huge swell of new visitors and ultimately life change.
Reading Ben Arment’s new book, Church in The Making, reminded me of this.
“They hand out water bottles imprinted with their church logo at the grocery store and buy down people’s gas at the corner Exxon. Everyone they meet acts interested in the new church, which gives them reason to be hopeful, but there’s no telling who will actually show up on Sunday.”
I’m not saying all schwag is bad, but it can’t stand on it’s own or you will never see results. It has to be used in the right context, and by right context I mean personal relationships.
It’s about relationships
If your church tracks reasons why folks visit, you have found that 90% plus come because of a personal invite. There is no arguing with those numbers.
What? It can’t be that simple.
What if the Church stepped out of the role of promoter and into being an equipper for their attenders to focus on investing and inviting? What if you placed tools in the hands of your folks or created remarkable experiences that helped them invite their relationship circles?
As a side note, I think social media helps with this. God wired us to be relational, and social media has allowed us to re-discover those roots. Think about the circles of relationships you have online. Who follows you? Think about how you generally find out breaking news or town news these days — usually because you follow someone on Twitter or Facebook that posted it.
Your church
What is your church doing to give attenders a reason to want to extend personal invites to those around them? What’s working for you? Please share below.
Cleve,
Your point about “SCHWAG” is well taken .. the free stuff might bring about interest .. but it is not going to guarantee that people are going to know Christ and further enter into a relationship. It creates interest = BUZZ; gets your name out there, but there has to be a follow up and follow through plan behind the SCHWAG.
The CHURCH has to be creative in the gathering process of collecting names, addresses, all that statistical stuff for the follow up plan - and believe me, people are skeptic about providing detailed information and most will make stuff up like I did in my collect days to get a free t-shirt from the credit card company - but if you offer BIG PRIZES (as my 3 year says); maybe like an iPad, iPod touch, $1000 gift card, etc … most people will provide LEGIT detailed information for contact after event to collect on prize …
- Brad
I think what the church communication staff needs to do is help build a positive reputation in the community. Of course, the absolute end game is to have someone make the relational connection for an invite, but I think it goes a long way if your church is known by the other person — and it helps if that person has a positive impression of your church.
So a question I have is: are you known in the community, and what are you known for? If you are known for being generous because you give awesome swag in the homecoming parade each year, that creates a positive impression and it’s useful. That paves the was for a successful personal invitation later.
I was a Mary Kay consultant for a while when I stayed at home with my kids. It’s seriously a great model. The company invested in advertising to create a positive brand identity. They provided awesome tools and training to teach their work force how to engage people in the product. It worked well because people were familiar with Mary Kay but didn’t have the personal experience with it yet. When they were invited to try, they were confident in the brand. Bingo! People were connected.
Swag or no swag, what can you do to create a positive identity for your church in a time when churches are taking a beating for being judgmental, ineffective and out of touch? Make a real, tangible difference in your community and in the lives of your people. Nothing in more influential than an enthusiastic supporter.