Unless you have unlimited church resources, you’ll need to stretch your church communication budget to get as much done for a small amount of expenditure. Certainly, at times during the year, you’ll have to stretch every communication dollar. There’s so much to do, and so little budget to do it all!
Here are 4 tips for spending less; while maintaining your communication strategy:
- Discover your thread; calm messaging. A church that doesn’t have a communication strategy often communicates too much. All in a feeble, expensive attempt to inform your congregation about everything that’s happening. And what happens? It fails by adding to the marketing noise that makes people half listen at best and ignore at worst. A better way? Discover why they need your church in their lives and communicate that thread most. Then your branding communication should feel more entertaining and solution-oriented than promotional. A thread will calm other messaging that falls outside of your church brand. More will be heard as you say less. That’s a better return on investment.
- Have one trusted communication channel. After reading point #1, you may be asking, “So how do we inform everyone to know everything that’s going on then?” The solution is simple: have one trusted communication channel that everyone knows is the place to discover your church’s calendar of events. Over time, get everyone to trust it. And ensure it’s accurate with all details needed and very easy to use. Then you’re just producing simple reminders that point to the trusted source. Usually, the trusted source is your website or a social media channel (since it reaches internal and external audiences). But it could be your email that connects to your web content (but is mainly an internal audience). Make sure you’re building trust regularly for an accessible channel! Then it’s not as important to invest in other channels until your trusted channel is working well. That will take less time and money.
- Reduce print communication. One of the largest communication expenses for most churches is the print budget. Unfortunately, the bulletin (worship guide) is often the long-time trusted communication channel and it’s expensive! It needs to be on a retirement track. But even if you still have a printed bulletin, for many churches, it’s grown out of control! The world now has a reliance on digital communication; therefore, follow these 3 steps in this order: 1) improve your website so it’s easy to find everything, 2) reduce your current printed materials to a smaller more economical reminder that points to the website, and 3) consider a timeframe to retire all print materials.
- Use templates for designs. A church should have more similarities in design than differences to create a branded look. So much time and money is spent reinventing promotional materials when it’s not needed. Instead, get a professional designer to design standardized templates for regularly used material. Use your church’s controlled fonts, colors, and logo to create a trusted look that quickly says what ministry it’s for and reminds people to go to your trusted channel for more details. A huge savings to your budget and it becomes a brand-builder for your church!
About the author
Mark MacDonald is a communication pastor, speaker, consultant, bestselling author, and church branding strategist for BeKnownforSomething.com empowering thousands of Pastors and churches to become known for something relevant (a communication thread) throughout their ministries, on their church websites and social media. His church branding book, Be Known for Something, is available at BeKnownBook.com.