As a marketing coach who's active in my church, one day it hit me right between the eyes that my church was missing out on a great opportunity to grow using all of the tools I use in marketing.
In fact, I believe that the church is God's marketing arm, and therefore, the job of the church is to "deliver more people to God" and we aren't doing a very good job of actively getting out there to do that. I found a way to grow your church that not many have discovered. There are hundreds to thousands looking for a church, and most churches don't even know it, know where they are, or how to connect to them.
So, the first step was for me to find out how many people are actually searching for a church. At that time there were 4,000 people a month looking for a church in the Kansas City area, in about a year that has expanded to over 40,000 a month So, there's an explosion in the number of people out there looking for a church, and churches are plain "missing the boat" if they aren't out there trying to connect with those actually looking.
My suggestion is to go to Google Keyword tool and type in "church ___________" (fill in the blank with your location). Then continue brainstorming with Google to see how others are searching, Sunday School _________, Christian church ___________, Methodist church ___________, non denominational church ____________, and on and on.
In any case, here are a few ideas of how many are searching in some of the metropolitan areas around the country.
| Search Words Used |
Number of People Looking |
| church Atloanta |
110,000 |
| church Boston |
30,000 |
| church Chicago |
165,000 |
| church Cincinnati |
40,500 |
| church Dallas |
110,000 |
| church Denver |
75,000 |
| church Detroit |
40,500 |
| church Kansas City |
40,500 |
| church Los Angeles |
74,000 |
| church Miami |
49,500 |
| church New York City |
18,100 |
| church St Louis |
60,400 |
Those are the number of people looking monthly!!!
A good rule of thumb for marketing is: if you say the things that connect well with your target audience, you SHOULD be able to capture about 5% to 10% of those you reach out to touch. so, for most cities being in the area of 30,000 to 40,000, that means that somewhere around 1,500 people.
As I continued digging, and actually was speaking to a roomful of ministers in the next week, I dug to see how many people were looking within the smaller communities around the city.
- 4,000 people looking for Baptist churches,
- 6,000 people looking for a church within a suburb of only 20,000 people.
- And, for one of the larger churches nearby there were actually 6,000 people looking for that church by name.
How many of you are missing out on this opportunity to reach more people?
Use this tool to find how many are searching for you in what way.
Or are you a church that's ingrown, inward focused instead of looking for ways to "marketing God?"
In any case, for our church, we search engine optimized our website and went from "half full" to "bursting at the seams" within a year.
Then we decided that there were other marketing opportunities that we were missing out on. We search engine optimized a page for "weddings ___________" (our city). Our church is now booked solid for the next two months with weddings. Of course, every one of those that searched us out for "church wedding" are people that are considering joining now.
Marketing is about "building relationships" not just selling. So, we are using our church website to actively attract people who are looking for help "asking questions about religion", "family activities," "Sunday School" and we keep finding new ways.
As far as mission work is concerned, we've discovered that we've got a worldwide reach from right where we set. We are opening our doors to people looking for churches and questions about religion from all over the world, including small groups that are open worldwide. Small groups that quickly become worldwide small groups.
People are looking for churches, and you may be letting them slip by.
Are you?
