The benefits of Social Media Marketing for Your Church
Want to increase your contributions and your attendance but not sure where to start?
Marketing has significantly evolved over the last century underpinned by the rise of the Internet and technology. If the wide number of options available to advertise services nowadays gives businesses flexibility, it can also be overwhelming and frankly, daunting. However, the online shift is here to stay particularly driven by the current coronavirus pandemic and the need for most churches to step up their social media efforts, regularly engage with their parishioners and post online masses. As 60% of churchgoers prefer to give online, building a strong social media presence to create a powerful online community is, therefore, key in this day and age. Moreover, 71% of non-for-profit organizations cite social media as one of their most important communication channels.
In this article, we’ll briefly analyze how marketing has evolved over the years (print to digital) before highlighting the importance of social media marketing for your church.
Marketing evolution over time
As a charitable organization, it’s important to understand marketing evolution as it is a great way to prepare yourself and your organization for big changes to come and harness the power of the next big thing in Marketing. From billboards and radio to social media, we’ve highlighted below the chronological evolution of marketing mediums over the last century:
1900-1950’s:
Marketing, as we define it nowadays, has been around since the beginning of the 20th century. As sales slowed down due to political and economical factors, mass production companies originally focused on economies of scale, efficiency and aggressive sales techniques using a door to door approach along with magazines, posters and billboard advertising.
1955-1995:
From 1955 onwards, companies started to embrace the need to assess what individual customers really wanted, therefore offering more choices and options based on marketing segmentation and market research. Radio, TV, Telephone and Direct Mail were the main mediums used as marketing tools for advertising during this period.
1995-Today:
By 1995 the idea that customers came first was widely adopted and relationship marketing started to emerge. Therefore, Marketing campaigns started to become customer-centric. Businesses have, since then, been thriving to ensure customer satisfaction by harnessing the power of the internet. As Digital Marketing allows companies to better target and reach customers across mobile and desktop, some specific fields such as Email Marketing or Social Media Marketing revealed to be powerful sales and customer satisfaction tools.
The importance of Social Media Marketing
With more than 3.8 billion people using social media, according to We Are Social, it’s easy to understand why Social Media Marketing is such a powerful tool for companies, charities and organizations nowadays. With 1 in 4 social media users claiming to follow brands from which they might make a purchase, harnessing the power of social media has, therefore, never been so important for your church to thrive and succeed. But how can social media help your organization?
Brand awareness
Creating a social media account on the right platforms is one of the most cost-effective ways to increase your church’s visibility. Having a social media presence means that you’ll be able to connect with a broader audience and increase your attendance in the long run as well as drive your donations. 91% of marketers claim that spending a few hours a week posting and engaging on social media significantly increased their exposure and improved their users’ experience.
Cost-effective
Creating a social media account and interacting with your loyal and regular parishioners is free. If you want to increase your reach, paid advertising campaigns will see you gain valuable insights and fine-tune your strategy for very little money in comparison to any other marketing tactics.
Market Insights
Being on social media and directly interacting with your parishioners is the best way to understand their needs, their fears and their thoughts. This can help you refine your messages, your content, your sermons and better assist both your online and offline audience as you’ll be able to craft messages that resonate with your audience. This will also help you target suitable content to drive your contributions and broaden your reach.
Display your church’s culture
Social media is a great way to convey your church’s culture and draw people to your church. You can also post messages of hope and give parishioners some well-needed comfort during difficult times.
Drive giving opportunities
Your social media content can be used to drive giving through other Marketing tactics too. Indeed, a study published by Anthony Coppedge has shown that the average click-through-rate is 115% higher for church emails that include at least one social media link.
