A change is coming for the CMO
The Church Marketing Online blog is a ministry of OurChurch.Com.  OurChurch.Com is a wonderful place to work for several reasons. One of the biggest reasons, however, is that we do not just think of ourselves as a company, but also a ministry.  This is reflected in our goals, services, and how we do business.

A little over a year ago Paul Steinbrueck (CEO of OurChurch.Com) and I decided to create the Church Marketing Online blog as a free ministry resource.  We wanted to inform churches on ways to market themselves online and equip them with the knowledge to do it.  We’ve covered a lot of topics during our tenure and, hopefully, have made an impact in how people view church marketing and what they are doing to market their church and reach people online for Christ.

In addition to the Church Marketing Online blog, we also developed a church marketing service designed to help churches market themselves online.  We know that you have a lot of other things to do and some of these church marketing strategies can be a bit confusing.  We’d love to help you with your church marketing.  Please visit the Top Church Search Rankings web page and contact us about how we can help you and your church.

Church Marketing Articles Moving:
With the completion of the “Is Your Church Social” article series, we have decided to post future articles related to church marketing to OurChurch.Com’s other blog, “Christian Web Trends”.  I will still be posting articles about church marketing, but we will be consolidating the articles with the other Christian web trend articles.  If you have been receiving the Church Marketing Online RSS feed, I encourage you to sign up for the Christian Web Trends RSS feed.

The Future of CMO:
Church Marketing Online will remain…online, as we believe it can still be a great resource for churches looking for information about church marketing.  However, we will no longer be updating the site with new articles.

Thank you.
I would like to thank all you who have been following the Church Marketing Online blog over the past year and pray that the Lord will bless you in your ministries.

Alright, so you’ve decided that your church should have a blog and you’ve chosen who will manage the blog (or blogs) and what the blog will be about. But your job isn’t over yet. Now you need to get people to read the blog. So, how to do you distribute and promote your blog to make it successful not only within your church, but also as a church marketing tool? Read more…

Does your church let money make your decisions?  Does your church let money determine what kind and how much outreach you do?  Really?

Read more…

 
I was reviewing some old articles and came across a post refering to a Christian Web Trends article that spurred the idea for a follow-up post.  The article is, “The Best Target Demographic Ever“.  I encourage you to give is a quick read, but here’s a quick two paragraph recap.

Studies have also shown that the average church will loose about 10% of their members each year and will only convert about 15% of visitors to becoming members.  This means that a church has to attract the equivalent of 75% of their church size in new members each year just to maintain their church size.  If you have a church of 200 members, you have to have about 150 visitors each year to keep your church around 200 members.  That’s 150 visitors for no church growth.

The Best Demographic Ever
In the article, “The Best Target Demographic Ever?”, Paul wrote about how a church’s current members and the people who come to visit the church are the best demographic for a church to market to.  Studies have shown that it is much easier to retain members than it is to get new members.  Similarly, it’s much easier to get a visitor to come back than it is to get a new visitor.  So, why not put a little more focus on keeping more members and getting a greater percentage of visitors to become members?

Below are five relatively cheap and easy ways your church can better engage members and visitors to keep more members and get a greater percentage of visitors to become members: Read more…

I subscribe to several blogs and newsletters.  So, I frequently receive emails or RSS feeds with articles, information, and announcements.  Yesterday, I got an invitation to download an eBook.  What was the eBook about?  I don’t know…or at least I didn’t know for a while.  Why?

Read more…

It’s been a couple of weeks since the last Church Marketing Online post.  I didn’t want you all to think I’d gotten lazy or quit.  Nope, I just had to take a little break to become a daddy.  Last week my wife gave birth to a beautiful baby girl.  Both my wife and the baby are healthy and my wife and I are very excited for this blessing.  We give all thanks and praise to the Lord!

I’m back now and will be posting new messages this week.

God bless!

I came across an article from ChurchMarketingSucks.com based on a poll that asked the question, “What is your number one church marketing fear?”  The idea behind the poll is that many churches do not market themselves (or do very little marketing) because the church is afraid.  Maybe it’s a fear that the marketing will not be any good, maybe it’s a fear that the church will become dependant on marketing instead of spiritual growth.  Are you being controled by fear? Read more…

We’ve been discussing social media a lot here on the Church Marketing Online site as we’ve been going through the “Is Your Church Social” blog series.  I’ve written a lot about the benefits of churches using the various social media, such as YouTube, Facebook, and Twitter.  While I take the approach in most articles of how a church can use the media to market itself and why it can be beneficial, I also realize that most churches can’t use all the social media either because of time or expense and that not every social media outlet is a good choice either for your church marketing strategy or even your church.  It’s not that any of the specific social media outlets are inherently ineffective, but rather that each church has its own strengths and foci and those may not match up with some of the social media. Read more…

Drew Goodmanson (Goodmanson.com) recently announced that he has completed an in depth survey with over 500 responses from over 50 churches.  The State of the Church Online survey, as it is known, sought to gather data about what online practices churches are using and how effective they are.  They have now begun to analyze the data from the survey for “Social and Community Networks” and “Church Websites and Usage”.

They are going to be presenting two webinars with the results of this analysis.  I thought you all might be interested in these webinars.  Read more…

 

I recently came a cross an article on CNNMoney.com about a video production company that produces short online videos quickly and inexpensively.  The company, TurnHere, is now producing online videos at the rate of about 1000 videos a month for an average of only $1000 per video.  The article focuses on the possibilities for businesses to use TurnHere’s services to market themselves both on video sharing sites like YouTube and on local search sites such as the online Yellow Pages and CitySearch, but churches can use these services as well.
Read more…