Seth Godin Talks about Church Marketing
Church Marketing Sucks has an excerpt from an interview Jeff Goins recently did with Seth Godin. During their conversation, they got talking about Godin’s visibility as-of-late in church circles. One of the most interesting parts of the interview was when Godin started talking about how churches sometimes do marketing:
Proselytizing, in my view, is like spam. Ringing a doorbell, standing at a bus stop, buying a billboard… those are not permission-based activities. On the other hand, delivering anticipated, personal and relevant messages to people who want to get them… that works, and it always has, and it’s working better than ever.
It’s interesting to me that even as the Church has moved away from old school, cold turkey-style evangelism, it has upped its efforts in areas I think Godin would classify as interruption marketing. We work hard and devote resources to raise the visibility of our churches and their programs in hopes that more and more people will be attracted to what’s going on in our churches.
But isn’t this just proselytizing in a different form? When we try to get in front of people’s eyeballs, whether they’re anticipating or wanting that message in the first place, are we actually helping build relationships with them, or just hoping they’ll show up on Sunday?
And how does that approach (however effective it is at getting people into our churches) affect the big picture, long term relationship we have with the communities around us?
02/03/2010 at 2:45 pm
While I usually agree with Seth Godin – I think he may be off just a little on this matter – While I am not a big person on interruption marketing, I believe the church has a mandate to be visible.
The church is in a quiet competition with the CNN’s of the world in crafting a message to be delivered to people. Crafting and disseminating that message, at times may and should cause interruption.
Again, I am not one for a lot of interruption marketing, and I believe the church as a whole should become more strategic. I also believe the church should work on creating lasting relationships and not just on short term audience growth. But having said that – our message has to “get in front of eyeballs” even if that means interrupting someone’s day.
02/03/2010 at 11:50 pm
Richard – thanks for your comment and your thoughtful response. I’d love to hear more about the church’s mandate to be visible. I can’t say I immediately agree or disagree with that statement, but I’d be interested to hear why you believe that, and what specifically that means.