Marketing Strategies For Churches: Challenges And Opportunities Essay. (70 Characters)

1.Psychologist G.D.Weibe in 1952 raised the question ‘why can’t you sell brotherhood like you sell soap?’  Since this time, marketing has been used to promote anti-smoking, non-profit organisations such as World Vision and ‘mega-churches’.  What are the challenges of marketing an idea, social cause or church?

2.Marketing orientation or the ability of organisations to understand the needs and wants of its customers and meet those needs and wants is the bedrock of contemporary marketing strategy.  However, a key challenge for the church is whether to listen to its membership if what they want is contradictory to the principles of the church.  For example, should the church emphasise a product orientation (as sin: I know what is right and I will persuade the membership as opposed to the membership knows better, let me adapt)?  Discuss.

3.Do you believe that CKBC should develop a marketing strategy?  If you do, what aspects of marketing strategy should the church concentrate on?  If you do not agree, argue your case.

4.Tuck suggests that word of mouth is a crucial component of the promotional tactic.  If you were marketing CKBC, how would you develop ‘work of mouth’ tactics?  

5.Critically evaluate and enhance the current marketing strategy and tactics that CKBC engages in.

Challenges of Marketing Idea, Social Cause or Church

1. Marketing has been done in almost all sectors that such as marketing non-profitable organization like NGOs, marketing business to increase customers etc. It is very surprising to note that little marketing has been done to churches to motivate and increase their members. Church leaders’ belief that telling the congregation the word of God is enough but they should know that here work is like selling a soap which must be done with high convincing of the customers to purchase it. This is great mistake and this may make them lose their followers to other religions. Religious marketing is very important to churches in spreading the gospel and winning soul (Cutler& Bob D, 1992).

Churches in this century are facing great challenges which include competition from science and technology which has changed the ideology of the public. This has made churches lose many members to other religions. Christianity has been really affected in Australia as the numbers are really diminishing. In the current survey only 64 % of the country’s citizens are Christians. This raises a great alarm to the churches which have to come up with strategies to market themselves to increase members.

The churches have tried to market themselves in the media but the public sometimes ignore the message, channels to propel the gospel such as Family Tv have been set up yet very few watch them to get nourished with the word of God. It is very true that the church has lost the taste to many people which is contrary as it should be the salt of the earth. Truly, it is very hard for churches to market their ideas as they have financial constraints. This challenges have made church membership reduce and others have been closed completely. Churches should look new methods of survival just the way the CKBC did of having a website to increase its coverage and has logo for people to distinguish itself in the other organization. It is important to ensure that the church is healthy which is demonstrated by the growth just as healthy plant is noticed through the growth. Churches should have outreaches to reach more people and also crusades and through this they will grow. The growth is noted when churches win more souls for God. The church industry is like a business and like all businesses it should put up strategies to compete effectively and survive in the challenging environment or be extinct (Shaull et al. 2000). 

2. Churches are nowadays facing a lot of challenges due to increasing changes in information and technology. People have had diverse thinking which sometimes is contractor to the teachings of the church. This has created divisions among the church members and making churches loose membership. Ideologies have changes and therefore people have gone to areas where they think their interests are well served. Australia had initially high numbers of Christianity but now they have dropped drastically due to different thinking and beliefs brought by technology (MacKenzie et al. 1999).

Product Orientation Vs. Listening to Members

Churches have been caught in dilemma as the leadership tries to weigh whether to teach what the members what to hear or teach what is really written in the scriptures which is the principle of the truth and maybe lose some of its members. This has been a great problem to churches as people have different mindset. If churches become product oriented by preaching the gospel of truth assuming that membership will increase they will be wrong. This is because majority of the people are not attracted with the truth but materials things. Some want to be associated with a famous and well-known church, others want to go to churches which are well constructed and designed, others want to go to churches with pastors well-known world-wide, others want to believe in science and technology instead of the gospel of truth among many others reasons.

Churches therefore, to ensure that they retain and attract more members they should be all round by embracing technology and the different peoples’ ideologies in teaching the principle of truth to ensure that none is left behind. They should persuade the people rather than assuming they know better to avail themselves to the churches. Leaders of churches should have adequet knowledge on how to handle the believers and non-believers to ensure peaceful co-existence of the two groups.They should not condemn but teaches the importance and demerits of the new technology (Allporty & Gordon W,196) 

3. Yes, the church should develop are marketing strategy to prevent it from losing the members. The main goal of the church to preach the word of God to all the people to inspire them and make them changes their ways of sin. It is very sad to note from the study carried out that the members of CKBC were majorly outside the community it was located in. the church needs strategies to ensure that the local people are members since they are the near most persons. It is also discouraging to know that the numbers of Christians are now 64% and therefore the church should take measures to increase its members and protect the members from denouncing Christianity in Australia. Competition to churches is high as many people are becoming atheists, muslins etc. churches should stand firm and be able to compete effectively and efficiently (Grant &Robert M,1991)

In order to ensure that it achieve its goals the church should concentrate on impacting skill and knowledge to the members in order for them to help the church in convincing more members. Through this the members may spread the good news to non-members hence ending up convincing them to be members. It should also advertise the church through the website created to enable the public know it better. The church has done well by building a playground as it will be an avenue for meetings and it can mobilize more people to join it (Belch at el. 2003). 

4. As Tucks suggests, it true that word of mouth is the greatest means to promote a church to ensure that many people joins it. Firstly, through word of mouth a believer has the ability to influence of convince the other party fully by giving him or her the benefits of the church. Through this way any questions or doubt raised by the other party are answered to their satisfactory. This can motivate the person to be interested to join the church as trust is highly created (Kazmi et al. 2009). Secondly, through this means of advertisement very little resources are need as the cost is low. This would be very effective for the church as it has no large base of finances. Finally, this type of promotion of the church will build its brand name and enable it be known in a wider area as word of mouth spreads very fast. (Wagner, 2013).

Developing a Marketing Strategy for CKBC

It is important to note that not all cases of word of mouth advertising become successful. The power of convincing relies on the individual who is the believer and sometimes he or she may fail to convince the other party and portrays a very negative picture unknowingly. this may be through the information he/she gives out or the response of the questions asked. This way the other party may fail to be part of the members of the church and also campaign against the church (Richins, 1983). It is therefore very important to develop a firm tactic to do word of mouth advertising to ensure that you create a positive image of the CKBC church and attract high attendance. To enable people, motivate others to the church they must have adequate knowledge of the church to be able to answer any question posed. They should be caring to the non-members and treat them well not as sinners because they are either non-believers. To attract anyone to listen to your story you have to be presentable and so the members of the church should look clean and smart to convince others easily. Good communication is essential to enable one to communicate the message clearly in a manner easily understandable by all type of people. The church through the leadership should give teachings to the member on how to effectively convince non-members to join them. This method of promotion is very advantageous to small churches to enable them grow and beat the high competition in the society (Nyilasy,2006). 

5. Marketing strategy is a means of an organization marketing itself and in this case is the CKBC church method to attract more people to be its members. A good marketing strategy will ensure success of the church while a poor strategy will make the numbers if its members decrease. The church engages in a number of marketing strategies to try and get more congregation.

CKBC has renovated the buildings and modern facilities making them very attractive and not a hindrance to the members in terms of limited space. The constructions of buildings with new designs will definitely attract more members as they see the church as growing.

It has also put up solar panels to be part of solution to the changing climate changes and not cause problem. This has had a positive attitude to the members of the community and this will attract them to this church. The church has also created a positive culture for visitors giving them priority and attention and this makes them feel a sense of belonging. This will enable them be members loyal to the church and also invite their friend because of the better treatment. It very important to note that all the people need attention just as children.

It has been realized that most of the people who join the church have known it through the internet and so a website for the church has been created. This has provided a platform for non-members to be able to know more about the church through the internet. The church new logo created has made the church unique and people can easily identify or know it. Since technology has improved the church will know be known world-wide and this is very important for its expansion as the world as be made as a market place by technology (Melville et al. 2004).

The church has done training on leadership among the members and this also improve the welcoming of new members and also the convincing power. All these ways have increased the followers of the church as the members carry out word of mouth promotions to non-members. Due to training this promotional strategy more tactics have been imparted to members to convince more people (Noe et al. 2010). 

Allport, Gordon W. "The religious context of prejudice." Journal for the scientific study of religion 5.3 (1966): 447-457.

Belch, George E., and Michael A. Belch. Advertising and promotion: An integrated marketing communications perspective. The McGraw− Hill, 2003.

Cutler, Bob D. "Religion and marketing: important research area or a footnote in the literature?" Journal of Professional Services Marketing 8.1 (1992): 153-164.

Grant, Robert M. "The resource-based theory of competitive advantage: implications for strategy formulation." California management review 33.3 (1991): 114-135.

Kazmi, S. H. H., and Satish K. Batra. Advertising and sales Promotion. Excel Books India, 2009.

MacKenzie, Donald, and Judy Wajcman. The social shaping of technology. Open university press, 1999.

Melville, Nigel, Kenneth Kraemer, and Vijay Gurbaxani. "Review: Information technology and organizational performance: An integrative model of IT business value." MIS quarterly 28.2 (2004): 283-322.

Noe, Raymond A. Employee training and development. McGraw-Hill/Irwin, 2010.

Nyilasy, Greg. "Word of mouth: what we really know–and what we don’t." Connected marketing (2006): 161-184.

Richins, Marsha L. "Negative word-of-mouth by dissatisfied consumers: A pilot study." The journal of marketing (1983): 68-78.

Shaull, Richard, and Waldo A. Cesar. Pentecostalism and the Future of the Christian Churches: Promises, Limitations, Challenges. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 2000.

Wagner, Nancy. "The Advantages of Word-of-Mouth Marketing." Demand Media, Houston Chronicle (2013).