If you build it, they will come. Sure it’s an over-used movie reference; unfortunately, it’s also all too often the mindset of people when they build a website. Creating a successful website with significant online presence takes more than spending a few minutes or hours building a website. It takes innovative thinking, the ability to create value, and the ability to both let others know about that value and convince them to visit.
Do I Need to Read This?
Most businesses understand that they need to do something to get people to buy their products/services. That something is called marketing. According to Webster’s Dictionary, marketing is “the process or technique of promoting, selling, and distributing a product or service.” Before you brush-off this article as something only for a businessman, ask yourself whether you are trying to sell of promote something on your website. If you aren’t selling anything, chances are that you are at least trying to promote something. If you have a poetry website, you are trying to promote the poetry and share it with others. If you have a church website, then you are trying to promote the Gospel of Jesus Christ and the ministry of Christ at your church. You created your website because you have something you want to share with the rest of the world. Whether that is a product, service, information, or pictures of your Grandma, if you want anyone else to see your site and get that product, service, or information, you need to market your website.
So, What Is Marketing?
As Webster said, anything you do to promote, sell, or distribute your website. There are basically two aspects to marketing.
- The first is informing people. This can be as simple as mentioning your website to a friend or making an announcement to your congregation at the end of Sunday worship. It can also be as grandiose as putting up billboards or creating television ads. Anything you do that gets peoples attention and lets people know that your website exists is the first part of marketing.
- The second element in marketing is conveying value. If I simply tell you that there is a website called OurChurch.Com, that may not mean much to you and you may never visit. But, if I tell you there is a website called OurChurch.Com that provides an online Christian community with devotions, forums for discussion, brilliant articles, and offers free websites, then I’ve conveyed some of the value of OurChurch.Com and given you reasons to visit. If you’re telling your congregation about your church website, it’s not enough to simply mention you have a website, tell them that they can get information about events and weekly Bible studies, see pictures from recent church events, and listen to audio recordings of sermons. So, it’s not enough to just mention your site, you also want to tell people why they should visit your website, to convey the value of your website. Of course there is one catch to this. The site should actually have value.
Tips
Often times when I talk to people about marketing their initial reaction is that they either don’t know how to do it or they can’t afford it. I tell them everyone can market something that they are interested in. Have you ever seen a great movie and then told your friends about it? That’s marketing. You’re making people aware of the movie and conveying the value of seeing the movie. In fact word of mouth and personal references are some of the most effect forms of marketing…and their free. Here are some ideas to help you get started:
- Tell your friends and family about your site
- Tell your church members or clients about your website and remind them regularly
- Put your website’s address on any and all printed materials, signs, and business cards
- Register with search engines
- Submit your website to online directories
- Optimize the pages of your website for the keywords you want to be listed for. This can increase your website’s search engine rankings.
- Optimize your website for local search
- Engage in pay-per-click search marketing like Google Adwords or Yahoo Search Marketing
- Upgrade to a hosting package that will give you a domain name for your site
- Create original content visitors will enjoy reading monthly or even weekly if possible. This can increase traffic keep visitors coming back, and get others to link to your website which would help your search rankings. This also creates value for your website
- Exchange links with other sites
- Contribute to discussion groups and message boards related to subjects your website deals with like OurChurch.Com’s forums (and include a link back to your website when you do if they allow that). If you can show that you are knowledgeable in your field and you provide a link to your website, that will attract visitors
- Upgrade to a hosting package that includes message boards to build community on your website
- Create a blog on your website and write articles and submit then to large sites to publish with a link back to your site and blog article sites like Blogs4God. When others read the articles and find them either very informative or entertaining, they will often place a link to the article on their site.
- Purchase online advertising
- Send out a monthly e-newsletter to your members
- Consider off-line marketing options such as flyers, billboards, tv/radio, and advertising in the phonebook
- Create profiles on social networking sites like MySpace and Facebook and build up a list of friends who share your interests.
- Read blogs that are related to your website and comment on them.
- Offer to become a guest blogger on blogs related to your website.
Innovative Thinking:
Websites are a dime-a-dozen these days and with sites like OurChurch.Com anyone can make a website. I mentioned at the beginning of this article that a successful website requires innovative thinking. Innovation should be used in both the creating of content for your website as well as the marketing. The marketing ideas above are just some of the ways to market your site. Take some time to brain storm and I’m sure you can come up with other creative ways to market your website.
Don’t forget that innovation in presentation is important as well. We’ve all listened to some announcement where the person making the announcement just mumbles the info and doesn’t display any enthusiasm. How did you respond? On the other hand, when someone announces something with excitement and passion and is creative in how they convey the message, we respond differently, same announcement different response because of how the announcement was done. Many churches today are using music, drama, art, testimonies, stories, movies and more as innovative ways of sharing the Gospel because how we deliver the message can effect how people receive the message. Be innovative in both the way you market your website and in the content you provide on your website. That can attract people to your website and separate your site from the millions of other sites out there as being unique and interesting causing people to return time and again.
Can You Afford Marketing?
The number one reason most websites fail within a year is that they do not market their site. Websites are created so people can visit them. If no one ever knows that your site even exists, no one will ever visit. If you have a business site, you may go out of business. If you have a church site, you have missed out on countless people who you could have connected with and ministered to. So, next time you ask yourself, “Can I afford to market my website?” maybe the question should be, “Can I afford to NOT market my website?”
If you have a comment, please leave the comment below. If you enjoyed this article or found it interesting, vote for it at Blogs4God and PlugRug so others can see it as well.
OurChurch.Com Director of Marketing Services
Kurt serves as OurChurch.Com’s Director of Marketing Services, bringing over 20 years of expertise in search marketing, and has developed numerous marketing services and served hundreds of churches, schools, ministries, and businesses.
He has authored more than 500 articles on the subject, contributing to platforms like the Christian SEO Guys blog and Church Marketing University, and is an active participant on LocalSearchForum.com.
In addition to his professional accomplishments, Kurt is an ordained minister, serving as pastor at Faith Lutheran Church in Wesley Chapel, FL, demonstrating his commitment to both faith and community. He holds a Bachelor’s Degree and a Master’s Degree from Georgia Southern University. He also holds a Specific Ministry Pastor Certificate and a General Pastor Certificate from Concordia Seminary.
5 Comments
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I have found some really useful tips on your site about marketing. I must confess that most of our marketing to date has been in the form of “we have a website – come and look at it” and I have now realised what should have been obvious, that we need to give them some reasons why they should look at it. Is it not also true that many people will arrive at the website by accident and the home page needs to draw them in. I have seen some Church websites which have useful content but whos homepage would be more suited to a rambling club, talking not about what the Church can offer but the countryside and nearby walks.
HI Ken,
I’m glad to hear that your starting to think about how people find your site and what the visitor’s experience is like. Is it true that many people will arrive at the website by accident? Well, I suppose that depends on what you mean. If you mean many people can arrive at your site without having originally intended to go to your specific site, then yes, many people do arrive at websites that way. However, those people were most likely looking for a site like yours, just not specifically your site. If you mean that the people are just surfing the web without even purposely looking for a site like your site and they just happen to end up at your site, then no, that doesn’t happen that often. If you have a church site for example, the people were probably looking for a church, or some service that the church offers, or something like that. They weren’t out looking for a lawnmower and somehow ended up on the church site.
It is important to consider what the visitor’s experience is and a homepage especially should draw a person into the website. Like you said, you need to give the person a reason to look around your site. That can be done by offering information about other things than what your primary purpose is (I assume the church websites you are referring to aren’t primarily trying to be a source for nature trail activities :); however, this can also be done by offering intriguing information about what your main focus is. A church can draw people in talking about the church, its activities, sermons, etc. One particular way you can do this is by using interesting or exciting titles for things.
It’s good that your starting to think about what people experience when they get to your site, but if your strategy for getting people to your website is to hope they just find your website by accident, I’m afraid you won’t get many visitors. If you started a brick and mortar clothing store, would you just rent a store somewhere and hope people came in and bought your clothes or would you put a sign out front, place an add in the yellow pages, hand out flyers, put up a billboard, etc. The same is true of a website, regardless of whether it’s a business, church, school, or poetry site. If you want people to visitor your site, you have to go out and get them. You have to make your site visible to the people looking for a site like you have. You have to market the site.
It’s strange how often clients don’t realize that marketing their site is a very important step.
This has been by far the best written information on how to promote a web site I have seen. My site took 12 months to develop before it was launched. I have been in business for over 25 years, but am relatively new to the web world, but the ideas here are bang on. The only thing I would add is what a web marketer mentioned to me. He said that being patient with the success of your site is very important. It might take 36 months to get to where you want to be now, as far as your web traffic and presence. However, if you are a new web site owner the information here is really what you need to know in a nut shell.