I just wanted to blog about something worth mentioning- and it's an idea that was raised in a blog by marketing guru Seth Godin, and expanded upon by one of the team members at Church Marketing Sucks... And I thought that it was a point well worth exploring a little bit more in the God Shack blog space too.
So below, you will find the original blog post by Seth, following by the CMS blog, and I will then add my own thoughts at the end.
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Making Promises
Is that what marketing is all about?
I think so.
Make promises and keep them.
Some organisations work very hard to weasel in the promises they make. They imply great customer service or amazing results or spectacular quality, but don't deliver. No, they didn't actually lie, but they came awfully close. The result: angry customers and negative word of mouth.
It's very easy to overpromise. Tempting to shade the truth a little bit, deliver a little bit less to save a few bucks. Who will notice?
The consumer notices.
If you need to overpromise to make the sale, don't bother. It's not worth it.
The best way to generate word of mouth is simple: overdeliver.
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Church Marketing Sucks, blog reply:
"This is a little different but particularly pertinent for the church. We can't overpromise. We have life change, world change and miracles to offer. But sometimes we self-promote rather than message promote.
When we promise big and huge and spectacular and over-the-top events, but we underdeliver, the message suffers. So when it comes to your church, underpromise and overdeliver, but when it comes to your message, remember: no promise is too big."
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My Reply:
I agree that all too often, Western church's have been guilty of this very thing. They have over-sold the programme, the speaker, the event, the theme, the music... whatever it has taken to get bums in pews... and then, they (certainly not everyone, mind you) have not delivered on the hype they've built for themselves.
Not convinced? I write some of the advertisements for my church's newsletters, and I personally have been guilty of over-playing what's happening in order to get people to our church more so than getting them to hear the message of the Gospel.
And across the board, when we have these super-hyped events and why take an honest critique of the numbers of people who have come along to the event versus the number of people who are already part of the church, there's no significant increase. In the words of Seth, "No, they didn't actually lie, but they came awfully close."
We're talking about the Bride of Christ here. We're talking about the Body of Christ. "We have life change, world change and miracles to offer..." not to mention eternal life doing the one thing that brings truefulfillment- gloryfing and honouring God. The church is a place that people should want to come to!
But here's where I digress for a moment. The last time I looked in my Bible, Jesus said, "Go therefore and make disciples of all the nations..." In the Greek, the word "go" (poreuomai) is derived from another word- peira, which means "to attempt a thing, to make trial of a thing or of a person." This word is derived from the root word, peran- which means "beyond, on the other side."
When Jesus said go, what He was realy trying to say was... Go! And yet we market and we plan to have the people come to us week after week, year after year.
So my first thought is this- for sure, we should not over-promise on the stuff that our church's are doing. Perhaps we should be looking at how to create a market plan that gets us- the people who are already in the church- to start obeying Jesus last command. To get us going. And perhaps then the Western church will see the growth it has been praying years for.
My second and final thing to consider then, is what can you do about it this week? If you are in a position to make a direct change on a church level (or higher), then why not do so? If you are not at a point of being able to start the ball rolling in your church for one reason or another, then why not start to influence where you can- such as in a small group, or with your friends... or at the very least, change yourself.
- Shane Miller.
Shane Miller is the founder of web-site and blog, The God Shack, and has been actively involved in numerous minitries for the last decade. These have included being a youth leader for seven years, being involved in creative arts ministries (including CD recordings), as well as being a missions assistant to Kazakhstan for a year (working with Teen Challenge). Shane is married to his beautiful wife Marie, lives in Sydney Australia, where he works for his home church, as well as being a Core Team member and consultant for the internationally developing youth movement, Generation Fire.
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