Churches and nonprofits face the challenging task of communicating effectively with their audiences, whether they be a congregation or donors and stakeholders. These organizations are often operating with lean resources and limited technology, exacerbating the difficulty of communication. In this webinar, sponsored by Ministry Pacific Insurance Services, we present a way forward. Even lean organizations can communicate effectively by identifying their audience and then maintaining simplicity and consistently on a few media platforms. The transcript of this webinar is below: IntroductionI’m Roy Harryman with Ministry Pacific and our topic is Effective Marketing and Communications for Churches and Nonprofits. This show is a free service of Ministry Pacific. We provide webinars and numerous other free resources to help our clients succeed. Ministry Pacific, we are not insurance agents and we do not work for an insurance company. Rather, Ministry Pacific is an insurance broker. That means we work for you. We’re exclusively committed to serving churches and nonprofits. As a broker, we are free to research the market and find the best coverage for your specific needs. We have no limitations. We can look anywhere for anything you might need. Please take us up on our offer of a free consultation at ministrypacific.com. Speaker introductionI will begin with a very short bio on myself, basically for the reason that I want to give you some justification for why you should listen to this presentation. I am a journalism school graduate. I worked as a reporter and editor for about 10 years before serving as the communications director of two large churches. In 2015, I started my own marketing agency and I exclusively work with small businesses and nonprofits to help with their marketing needs. In addition, I served 12 years on the board of the International Association of Business Communicators in Kansas City. And I am currently on the board of the Social Media Club of Kansas City. So enough about me. Avoid Shiny Object Syndrome (S.O.S.) My goal is to lay out a process to guide your efforts. So wherever you're at in your communications ministry, there'll be something here today that will be applicable to you. Now before we talk about what to do, I want to talk about what to avoid. And that is what I refer to as – and others coined this phrase – shiny object syndrome. And what is shiny object syndrome? It means that instead of having a plan and a strategy, we just lurch from one new idea to the next, and we're constantly distracted by the newest thing on the market. Now right now that's AI, who knows what it'll be next. So certainly adapting to new technology has its place. We have to do that. But shiny object syndrome gives the new an inordinate amount of attention. Now why do we do that? Well, sometimes it's just more interesting than the actual work that we have to do. I mean, I've, I've been there. We might consider what we need to do mundane. It's easier to run after this shiny thing over here. So if you do want to explore new technology, by all means, please do that, but schedule time for that. Don't let it blow up any kind of consistent workflow that you're trying to create. Identifying our audience Okay. So where do we start? Well, the first thing we need to do is ask is: Who are we communicating to now? That that's simple, right? It's the church, or if you're a nonprofit, it's your donors, but let's dig a little bit deeper. Who is in your database? Some people will be saying, “My what?” Your database, is your definitive listing of who is affiliated with your organization. In the old days, that was the paper church directory. Now it may be an Excel file. It may still be on paper. It may be something more advanced, like a Church Community Builder or something like that. But whatever it is, you want to make sure that the people who attend your services and contribute to your budget are in your database. Those two audience should overlap 100%. If they're not in your database, you can't reach them. How do you know if your information is up to date? Well, how many people are in your organization versus how many people are in your database? Do you get bounced emails? Do you get returns? Do you get returned postal mail? Like it or not, our database is our most important asset when it comes to communicating with people, because we can't communicate to people who we're not connected to. So someone needs to champion that database to protect it and to keep it updated. We don't really like to be bogged down with administrative tasks, especially if you're a creative type person. But this is foundational. Think about someone who is excited about building your home, but skimped on the foundation because it was boring. No matter how cool our communication looks, if we don't send it to the right people, it's not going to be effective. Database upkeepNow, making sure our database is updated and accurate is not, ...
