There’s no doubt that, in some people’s minds, the words “church” and “marketing” are like oil and water.  In the view of many (partially aided by the poor efforts of some), taking the secular and mixing it with the sacred is something not only abhorrent, but borderline “dancin’ with the enemy.”

This is a new site exclusively dedicated to helping churches, parachurch organizations and other Kingdom-focused ministries.  1429 Creative is the effort of the The Marketing Twins, Randy and Donny Vaughn.  You can read more about us here and understand a little more about our background at our testimony page.  And the big question,  “What is 1429?” can be answered HERE.

MarketingTwins.com is our small business marketing site.  1429creative.com represents who we are as believers wanting to help advance the communication efforts of churches and those ministries who seek to glorify God and bring hope to a hurting world.

Here’s our simple definition of church marketing (also to be referred more globally as “ministry marketing”):

Maximizing Communication to Get the Message of Christ to the Community!

At the core of our efforts is the challenge to maximize communication.  Marketing techniques, tools and tactics won’t do it alone.  At the core of communicating effectively with our communities and constituents is a basic understanding of marketing.  We do draw that definition from our small business efforts.  Randy is Fort Worth’s only Duct Tape Marketing coach (understand more about DTM here).  John Jantsch, who created Duct Tape Marketing, defines marketing in a way unlike any marketing committee or textbook.  When I first heard it, my initial reaction was “this should have been a definition created by church marketing people!”

Marketing is:

“Getting people with a specific need or problem, to KNOW, LIKE and TRUST YOU.”

Simple and highly relational.  Yes, tactics, tools and techniques will play their part.  But there’s also a comprehensive and systematic approach we use that keeps us from experimenting with short-term manipulative techniques just to get attention.  We don’t advocate copycatting the popular marketing fads used in corporate America just to make our ministry efforts seem “relevant.”  It’s much more comprehensive and systematic than that.  When assisting clients (churches, non-profit ministries), we think of marketing as connecting people who have a specific need to become aware of your offerings, enjoy their experiences with you, and ultimately becoming loyal ambassadors of your message.  I might be so bold as to say that marketing has more to do with long-term discipleship than with promotion or publicity.  It’s about implementing a system that your ministry can follow (as a team effort, not everyone doing their own marketing thing) in efforts to create a highly effective communication plan that will propagate your message.  It’s a comprehensive approach that does explore high-level strategic planning as well as marketing tools that cover things such as:

• developing a clear anthropological understanding of the culture we’re trying to reach (and sub-cultures within)
• establishing clear resonating messages that connect the message of Christ (and the role of your church) with those who need to hear it
• standing out in a culture of noise, busyness and chaos a clear distinct alternative offering peace, hope, love and rescue
• understanding the importance of visual communication in order to establish a connection/bridge with our culture
• knowing when and how to best use traditional advertising media (radio, TV, newspaper, print, direct mail, billboards, etc)
• navigating the ever-changing online world to find ways to connect to the communities we want to reach
• making a church website more than an online church bulletin and turning it into a source of conversation, interaction and community
• understanding how people find your church online and maximizing exposure when a non-churched person is at a point of seeking a church
• relating to strategic community partners to maximize your message so that what is known about your church is controlled more by you than other opinions or voices
• when and how your church can occasionally foster strong creative environments that generate a strong buzz about who you are and what your ministry is doing
• recognizing that without a plan, you will never truly maximize your communication nor maintain a systematic approach to communicating your message (think:  calendar, priorities, and plans!)

We are launching this effort not to criticize the local church.  We are not here to simply (nor smugly) offer more dissenting opinions about how bad church and ministry marketing is (although it does rank among some of the worst, especially our online efforts).  We want to be a voice of strategic thinking – we hope you understand that while we are marketing professionals, we are also missionary in our hearts.  While we make a living working in the marketing consulting world, we also see an opportunity to be a resource to the local church and to those ministries who serve the global community.  We hope you’ll hear our hearts as we blend our professional experience with our experiences in charitable ministries, domestic church planting, children and youth ministry, and international missionary experience (10 years in Canada and Africa).

Billboards, Facebook, or even the most innovate word-of-mouth campaign will not likely be the way a person finds salvation and becomes reconciled to God.  But good uses of these tools might be a bridge or a touch point for someone.  At the same time, poor (or non-existent) efforts in marketing might simply create disconnect for some who simply are wanting to know, like and trust you.  They may be ready to engage with you – are you maximizing your communication so that they will have these best possibly way to connect with you?  Church marketing doesn’t replace or negate the efforts of people in your congregation connecting face-to-face with your community inside your church building, in small home groups, or through community service opportunities.  Church marketing is certainly not trying to water-down the message of discipleship as if to create a false sense of the risks and responsibilities of walking with Jesus (if we market Jesus as “easy” and simply “peace and prosperity”, then how are we any different than those deceptive manipulators in the secular world?)

In maximizing communication, we hope your church marketing strategy will ultimately bring people in touch with the faces and stories of your own people and with the life-changing power of worship and the Word.

-Randy