Are you wondering how to use online marketing for ministry?
Check out this powerful case study of a prolife group using online marketing to connect with people considering abortion.
Meet the Pro-Life Group Cracking Planned Parenthood’s Favorite Market
They do’t go into great detail about how they are doing it, but it’s clear they are using simple search marketing practices to intercept those looking for abortions.
What they are doing is exactly what any ministry can do: Determine what kind of online searches the people they want to help are making, and provide relevant content.
For instance, people searching for information about Jesus could be pointed to a local Alpha group.
People struggling in their marriage could be invited to sign up for a related email series and invited to a marriage mentoring program or marriage focused small group.
In a local market, there may only be a handful of such searches in a given month, but people who search for “How can I save my marriage?” are quite motivated and likely to respond to anyone who offers some hope for their crisis.
There are two ways to approach this:
- Look at your existing ministries and see how they might relate to those outside the church, then target those ideas. For example a small group consisting of empty-nesters could be a point of contact for people at the same stage of life. Target “empty nest help” and related phrases to find them.
- The other approach is to see what kinds of things are being searched for and then create a ministry that addresses those things directly. People searching for “empty nest syndrome help” can be pointed to your new class for empty-nesters, perhaps taught in part by a local counselor. And what about business related ideas like time management training, leadership development and the like? As a pastor who has spoken in the secular market, some of the ideas we take for granted in the church as far as teamwork and servant leadership are novel and exciting in the non-church world.
Use your imagination: What needs are in your community that you can address in Jesus’ name?