Back in June, I wrote an article about the importance of promoting your church’s online giving solution.
To summarize the article, integrating a great online giving solution only gets you half way to your goal. If your church members don’t know about it, then the best system will produce the worst results.
This concept applies to so many things in life but especially to websites.
I can’t tell you how many calls I receive every week from people who have built a website and are frustrated that they are not getting many visitors, customers, etc.
I’m not trying to be callous, but that doesn’t surprise me in the least.
Let me explain why…
According to Internet Live Stats, there are over 1 billion websites today!
So if you build a new website, how would someone know about it?
If you aren’t doing anything intentional to market or promote your website, nobody should know about it.
Building a website is kind of like building a brick-and-mortar store in the middle of nowhere… Unless you get the word out about your store, how would anybody be aware that your store even exists.
All of this sounds pretty grim, right?
Well, the good news is…
If you build it AND promote it, then they will come.
But just like anything in life, if you want to do something well, it will take a knowledge, a plan, and proper execution. It may even take some external help.
There are 5 primary ways that people will learn about your website:
- Word of mouth and relationship marketing
- Email marketing
- Links from other websites (including social media websites)
- Online advertising
- Search engines
We could write a book on any one of these topics, so I can’t go in depth on all of these topics.
However, I would like to spend time next week talking about the things that you as a webmaster can do, then the following week, we will discuss the things that you likely need help doing.
Have you built a website and been frustrated with the lack of results it is producing? Share your stories in the comments below.
If you want to talk with me about church website design, promoting your current site, or both, please contact me here.