Is Your Church Using Content Marketing to Reach the Lost?

This is a guest post by Matthew Schoenherr. Read more about how you can guest post on Christian Web Trends here.

As a local church, your flock needs to receive valuable content from you. That content should not only be produced regularly, but should also feel natural and carry Kingdom value. If you’re only speaking to your congregants once a week on Sunday, you’re leaving the world to fill their ears and eyes the other six days a week.

Truly, truly, it is difficult to overestimate the importance of content marketing in the overall outreach strategy for your church. By leveraging effective and consistent content marketing, you will improve your relevance, increase conversions and raise your effectiveness in fighting the good fight.

Why is Content Marketing Important?

The theaters are full because the world lies well and the churches are empty because the Church tells the truth poorly. – Charles Finney, evangelist

We live in an informational age. Good content is key to any successful marketing strategy. Content marketing within the Church is all about sharing the Good News in a way your audience can experience and apply.

Rethinking (and potentially revamping) your content marketing practices can help you take your evangelistic outreach to the next level by:

• Increasing conversions
• Promoting the Gospel message to a lost and dying world
• Building relationships with your flock
• Creating a sense of community around your church
• Showing your non-churched community how—through Jesus—their challenges can be overcome

Types of Content Marketing

While blogging remains a key aspect of content marketing, there are a number of other outreach techniques rising in popularity at astounding rates. Here are some of the top digital evangelism tactics:

1. Blog Content Marketing

Blogs remain one of the most powerful and flexible tools in your content marketing arsenal. You can be creative with the purpose and topic of your blog posts, promote other content and blog articles via inner-linking, engage in comments with the readers and evangelize the Gospel.

2. Social Media Marketing

In 2020, were over 3.6 billion people using social media worldwide. This statistic explains why so many pastors and churches choose to invest in social media marketing.

There are several platforms to choose from, such as Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn, Pinterest, Twitter, etc. There are also several ways to share your content: you can make short posts, publish photos and videos, broadcast live telecasts, and more.

3. Paid Ads

Paid advertising never went anywhere. It is the fastest way to reach a broad audience and get noticed. Keep in mind paid ads work especially well when they are complemented with inbound marketing techniques.

You can choose to share your paid ads on social media, landing pages, or banners.

4. Video Content Marketing

Video content marketing can give your church a more personal feel. Using video well can help you grow relationships with audience members around the world.

You can create various types of videos, such as Scriptural studies, sermons or personal blog posts and share them on your social media accounts, blog posts or other landing pages.

5. Infographics

Infographics offer an attractive way to display data, content, and information. Mix short statements, simple wording, hard numbers and images to communicate your content in an easy-to-understand format. (Don’t forget to cite your sources!)

Infographics may be a great idea if you are trying to break down a complex topic into simpler components so more audience members can absorb the content.

6. Podcast Content Marketing

More and more people are tuning into podcasts on a daily basis. This is why many churches and faith-based organizations have begun creating their own podcasts. (Think “radio show”.)

Podcasts leave a lot of space for creativity, being that they can be on virtually any topic. In addition, you get to decide who is on the podcast, how long the episodes are, and where it is advertised.

Ready to Take Your Outreach to the Next Level?

Creating and implementing a content marketing plan may seem overwhelming at first, with so many opportunities available. Yet today, content marketing is all about being dynamic and reaching audiences from all types of platforms.

My final advice: Pray for guidance. Study your potential audience. Make a plan. Run it by God. Then cast a wider net.