I’m going to show you 3 simple but effective church advertising ideas you can use to promote your church.

Whether you’re promoting an invite-a-friend Sunday, a Christmas event or this month’s sermon series, make the most of your church’s time and budget with these simple, yet effective church advertising ideas.

Making your advertising efforts work harder for you means focusing on just a few areas and doing them well.

What works now might not work in a year’s time – it’s all about measuring the effectiveness of your church marketing and promotion and adjusting as required.

OK, let’s take a look at 3 church advertising ideas you can use to make your church known:

1. Advertise Your Church With a Good Website

In today’s digital online world, having a church website is no longer an optional extra – it’s a necessity.

Here’s why.

8 out of 10 church visitors visit your church website before they decide whether or not to visit your church.

75% of first-time guests have already formed an impression of your church based on 10 seconds of your website.

Advertising your church with a website gives you an effective platform to showcase your ministry and give a great first impression.

You no longer have to have a degree in I.T. to create a simple yet powerful site. Combined with WordPress and Bluehost web hosting, the Avada Church Theme is a WordPress theme specifically designed for churches.

This premium theme gives you hundreds of options to customise and have your church website look exactly as you’d like it to.

It’s possible to get a professional church website up and running and live on the net in the next 30 minutes.

Here’s my step-by-step, newbie-friendly guide on how to do exactly that:

How To Build A Beautiful Church Website Today – Step by Step.

8/10 church visitors first visit your website before they will ever step foot in your church.

Once you have your website up and running and firing on all cylinders, be sure to add your website address to all of your promotional materials, letterheads, stationary and email signatures.

If you have a church building then you have the opportunity to make a sign and put it up.

One church I know is paying for the flowers on a public roundabout, what a great place to have a church website address!

If you haven’t already got a church logo, a logo is great for building a stunning, impressionable brand and image for your church.

You can either design your own or there are places like Fiverr.com where you can get a professional logo created for you for less than $10.

2. Harness The Power Of Social Media

Love it or despise it, social media is here to stay.

50% of church guests under the age of 40 will check out your church’s reputation with their friends on social media.

I’m not saying a pastor should be spending hours each day on the likes of Twitter or Reddit but focusing your efforts on just one or two social networking sites can increase your church’s reach.

I think it’s worth mentioning at this point that before any promotion, determining your target audience is vital.

If you’re targeting the over-60’s stick with newspaper advertising.

Yes, it’s an expensive way to advertise but your target market read their local paper.

There are hundreds of social media sites out there and as a church, you don’t need to be on them all but if you’re targeting students or young professionals then I would recommend having a least a church Facebook page.

A church Facebook page means you can keep people informed about upcoming events, share photos and create a real sense of community.

Your congregation can tag your church in statuses and photos – it can create a real buzz.

What really excites me about Facebook is the potential to reach so many people at no cost whatsoever. I mean, we always say ‘friendship evangelism is the best form of evangelism’ don’t we?

Well, what if everyone in your church invited all of their Facebook friends to your next outreach event?

It’s not hard to reach over 2,000 people within a few minutes. I’m sure not every single person you invited would turn up but at the very least it’s getting your church name out there.

You want people to think ‘Oh it’s that church again, there’s always something happening there’!

Check out ‘How to Advertise Your Church on Facebook (for free)‘, for a step-by-step guide on how to create a Church Facebook Page.

3. Advertise Your Church With Promo Flyers

OK, so this third promotional method is definitely the least technological of the three, but it can still be an effective and fun way to get the word out.

You want your church logo, address and times to be clear.

Point out the benefits of your church like an awesome kids church, showing pictures of young families and so on.

Whether you are hosting a travelling evangelist, offering an arts and crafts community class, inviting people to your Sunday morning service, your flyers must have a single, specific message.

Organise your team of volunteers. Set a date, time and location to perform the outreach. Choose an outreach date that is within a week or so of the event.

Perform the outreach by handing out the flyers to people on the street, knocking on doors in the community or posting the flyers in public places such as coffee shop notice boards.

An effective way to invite people to church is by making your Sunday morning services an event by having monthly sermon series where you talk about marriage, relationships, raising children, handling finances etc.

For more on making Sunday morning an event see ‘How to Grow Your Church Attendance – Keep People Guessing‘.

You could have a flyer for each monthly theme.

High-quality and affordable flyers are available from Vistaprint who have easy design templates so you can get your church name on flyers, pens, magnets, calendars, T-shirts, you name it, they probably do them.

So there you have it, there are lots more church growth strategies of course but here are my 3 simple church promotion ideas to advertise your church with little or no cost. I encourage you to take action and get the word out.

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What Church Advertising Ideas Do You Have?

What have you tried that’s worked well?

Scroll down and share your insights in the comments.