Advertising Your Church (Pt. 6)

We’ve been talking about church advertising – today our question is: When and how often?

Two critical factors with advertising are repetition and penetration.

Repetition refers to how often you send out your message. In advertising there is what’s called “the rule of seven” which refers to the fact that most people need to hear about something seven times before they act on it. This means that sending out one postcard to a big group of people will probably not be very effective (unless it’s combined with some other “hits” they’ll receive). Or, another example, doing one radio ad – not very effective. The rule of seven means you should get your message out as often as possible.

Penetration refers to how many people will experience your ad. If you send out a postcard, will it go out to 25,000 homes, or 50,000 homes? I’ve seen studies which reveal that something like 95% of almost every church’s congregation will come from within a five mile drive. And so unless your church is the exception, you will reach almost no one from over five miles away.

So, putting those two factors together: It would probably be much more effective to send a series of three postcards to the 15,000 homes closest to your building than it would be to send one postcard to the 50,000 homes closest to you. Make sense?

Also, there are times when people seem to be more receptive to the idea of going to church, and you should probably concentrate your advertising on these times. What are they? Easter, Christmas, Back to school time, start of the new year, maybe Mother’s Day.

– featured on newchurches.com