Yelp
One Sunday morning a couple weeks ago a guy here in Las Vegas woke up and had a thought that surprised him, “I think I should go to church today.” It had been years since he’d been. He had no connection to any church in Las Vegas. So how does he choose where to go? What do you think he did?
He decided that he would go to the church that had the best reviews on Yelp. So he got on his computer and started looking, and decided to try our church, Verve. Not because of an advertisement we had paid for. Not because a friend had invited him. Just because people had given us good reviews on Yelp.
What does this mean for those of us who are pastors and church leaders? I’m not exactly sure, but it definitely means we live in a new world and we’d be dumb to ignore the implications. And so we better be thinking about Yelp and Facebook and how our website looks on mobile devices, and if your service sucks or is irrelevant to people who don’t typically go to church — don’t think that’s gonna stay a secret, and …
In our Welcome to Forefront lunch a few weeks ago, we had 32 adults. We asked how they heard/found out about the church? of the 32, 28 decided based on our Facebook Page. The others because of our website.
No one cited a postcard, ad, or anything. Most had seen some from the church repost a video or link, and that got them interested. Pretty interesting change in how people find churches.
Churches need to remember that although not a “business” to drive up membership, it is essentially a marketing campaign! Every church should have a social media expert running things…the same way they have a sunday school teacher.