PIXL Designs

We love to share what we do as we go through a new design process. Soon we’ll be announcing the launch of Pleasant Hill Baptist Church’s online presence. Here are a few quick things we learned this time around:

1. We learned that domain names can disappear overnight. We had already settled on a domain name but were waiting for the deposit to come through before we purchased. Unfortunately a church in Texas bought the domain and launched their ‘coming soon’ within a few hours.
2. So we learned to be creative. We almost and hour searching through to find that perfect selection with the right ring and feel. The client signed off and we made the purchase. While it wasn’t our first pick, I think it is going to be beneficial to our client in the long run.

Common Sense Rules
Domain names should always be personable and easy to remember. This is common sense. They should also help with your SEO and achieve your goals. In our case, the church name is Pleasant Hill Baptist Church. At first, PHBC.org seemed like an easy domain choice (thankfully it wasn’t available). But ultimately this wouldn’t be recognizable for the audience they are trying to reach. So we regrouped and came up with a more appropriate name (we’ll tell you soon).

Think practically.
In Web design, it’s really easy to get carried away with the creative elements. There are sooooo many tools, it can make your head spin. We chose to use Standard Theme, which our own blog is run on. This enables us to work on building a simple Web site without overthinking things too much. As time goes on and there is an opportunity for a redesign, we can easily customize the templates through CSS.

We look forward to sharing more insights with you this week. We’ll also be announcing the launch of the new site hopefully in the month of April, so stay tuned!

What similarities do you notice above?

The top row everything begins with “iP” and the second row everything begins with “Mac.” Coincidence? Hardly.

The Apple brand is huge and its marketing is amazing. From cleverly crafted taglines to witty commercials, Apple pays extreme attention to detail. And thus its product line speaks loud and clear.

So how can this help your business or church? Easy.

1. Stay Consistent. Apple creates a clear message and repeats it over and over. This breeds consistency and trust.
2. Remain true to who you are. Apple was under tremendous pressure to change from it’s “iP” brand to “iS” when the iSlate become a frontrunner for its new product name. No doubt there were many who would have preferred that name over another. But ultimately they stayed true to who they were and now iPad is a noun.
3. Believe in yourself. The biggest key to Apple is their believability. When Steve Jobs takes the stage and talks about their products, you can tell he truly believes they are remarkable and magical. Oftentimes they are, but not at first. But no one cares because he sets the vision and he believes in it.

So from a business or church perspective, you need to stay consistent, remain true to who you are and ultimately believe in yourself and where you are going. This is an effective way to create a lasting impression on those around and develop not only followers, but passionate recruits that will help you further your cause.

Church marketing is necessary.

We have been all over the place this week, but hopefully it was fun. There are always going to be people that agree with what you say and others that strongly disagree. I know and respect that. Everything listed is simply my opinion, observed over time.

But I still believe church marketing is necessary.

Churches compete with various forms of entertainment throughout the world. We don’t want to dilute the message being preached, but we also want to make sure we aren’t dull and boring. We don’t want to entertain, but we also don’t want to repel.

So, the moral of the story this week is FIND YOUR BALANCE! Church marketing is necessary, useful, practical, and good for churches but you must find a healthy balance between reaching people with the Gospel and raising awareness about your cause through healthy marketing efforts.

Church marketing sucks. It is often disconnected from reality.

Plain and simple. And yes, I borrowed that one from these guys. But I don’t think it has to.

Churches have the best leader in the world—Jesus. And the Word of God is chalk full of leadership advice on how to reach the world for Christ.

So why do we have such a struggle communicating a simple message packed with a powerful truth?

Because we have incorporated it. We have institutionalized it. And that has to stop.

I think the problem lies in denominations. Denom means “to divide” and that is what has happened. Churches preach against each other, find fault with others and get frustrated when people don’t join their midst. Sure they may preach the Word, but they cross the line by starting the blame game and dividing the church rather than reaching the world.

And thus begins the marketing disconnect. Which is why church marketing sucks.

My hope is this changes and they begin to get “it” more and more as we transition from a mindset of the past to a vision of the future. Accepting diversity, standing on God’s promises and Word and believe in the power of Jesus to change lives forever needs to be the norm. And with such a focus and vision, a passion for community and relationships will come a new era of church marketing that does not suck.

Wow, this post is random and interrupted with stray thoughts. This is my writeboard. I’m flushing out the experience. I’m walking through my knowledge and my interpretations. And most of all, I am looking for the few that will go on the journey to new and amazing things in life that are centered around Jesus.

We have focused a lot of our advice lately on freelancing and business. My major client groups are churches so I thought I would spend time this week addressing church marketing. This week I’ll probably be all over the place because I have a lot of thoughts, but haven’t spent enough time organizing them yet. Hopefully you’ll be able to garner words of wisdom on occasion and have a few good laughs.

Common Sense
Church marketing should be common sense. Each church has a brand identity and if they are doing their job, people in their community associate their church with a set of feelings and emotions. These can be positive or negative depending on how the church markets itself to the community, though.

Church marketing is not a logo.

So many pastors and church leaders believe they need to have the perfect name and the perfect logo. Their church is the one with postcards of smiling people dressed in white with birds flying overhead and the sun shining down from above. They want to paint the picture that all is a bed of roses and that their church is the perfect church for you and yours.

But they forget the most important thing of all — relationships.

In order to be effective, you must build relationships. In order to get people to listen, you must first listen to them. In order to market your services, you have to cast a compelling vision for why you exist and why the community should be a part of your church. And then you must do the hardest thing of all:

Let go and let the Holy Spirit draw people in.

You cannot control your brand when you are in the business of relationships. So why get frustrated about it? Churches should focus their marketing on showing people who they are (not stock photo cutouts), what they stand for, and where they are going. The Holy Spirit will draw people in ways we can’t imagine. The job of the church is simply to be transparent, authentic, and real with their community. And to not get bent out of shape that something they tried didn’t work.

Churches need to match their marketing efforts to who they truly are. The last thing a church wants is for visitors to be knocking on your door expecting a choir of white robes to be singing praise to the heavens only to find a few golden voices croaking some lines off a page of a hymnal with little emotion. This not only dilutes the church brand, but it can damage the reputation of other churches in your area too.

I believe God is a God of common sense and excellence. Everything we do as Christians should be giving our best. As churches, this is highly important and we should make sure our brand is defined, our message is clear and then market that brand and message in the best and most honest way possible.