Your people, your members, and your team within your organization are the heartbeat of your church or business. You can’t function without them. It’s a given that because they willingly attend or participate in helping your organization to exist they also want success for you and the organization and are therefore your strongest advocates and supporters. So, first and foremost, you aren’t alone in raising awareness for your church or business. You have help and they like you and want you to succeed. You’re already in a great position to tell others about your organization even if you have no budget.  

Have you ever wondered if the people who sit in your pews or at your table with you are as excited to grow as you are? If they are there, they are! Your team just needs some direction.

We’ll walk you through how you can ask them for help, how you can increase their involvement for the success of your organization with little to no requirements and with a loving attitude. 

Don’t get me wrong. Not everyone is on social media and more and more are moving away from common social media platforms. But everyone still has a voice, has a goal, and if they’re on your team and are willing to help, you have a team behind you that you can inspire.

First and foremost, you need a direction with clear goals. 

Clear goals and some enthusiasm can go pretty far to ignite the light of engaged team members. If you don’t know what to focus on, ask them! Sometimes leaders don’t know where to start. That’s ok, some thoughtful and loving elders, deacons, and even regularly involved and lovingly enthusiastic members can be the guide to what goals you can make next to get your team on the same page, on the same track toward sharing and promoting your organization. Are you ready to start a new program? Make a video! Add some music and interview a fellow member who is excited about it to get the word out. You can spread the cheer, it can catch like wildfire under the right circumstances.

Next, identify those who have voices and those who can help

After sharing the new, and clear goal, get excited about it. A little hype and excitement can go a long way. Excitement from you and a few others can be contagious. Many people are helpers, many are doers, and many are idea factories. Start by identifying: 

1. Who is most excited 

2. What skills do they have 

3. What they want to do to help.

Getting your helpers involves a call to action, give them some actionable steps. Set up a meeting for anyone in the organization who wants to know more about the goal. Then ask those who attend what they want to do to accomplish it. For example, let’s say you want to create a new path through your church to help new mothers in your community. Maybe you’ll need to create a team. Have a meeting to get the people who want to be involved together. Assign a leader (or lead it yourself to begin with and pass the baton later). Next the leader will need to come up with a list of tasks necessary to jumpstart this new team initiative. Maybe you’ll need to create an event, maybe you’ll need to collect donations, maybe you’ll need to collect resources and package them in an easy to consume way. All of these tasks can be discussed and assigned to the team members. Motivate and activate the team members to get started. Doers, idea makers, and helpers who are along for the ride and need more guidance can work together to accomplish whatever goals you have. It’s like when Avengers Assemble…

Practical ways to spread the word through your members and teams

1. Social media
   1. Ask your members to share your posts / events on social media. Make it easy for them to do so. Create videos and imagery that makes this an easy ask. People like sharing  family, photos, and events. Think about spreading the word about your organization around these ideas and those will be easier for any member to share. But sometimes people forget, so just ask them directly. “Hey, can you please share this post about our upcoming event on your preferred social media platform? Invite a friend along too, it helps when you tell the world you’re connected to about us.” It’s ok to ask. 
   2. Share yourself. If you aren’t leading the charge, others won’t follow you. Once upon a time a co-worker of mine shared some wise words with me, “no one will celebrate or engage with your company, product, or organization if you yourself won’t, if the insider workers of Coke refuse to drink Coke there might be a reason”.  Being your best advocate means yourself also advocating for getting your message out. People know that if you won’t use your own product that it may not be worth using, if you and your team aren’t willing to sing the praises of your organization unabashedly then why would anyone else want to?
2. Give them something to say, like a brandscript. It doesn’t have to be imagined like you expect your teams and members to be robots but people have a lot going on. Make sharing your church or organization a second nature task. By that I mean, having a clear slogan you say a lot that defines your church or organization. Make it snappy and something that rhymes or flows and say the phrase a lot. An example is The Church of Eleven22 tells its congregation all the time that it “is a movement for all people to discover and deepen a relationship with Jesus Christ”. That’s easy to remember, easy to say, and something they repeat a LOT. Meeting an Eleven22 member is easy to tell because it may likely come up in conversation who they are. That’s a kind of free advertising that’s really electric. 
3. Make it easy to be seen –  Have fliers, cards, stickers, and magnets ready to post on anything and everything they have, cups, cars, and phones. Make these things as free or cheap as you possibly can for your members. It shouldn’t be a hurdle for them to show people they are shouting out the success of your organization. Make it as easy as possible. Car tags are super popular right now, shirts not as much anymore. Some people wear hats, some wear sunglasses, many people have stickers on their phones and computers as well. Cheap and effective ways to share that you exist and make your members excited to be along for the ride with you.

Getting your team in your corner on paper sounds easy, and it really can be. Sometimes it just takes some thought and a pulse on your members and teams. Different tactics will work better than others in different situations and organizations. It’s good to come up with ideas and think through how you can enthusiastically share your message with your teams and ignite the enthusiasm in them as well. It will take time and it will take effort but once you have free, easy, and effective ways for your teams and members to sing your organizations or church’s praises you’ll really be set up for success. Success doesn’t happen overnight though. Start making a plan now on how to organically but also strategically get the word out. Some of these ideas cost nothing, some will cost a little. But it’ll be worth it to spend a few dollars on a few items members can walk around with as free advertising for you, that is also a gift for them. Win-win.

There are many more ideas where these came from. If you feel stuck on getting started with a marketing plan, how to engage your members to invite people, to share your organization, or to get the word out about your goals, we can help you brainstorm! Let us know if you’d like to chat about ways you can turn christians in your pews or chairs into cheerleaders for your organization or church with incremental success.

Here are a few other articles that might help as you think through this too: