Some would say that the goal of digital marketing is website traffic, social media likes, reshares and engagement, or just a general improvement of brand. While these are all good things and stuff that should be sought by any digital marketer regardless of your company’s dealings, for churches and ministries, this is not the ultimate goal.
The focus up to this point has been how to do digital marketing corporately, as opposed to individually and noting the differences that come with it. What we have not perceived is the purpose of a corporate church doing digital marketing and as I always say with my social media and blogging consulting, start with the goals.
For Youth for Christ, our digital marketing is not about our current staff, it’s not about connecting with teenagers who are already part of youth ministries, and it is not for the donors and volunteers that know about some part of the ministry. No, we want to reach the lost teenagers, the people that want to help spread hope, and those that are looking to support a ministry that is willing to go to the ends of the earth to share the Gospel with this next generation.
With this in mind, we have a target to hit.
It’s Not That Simple
What I just shared with you is short, sweet, and clear. It took you probably as long as a minute to read, but the discussion to get to that point was not so quick. This target in mind had been formulating for months. To gain a clear and precise goal such as that requires that we know as an organization what we want out of our digital marketing. Even more, so many voices, all with backgrounds of some sort in YFC, have something to say. We want to see the best for this ministry and as Proverbs 27:17 says, “As iron sharpens iron, so one person sharpens another.”
Further, our organization just went through a complete rebrand with a new overall vision, logo, and purpose. In some ways, this has lengthen the conversation (do we want to stay with that marketing approach? is this the old way of doing it?) and other ways this has shortened the conversation (we have freedom to explore new ideas and people are open to jumping on board with the new vision of YFC).
How We Got There
I do not plan to give you the nitty-gritty details because this would be a long and boring article. What I can share are some of the general steps to help you get to those goals too.
- Go Piece By Piece
To try to hammer out this whole statement would be impossible as a team, instead we debated and finalized little pieces at a time that eventually built up the whole paragraph above. At times, someone would through out, “what about our donors and volunteers?” We’d stop the conversation, add both pieces (this isn’t a single point, but two different audiences) and then get back to the original debate at hand. Then we’d jump further into the conversation. - Have Diversity and Empathy
My own experience in YFC is as a a student that accepted Christ in youth ministry, a student leader, a volunteer with rural students, a leader for civilians, a leader for military teens, and now an administrative role. What I do not have is what it is like to be a board member, a parent of a teen in Youth for Christ, a leader in inner city, or an executive director. Yet, our team has those different dynamics or ask for perspectives as we hash this whole thing out. We push our own experiences, but keep in check to integrate others as well. It became a holistic approach that made us all passionate about our digital marketing efforts. - Remember the End Game
Several times in our discussion, we would get off topic and start to solve scenarios that had nothing to do with digital marketing. Did it matter? Yes. Should someone solve this and soon? Yes. Did it need to be part of our discussion? No. So we wrote it down in an email, sent it to the right people, and pushed on with our own focus. Let rabbit trails die quickly in your goal setting discussions as they can be pitfalls and energy drainers for all involved, both with time and mental freshness.
This is just a part of what we did, but I would love to hear what your church or ministry does with goal setting that I missed.
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