Coaching Churches

Any time you talk about some group of people being your primary target most people in the church get offended.  It is if they are concerned that because they are not in the target group their needs are not going to be met.  This of course should not have to be the case at all.

For over fifty years at least the same target group has existed from a demographic and psychographic standpoint.  They were the adults that made up the World War II and the Baby Boomer generations.  We developed programs and services to meet their needs and they would bring their children to church with them.

A typical adult conversation on the way home would be how did you like the message, music and the lesson?  If both adults had a good experience, then they would deal with whatever issues the children had and bring them back the next Sunday.

Today the overwhelming majority of adults under the age of forty are not coming to church any more.  They have a different world view about God and the need for role of the church in their lives.

When they do come because someone has relationally connected with them at work or in the neighborhood the conversation on the way home has completely changed.  Now the major thing that matters is what type of experience did their children have and do they want to come back again?

If the answer is yes, the adults are now willing to make the adjustments and they will be back.  If the answer is no, then regardless of what happened to mom and dad they are not going to give you a second look.

If your preschool, children and student ministries are not world-class in your church then you cannot expect to reach families in today’s culture.  The conversations on the way home have changed and your target group must change with it as well.

A good friend of mine recently exposed me to Seth Godin who is the author of several incredible books on the subject of new marketing and how it is significantly different from the old models most of us know.  He has an incredible blog and I would encourage you to visit Seth Godin.com and click on Seth’s head to read his blog.

In his book Meatball Sundae he writes, “New marketing leverages scarce attention and creates interactions among communities with similar interests.  New marketing treats every interaction, product, service, and side effect as a form of media.  Marketers do this by telling stories, creating remarkable products, and gaining permission to deliver messages directly to interested people.”

One of his incredible insights is that Old Marketing was all about interrupting people with ads that may have no interest whatsoever to the person involved.  Can I hear click the remote control?

New Marketing is about connecting people with similar interests so that when they get your information there is already a high degree of buy in because of the products and services involved and the relationships that already exist within the community.

As a matter of fact, the relationships within the community will initially be a stronger selling point than any brand loyalty to your company.  Failing to see the power in this human dynamic will position you with a competitive disadvantage the in new economy.

Marketing has always been about knowing what people want and providing them a way to get it. That basic dynamic will probably never change.  What has changed forever is how and when people get their information and what they do with it to make sure their friends know about it as well.