I recently was reviewing a design company that specializes in websites for churches, in particular church plants. I was impressed with the designs they produce and can say they are top notch when it comes to design. They offered wonderful features that every church needs like Sermon Brodcasting online, editable pages, blogs, calendars, etc. They build beautiful private islands for churches.
Wait, I thought you said they build websites?
Let me explain. You see, a website without online marketing is just like a secluded island that nobody knows about. Now this particular company does offer SEO to each their designs. While SEO (Search Engine Optimization) is a required step to having people find your site, it will not get you listed in the search engines. SEO is basicly making the code in your website search engine friendly so that IF you are visited by a search engine bot, the bot will be able to categorize and index your site in their database. SEO is like adding a dock to your island.
What the church needs to be is not an island but more of a Port. To achieve this you church needs at the minimum some basic search engine marketing. This used to be pretty easy; as all it required was submitting your website to the search engine inclusion forms. But things have changed. Just getting submitted to the search engines will not guarantee you will show up in the search engines. 97% of the time your not going to show up unless someone types the name of your church. Now you have to have an entire online presence to succeed in online marketing. This includes online news articles, twitter feeds, facebook, google map listings, and tons of inbound links to your website.
While I can appreciate what this particular design shop is doing for the church. It”s missing something I feel is vital. Because a beautiful design does you no good if nobody knows your their.
Is your church or ministry have an active online marketing plan?
