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How To Advertise Your Ministry |
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One of the questions my readers sometimes ask me is how do they go about advertising (getting the word out) about a ministry they are starting up for truckers. The answer to that question depends on the type of ministry they have and who they are trying to reach. There are, however, some general answers. The techniques for advertising a business also apply to many ministries. The best way has always been through word of mouth advertising. Enthusiastic people you have reached are always the best way to tell others about your ministry. I think the best approach is to use a combination of offline and online (Internet) advertising. Why? Because it is cheaper for one thing. Before the Internet, advertising media consisted of:
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Printed material
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Radio
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Television
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Referrals from others
For most people, spreading the word about your ministry through radio and television is probably out of the question, unless you're hooked up with a televangelist or have a rich uncle with deep pockets. That leaves printed material, referrals from others, and the Internet as the main options left. Printed material is getting more expensive everyday, just like everything else, so you have to make it work harder than before. It's what I call leveraging advertising material. With a good printer you can print off some flyers for about 10-15 cents each and distribute them yourself and have others help you. The problem with flyers is that many people don't read them. They use them for making notes to themselves or making paper airplanes out of them. Brochures are better, but even more expensive to produce. With these you can get a lot more information about your ministry into the hands of interested people.
The Internet: Leveraging Your Advertising to the Hilt
Every day, more and more truckers are investing in a laptop and hooking up to the Internet. All the major truck stops now have wireless and many truckers and travelers also have wireless service through their cell phone companies. (How do you think I manage this website?) The Internet can be used to get the word out about your ministry more inexpensively and to a wider audience than printed material can. With a website or blog, you can simply print business cards with your website address and give them to those you come in contact with. Your website or blog can be a simple one page brochure site or a multiple page site. Over a period of time you can even develop a community based site with lots of members. With the state of technology today, creating a website is not really hard at all if you can read and follow directions. If you can send email, it's just a few small steps from there to learning how to create a website. Using some of the online website creation software that comes with most hosting accounts you can click your way to having your own small website in about 30 minutes. Then it all depends on how much content you place on your site.
Web Hosting: Getting the Word Out For Just Pennies a Day
Once your site is set up, that is where you tell all about your ministry. You can add over a period of time 10, 20, 50, or hundreds of pages. Try putting that amount of material on a brochure or business card. That is why Internet advertising and marketing is the fastest growing means of getting the word out today, whether for a business, a ministry, or just for personal fun.
A web host is simply a big computer connected to the Internet 24 hours a day, seven days a week. Your website is just a bunch of files until it is hosted on a web server. That is what makes it live on the Internet. Many hosting companies now offer software with each hosting account so you can build your website right online in your browser window. For people who are not very computer savvy, most have a friend (geek or non-geek) who can help them get a site up and running. And if you figure the yearly cost of a web hosting account to host your website, you can get online for less than one hundred dollars a year. That figures out to about 28 cents per day. A lot less than a cup of coffee these days. Compare that to one dollar per printed brochure.
Once you're Online, Then What?
There are lots of ways you can tell people about your ministry once you are online. I have found the best way to tell others is through a combination of offline and online advertising. Many people think just because they are on the web, advertising is cheap or even free. That is not necessarily so. Advertising costs no matter what medium you use. There are ways; however, to get the word out without spending a lot of money...you just spend more time doing it.
Build Traffic to Your Website
You will want some type of printed media to give to other people. This can be business cards, flyers, brochures, or a number of other ways. You will want to always remember to put your web address on each piece of literature you hand out. Give some business cards to other people and ask them to pass them out as well. Put your website address at the bottom of every email you send. You want to get people at least interested enough to visit your site. Once they are there, then there are ways to keep them coming back as long as you have information of interest to them.
Once They Are On Your Website, Tell Them All about Your Ministry
The truth of the matter is that the information you have about your ministry has to convince people that you have something worthwhile to offer. That is, your ministry has to fulfill a need they recognize they have.
Let's suppose, two truck stop chaplains have a truck stop ministry within a few miles of each other. Suppose one has a one page site advertising his location. The other chaplain has a blog where he posts a weekly note of encouragement to truckers. He also has other information and useful material for Christian truckers. Now let's suppose Joe Truckdriver is surfing the net for chapels in the area he will be traveling. He runs across both websites. He looks at the first, but it doesn't give him much information. He then finds the second website with the blog and starts to read. When he is finished, he will have some idea of the chaplain and how well he teaches the Word. Joe Truckdriver is really impressed with this chaplain's website. Which chapel do you think he will stop at when he gets ready to park his truck?
When Joe Truckdriver visits the chapel on Sunday morning, he gets a good sermon and afterwards has a friendly talk with the chaplain. Before he leaves, the chaplain hands Joe his business card with the chapel location and web address. I don't know about you dear reader, but if I were Joe Truckdriver, I would certainly remember this chapel, the next time I was in the area. And if I am talking to someone else down the road, I would be more than likely to tell them about that particular spot, wouldn't you?
So you see, that is how word of mouth works and how you can harness the Internet to use it.
It's All About Building Rapport and Community
I get emails sometimes from people who tell me they will tell others about Christian Truckers Network. It is still a young website and I am slowly building content on it as my time allows. But it is obviously doing some good according to the emails I get. I am very thankful for the support it has received in the way of word of mouth advertising from others.
The bottom line is this. If you want to get the word out about your ministry, give your visitors useful information and encouragement. Keep adding new, fresh information on a regular basis. If your ministry is genuinely helping people, they will tell others. Make the whole point of your ministry to help others. That is the purpose of it in the first place. Use your advertising material to give out that help and word will get around.
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