Joe Porter on inexpensive communication ideas:
“If I had an unlimited communications budget, then I would _______.”
I would make a pretty confident bet that no church has dedicated an unlimited amount of funds to communications. In fact, most of us operate on what we consider a limited budget. This means we have to get creative about communicating with excellence. Here are the five ways that I have been able to make my limited budget go as far as possible:
1. Dig on Vimeo for Promo Videos
If you’re looking to add more visual appeal to your advertising, you may be considering using video content. However, constantly hiring a production company may not be the most practical solution. There are countless videos on YouTube, but most of them may not meet your quality standards. Luckily, there is a solution that could save you time and money. You could search for and download freely available content from platforms like Vimeo, where many commercial animation studios openly grant access to their work. You can then use these downloaded videos and focus your budget on design and editing to create a unique and professional look for your project. Just be sure to check the licensing and usage terms before downloading and using any content.
2. Download Existing Designs for Marketing
It might surprise you to know how many large and growing churches use pre-existing designs, templates and other shared media. If you have a limited staff and budget, you probably should not be spending 10 hours working on a custom graphic for your men’s banquet or hiring a designer to do it. An example of a website that facilitates this inexpensive design sharing: CreationSwap. Most graphics are free and can be downloaded as a source graphic (i.e. Photoshop, Illustrator, etc.)
3. Target Market with Facebook Ads
If you are bummed that you don’t have the budget to do a mail drop to the 20,000 people in your market, then this will comfort you. You can reach an exponentially larger and more targeted audience for much less money by harnessing the amazing power of Facebook ads. For example: We ran a simple five-day ad on Facebook to promote our Easter web page. It targeted those who are friends with someone already connected to our Facebook page (approximately 1,800 followers at the time) who also live in a 10 mile radius from our church. The results?