If you attended the pre-mixer workshop at the CBN mixer in Phoenix this April, you heard me present "The Bottom Line for Success Online." If you weren't at the workshop, feel free to download that helpful 10-page White Paper from my website.
Since the internet is my area of expertise, I'll affirm this fact: You must start planting seeds on the web today if you want to enjoy success for your company online tomorrow. Professional fundraisers know this fundamentally, but many small business owners have yet to grasp its significance.
I consider this so important for local businesses, churches, and charities, that I want to offer your company two very practical steps to jumpstart your efforts in this regard.
First, at no charge to you (meaning for free), Pathmaker Marketing will set up your personal and company profiles in Google -- a great initial step for local search engine marketing strategies -- and establish Google Analytics on your company website, so you'll get valuable weekly traffic stats for targeting keywords.
Second, I'm offering you a 50% discount off our Top 100 Local Directory Placements, designed to get your company listed in the Top 100 local, business, blog, video and map directories. That normally costs $995 ($10 a listing) but it's yours now at 50% off for just $495 ($5 per listing)! This effective internet marketing step is a fundamental building block to establishing a proper Internet foundation.
Or you can get our Top 40 Local Directory Placements on sale for just $195 ($5 a listing). At this low price, you can jump start your local business or church marketing 101 for cheap.
Either way, I'm going to extend these two special offers to you until 6pm, Friday, May 6th. (If the deadline has passed when you read this post, call me up, and ask if I'll honor the deal anyway over the phone).
I'm willing to help you plant your seeds today for effective internet marketing, so you'll reap the rewards tomorrow.
Call me today to get started: 623.322.3334
Or Skype me at pathmaker.marketing
Randall Mains, Co-Owner
I trust that as you read my posts regarding launching your blog, doing comprehensivek keyword research, and SEO-ing your website, that you have come to realize that the Internet really can work for not for profit organizations, and that the Internet is also a pretty good church outreach idea. A church blog is a major part of this, as it as it allows you to be targeting keywords.
The next thing I want to discuss with you is how link building serves well as a church, charity, or small business marketing strategy. After all, church marketing 101 teaches us that a church is, in fact, a small business and therefore the Internet business marketing promotions that work for companies work equally well for churches.
Have you ever noticed that invariably some of the most important things we need to do are also the most time consuming and the most boring? That is exactly the situation with your website and link building! While an excellent way to strengthen your website's rankings in the search engines, the process of link building back links is often laborious at best.
“Why,” you may be wondering, “is link building relevant to our church, charity or small business?”
Actually, there are two significant reasons that you should plan on making link building a part of your core Internet marketing plan. The first is somewhat obvious - - the more listings you have with backlinks to your website, the more opportunities exist for people to find your website in various locations online, thus bringing you qualified visitors. With a dynamite website, each time someone visits your website you have the chance of having them become a visitor to your church, charity or company.
The second reason deals with the fact that a well-developed and properly implemented link building campaign will increase your page rankings within Google search results. This, of course, is clearly to your advantage, so link building should be an on-going part of your search engine marketing program (to be discussed in a subsequent post), thus allowing your website to be that much more available online.
Your next thought may very well be, “How do we develop a link building battle plan?” Well, there are a number of techniques that you can use. First, get your company placed in as many relevant directories as possible - - national, local, and “niche.” The purpose of this, of course, it to then have your listing in these communities, and get it linked back to your website, driving traffic in your direction from those sourcs.
Work diligently to ensure that you get linked in relevant areas. To be listed in places just because they are available may be a waste of time and, in some cases, may even be counter-productive. As in any form of marketing, you need to identify your target market and pursue them with your link building efforts and dollars.
Next, establish links on relevant blogs, community sites, and forums. These are excellent places to establish your church or charity as a leader in your community for providing services that individuals may be looking for, as you will have the opportunity to interact and dialogue with those individuals who visit the sites, thus making their arrival at your church that much easier.
With social media being the latest buzz, it shouldn’t surprise you that you should be incorporating links from social media sites like Facebook and Twitter into your link building rogram as well. In as much as your Facebook account reaches out to untold thousands, the ability to link back from there to your website should prove to be a major hub in your Internet marketing program as well.
You may have found that there is more to link building than you ever imagined! I trust that you have also discovered what a viable tool this is in your over-all Internet marketing strategy!At the request of my Pastor I created a 20 Step program for Marketing our Church on the Internet. To make it as inclusive as possible, I recruited the assistance of Randall Mains of Pathmaker Marketing LLC. Realizing that the results of our efforts would be beneficial to a number of Churches, I decided to do a 20 part series and place it on the Internet so as many people/churches as possible can be Blessed by it!
To date we have discussed launching a blogging process and doing keyword research. Today, I want to discuss search engine optimization - both what it is and why it is important to you as part of your church marketing program. As we discussed last time, the paradigm shifts in our society mandates that churches utilize small business marketing strategies, and an effective website is an excellent church outreach Idea!
In a nutshell, SEO is used to receive Page One rankings on Google, Bing and Yahoo which facilitates more people to “click through” and find your website and all that you have to offer. As many people think they know a lot about SEO, there are three myths that I would like to dispel at this point in regard to the topic:
MYTH #1: As long as you Google your Church Name and come up “#1” you are in fact, search engine optimized.
The reality is that the major search engines treat your church name as a "gimme.” As a result, this means that in the realm of search engine optimization, this gives you virtually zero clout! In fact, if you don’t get page one ranking when you type in your church name you have a real problem!
MYTH #2: Search engine optimization can be achieved quickly!!!
Actually, nothing could be further from the truth!! It is a long, slow, and sometimes tedious task that leads you to the finish line in this race! There are, as you will learn, several steps involved, each time consuming in their own right. BUT the results are well worth the effort! As you schedule your SEO Program, you will want to allot at least six months to accomplish the task!
MYTH #3: You can accomplish SEO for Free!
The confusion in this realm is the fact that visitors come to your site for free, but the competitive nature of SEO mandates that you either hire professionals to achieve the rankings you desire, or that you plan on investing huge amounts of time and energy to accomplish SEO to your satisfaction!
The myths aside, SEO can be a tremendous boon to the success of your church. If you, through your SEO efforts, you can attain a #1 ranking on a Google search you will get a lot of click through traffic! This may lead to visitors who will, of course, greatly “enhance the chance” of your church growing!
Understanding that there are hundreds, if not thousands, of words related to a church, your goal is to make sure that yours shows up for as many of these words as possible when a potential parishioner is searching them, and that is where your keyword research that we discussed in Part II comes into play!
While the Internet is evolving daily, SEARCH ENGINES is one of the two items that tends to remain constant. Being well positioned allows people to discover exactly what it is that your church has to offer. To better understand this concept, consider the Internet a Super Highway with millions of people zooming along it every day. Your SEO program serves as a billboard, advising them of what awaits if they will take the “proper exit” and wind up at your place! Unless they can find you, however, they will always be “potential parishioners ” and never “your parishioners!” If you aren’t showing up in searches, you don’t have a Billboard! The first step is to conduct a keyword research project, which will allow you to find the rigth terms in order to have a website that is optimized!
As you can see, targeting keywords can lead to more visitors, which strengthens your church outreach. I know this may all seem overwhelming, and would suggest that if you have any questions that you e-mail Randall Mains at randall@pathmakermarketing.net, as he is more of an expert in this realm than even I am.
In the first installment I mentioned that it would be wise to launch a blogging process. In that, I alluded to the fact that you need to Target Keywords that are winnable, and explained how to do so. The next thing I think you need to concentrate on is doing keyword research.
Knowing that comprehensive keyword research is the foundation of an effective search engine marketing program will allow you to understand that, basically, you need to “chase down” the people who need the services and programs that your church offers and lead them to your website. The whole idea is to ensure that your church comes up when people type in their search terms.
You may think that there aren’t all that many words and/or terms, but actually quite the opposite is true. The typical comprehensive keyword search will yield a minimum of 1500 or more keyword variations! Through a variety of filters, you can narrow the number down that you will want to concentrate on regarding your website and your blog posts. The key, of course, is to find “winnable” words, and then prioritize them for your benefit.
While I certainly can’t list 1500 words/terms here, I will give you an quick example of what I mean, using the top 20 terms found when using Chicago churches as our local example:
churchesbible study
catholic churches
orthodox church
youth ministry
church chicago
church in chicago
willow creek church
willowcreek church
chicago maps
churches chicago
churches in chicago
bill hybels
catholic churches in chicago
catholic churches chicago
baptist churches in chicago
catholic church in chicago
churches chicago il
churches in chicago il
church chicago il
Once you have your list composed, you will want to chose the terms that best describe your ministry, whether it be to teens, seniors, street people or other. These are the terms you want to concentrate on as your church Staff compose their blog posts, and as you “tweak” the copy and contents of your website!
That brings me to my next point - - once you complete your keyword research and acquire your final winnable keyword list the real task has just begun! It will take months - probably six or more - to get you to a point that when an individual types in a term/phrase on your list that your church will come up. Remember I said that this list is the “foundation” of an effective search engine marketing program? While the list is the foundation, the “structure” you will build on it will be all the blog posts that you and your staff write! It is those Church Blogs that will help you acquire page rankings from Google, Yahoo and Bing, and that is what will drive people to your website and eventually your church, making the internet an effective church outreach tool for you!
While it may rankle us to have to admit it, “Church Marketing 101” is one of those paradigm shifts that we just need to learn to live with, and Targeting Keywords is one of those internet marketing ideas that will, in fact, allow this to be a viable church outreach idea.
In closing, I would suggest that you read Part III, as we will deal with SEO - search engine optimization - and how to ensure that your website will, in fact, get Google, Yahoo and Bing page rankings!
8. Communicate About Your Ministry with Regular E-newsletters is our 8th of Ten Top Church Outreach Ideas for the Internet.
Sending regular and updated e-newsletters is more than just giving relevant information to your subscribers. It is also a signal that you have an active church outreach that exerts effort to communicate with its members.
Oftentimes, churches fall short in reaching out to their members by overlooking simple and efficient solutions like sending out monthly, easy-to-read, interesting email updates or reports. You would be surprised at how many members (even the most active ones) would be thankful of being reminded of events that they have forgotten to pen down before or how they love reading about how your mercy ministry is doing.
E-newsletters are relatively easy to launch. You need to have a nicely designed template coded into HTML using no CSS. Then you need a email blasting system of which there are many. A simple one to start with which we use at Pathmaker is called iContact. Once your design is done, coded and installed, your church secretary could probably swap out copy and pictures each month.
For examples, check Hungry Souls e-newsletters for are good samples. Or call us for more help at 623-322-3334 and we'll be happy to install a system that your church secretary can supervise and maintain.
Church eNewsletters are also a fundamental church marketing 101 component.
Design – it isn’t about you. Your non profit website design should cater to what your visitors like, not you. Here are some things to avoid.
- Blinking or scrolling text, animated GIFs and auto-loading sound do more than distract your visitors … they cause people quickly to click away from your site. If you’re slyly looking at a non profit website from a small cubicle next to your boss, do you want sound blaring what you’re up to? Neither does anyone else. As for blinking text and banners, they’re just plain annoying and scream, “I don’t really care what you like … this is fun for me to design!”
- Pop ups are so annoying that most browsers block them. Many people click away from non profit websites because they thought internal links weren’t working when the only problem was that their browsers were blocking pop-ups of your on profit's vital information.
- Large file sizes in images. They make non profit website pages load slowly, and people will only stick around for about three seconds to let photos load. Resize large images to the exact size specified in the design, and optimize them for the web to get file size down. Also, avoid using background images, since that makes it difficult to read in addition to making your non profit website load slowly.
- Long lines of text that go on forever. Lines of text should be no more than 600 pixels wide. Break it up with optimized images, bold text and sub-heads.
- Small text. If you have to squint to read a non profit website, you’ll lose visitors. Make the text at least 10 to 12 points large (that’s Size 2 or 3 in HTML). Many people who give to non profits are older, and they simply can't read anything smaller.
- Avoid all caps. They’re difficult to read, and today words in all caps are considered yelling. Do you want a non profit website yelling at you?
Ease of use – make it easy to find your content. Put as much time into thinking about how to organize your site as you did thinking about your non profit website design. Visitors need to be able to see easily what your non profit has to offer, get to it and navigate to other portions of the site without getting lost, confused or annoyed. If you make people click too many times to get to your non profit's unbelievably great offer, you’ll lose them before they ever see it. Be sure to put a link back to your non profit's home page on every page, along with main site navigation that is easy to find and more understandable than cute.
Copywriting – less is best. Writing tight, succinct copy for your non profit website can be a challenge. If you can’t do it, hire someone else who can. You need to say everything that needs to be said in no more than a couple of screens of text at a time. In these days of busy schedules and information overload, people won’t read more. To keep your copy interesting, use active voice, and write to about the sixth to eight grade level. (The contrasting point would be to write extensive copy about any subject that you are attempting to establish your credibility as an expert).
Interactivity – involve your visitors. Games involve people quite well, but for non profit website design, your form of interactivity might be to get users to give you information about themselves. Offer them something for free (such as a newsletter or a white paper) in exchange for their contact information. People often will get scared off if you ask for too much (it’s kind of like offering a marriage proposal with the first handshake). You can try asking for the first name and email address in exchange for downloading something they would find useful (such as a free message from your non profit's CEO). On the thank you page, you could ask them for more information in exchange for receiving something free in the mail (such as your CEO’s new book).
Technology – use it to facilitate meaningful conversation. Capture email addresses. Learn people’s likes and interests by the way they browse your site and the appeals to which they respond. Offer online polls to get opinions (and learn what visitors like and what interests them). Offer a way for your non profit website visitors to forward your information to a friend (often called viral marketing). Include a calendar of your non profit's upcoming events. Allow visitors to submit testimonials or prayers. But don't use technology in your non profit webside design just because you like the bells and whistles. That's quick way to spend a lot of money for no return. Make sure all of the technolgoy you use on your non profit website contributes to your brand.
Content – make it useful. There’s no use in making a website look good if the content turns people off and causes them to click away. Good content is something that your target audience wants or needs. In Non Profit Marketing 101, we learned that we must find a problem and solve it. That is what your website content needs to do. Your non profit has a niche, and the content needs to appeal to people to want to give to a non profit in that niche. Don't use content that you think is useful - make sure your readers think it's useful.
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