Growth Hacking for Churches

One of the great and grand ideas of marketing is to create a system that allows your top shelf products, lower shelf accessibility. We’ve spoken about this before, in that when you make your top shelf lower shelf accessible, you are creating a system that allows anyone and everyone to have “the good stuff”.

• In leadership, this is called a leadership pipeline.
• In web development, it’s called a click funnel.
• In highway construction, it’s called an on-ramp.

At Catalyst Creative, we’re all about empowering the local church to affect generational change, no matter the system, context, or culture.

Today, we’re going to allow the principle of Growth Hacking to guide our discussion.

Analytics mean everything. You measure what matters. Analytics help gauge what works and does not work. They’re like runway lights, helping aircraft to land (in this conversation, the aircraft are our end users). However, analytics only paint a picture; they don’t determine the picture; you do.

Growth Hacking takes the picture your analytics provide, and lays out the next best step for you to take, so you can make a landing. 

If you look at Growth Hacking like you look at multiple on ramps along the highway, then you can get a clear picture of how you can make it easy to get your end users on the highway … with you. Growth Hacking (GH) means everything you do has a next right step for everyone to take. Here are some ideas to get your brain working toward this idea:

• Every page on your church site has a clear next step. If it’s a page about your small group system, then the GH is a sign up form on the page or a link to contact a group leader.
• If it’s in person while delivering announcements from the pulpit, then it’s a clear next step in the form of an in-hand option or cart immediately after services (PS: the link within this sentence is a Growth Hack).
• If it’s an email blast, then a link. If it’s an in-person invite, then it’s an invite card. If it’s a video, then it’s a call to action.

Everything you do has an opportunity to be leveraged by using a Growth Hack. If you take advantage of the principles here, your immediate and target audience will understand the WHY behind you, WHAT you’re doing, and HOW they can take the next right step.

Now that you know the WHY behind Growth Hacking, will you implement these principles and change up your strategy?

Bonus Ideas for Growth Hacking your church:

• Incentivize your audience by giving them rewards for helping others take the next step.
• Set up autoresponders for guests and registrants.
• Encourage social media sharing and engage with their audience.
• Live blog your services or create quote cards based off this idea.