Churches hold special places in communities, but that doesn’t mean that they can’t have impressive online presences. In fact, being online and having a great church brand will enable you to reach out and touch more people than you could with your physical presence alone.

3 Steps to Build a Great Church Brand

These three steps will make it easier for you to manage your digital brand. They will also allow you the space to generate an online presence that will help you build your congregation.

Step 1: Define Your Church Brand

Defining your church brand is about getting clear in your message. First, you have to define and express how you are uniquely positioned to serve your audience.

When asked: what do you do? You need to have a central focus and quick answer. You can’t just go on about your services and offerings. This doesn’t tell your target audience who you are in a clear way. For one thing, it might even leave them confused.

People don’t want to join organizations that confuse them. So, if your target audience feels lost, you will lose them. They will likely leave and find your competitors who have been more transparent about their objectives.

Use Specifics To Stand Out

How your brand is represented in the digital space is what separates you from the competition. If you’re in a saturated market, you may be viewed as a commodity.

Highlight what makes you unique to position your brand and get more people interested. So, when you define your church brand, you will determine how your consumers perceive your church. If they think about it in the right way, your congregation will grow.

Focus Inwards

If your church branding isn’t laser-focused, then your church won’t be able to have a recognizable face. If your branding isn’t unique, then you will blend in with all the other churches. You’ll have a collection of different branding materials that feel generic and don’t say anything about what makes your church special.

Unity in your branding will create unity in your church. If there is a purpose in your branding, then there will be a purpose in your church. The same can be said of consistency. Consistency in your brand shows consistency in your church.

Create an Elevator Pitch

Creating an elevator pitch will help you define your digital brand so that your target audience can quickly understand exactly who you are and what you offer. Your elevator pitch will be referenced everywhere online, including:

• Social media accounts
• Your website
• Review sites
• Anywhere your brand appears online

A solid elevator pitch will allow you to communicate precisely who you are and what you offer in a snap. This clear focus can help to set you apart from all the competition.

Understanding what you want from your digital brand will make the process of digital branding so much more straightforward.

Therefore, there are a few questions you should ask when creating your church brand’s elevator pitch:

• Why does our church exist?
• What are some of the critical ministries we provide?
• What do we hope to accomplish when we meet as a congregation?
• Are there some key ministries we offer that aren’t provided by the other churches in our community?
• Who are the people our church hoping to attract?
• What are the demographics of the people who attend our church?
• Is our church more discipleship-oriented (ministering to current Christians) or more of an evangelistic church?

Create a Slogan

It’s essential to have a church slogan in the digital space. There are many brands offering similar services and people often do not have the time to sift through every last one in depth. A slogan can help you quickly get their attention.

Again, this is important because, in a world where people are surfing the Internet quickly and bouncing off pages, you’ve only got a few seconds to communicate what it is you have to offer.

When you create your brand slogan, you want to be unique. A slogan is a few words that people will associate with you that will define your brand. Your brand might be interested in using slogans like ‘The journey begins here,’ ‘Assembly of sinners saved,’ or ‘Real faith, real people.’

Find the Intersection

If you were to make a ven diagram with customers and products, that sweet spot in the middle is where you have the opportunity to make the most significant impact on your following.

Find the place where your service will intersect with your target audience and then talk about it. Next, make your audience aware of what they are missing. Fill in the overlapping circles with your church brand.

Step 2: Build Your Church Brand

Before people get involved with a church, they almost always look them up online first. This means that in most cases, your target audience will interact with your digital brand before they associate with your physical brand.

So how do you make your church brand ready for digital searches?

Build Your Home Base

To ensure that your audience gets the right information the first time, you must focus on building your home base. For most of us, our home base is our website or blog.

Your home base is a critical component of your digital brand. No matter how tech-savvy you think you are, you must have a visually appealing home base.

What Kind of Digital Home Base Is Right For You?

If the purpose of your home base is just to showcase your brand or to allow people to get to know who you are, Wix, Weebly, Squarespace, or about.me are viable options. If you require a little bit more functionality, building a self-hosted WordPress website is a great place to start.

When creating your webpage, make sure that your name and logo are accessible and appealing. Your logo is what people will recognize you by and will set the tone for your home base.

Logos can elicit an emotional reaction. Think carefully about the logo and name you create when working on your home base.

When creating your church home base logo, keep these 5 tips in mind:

1. Christ-centered

If Christ is the focus of your church, then your logo should reflect this.

2. Authenticity

Your church’s foundational beliefs and principles may not always differ from the churches around you. However, your church does have unique qualities that your logo should represent.

3. Memorability

Make sure that your logo creates an emotional connection that your casual viewers will remember.

4. Consistency

Consistent branding will make sure that your Church’s identity is unique and recognizable.

5. Aesthetics

Your church bears the responsibility of creating beautiful things to glorify God. So, your logo should be visually appealing and not just an easy afterthought.

Build Your Email List

If you want to succeed in digital branding, get serious about building your email list. Your email list is one of the most valuable assets for your brand. This is because it allows you to initiate contact with your followers.

There are a few ways for churches to grow their email lists. The first is to offer an incentive. This is how you spark the interest of your target audience.

Offer Something of Value

Through it, you can help them to realize you have something valuable to offer. For example, this could include an ebook your church has written or just access to your service’s notes.

Adding an opt-in form on your website is also a great way to get your target audience’s attention. It can encourage them to sign up for your email list. You can include these on the side of your website, the bottom, or as a scrolling pop up. It all depends on your target audience.

Build Your Social Media Accounts

Your primary objectives for building your social media accounts are to focus on how to be social, not on how to do social.

Being relatable to your target audience will separate you from the competition. Engage with people on social media the same way you would engage in the real world.

Start Slow

When first starting out on social media, it is important to remember to only focus on one site. Having too many accounts can be overwhelming and keep you from being truly successful on any of them. For example, many brands start with Facebook.

Facebook is usually the most popular channel to start with because it has over a billion users. However, it is important to be strategic when posting on Facebook. You can choose to use free or paid for content options.

SEE ALSO: How to Prepare for the Facebook Newsfeed Update

Step 3: Manage Your Church Brand

This is a part of your digital brand that will remain a part of your day to day work. So, sometimes it can be in your best interest to find digital branding services that can help to manage this work for you.

SEE ALSO: Monitor Your Digital Brand

Guest Blogging

Writing guest posts on other blogs can be very beneficial. If someone has a larger, different, or more diverse audience, you can reach them through guest posts on their site.

When picking a place to guest blog, it is important to remember your church’s values and choose a blog that has similar values. However, you’ll also want to check the guidelines of the blogger to see if they accept guest posts. Then, if everything lines up then you can contact them and share why you’d be an excellent fit for their blog.

Repurpose Your Material

When repurposing your content you essentially create one big piece of content that you can then slice, dice, and repurpose. This quick way of creating content will make it easier for you.

Also, it is a fast way to have enough options for your audience to build a profitable digital brand.

Final Thoughts

Being a church doesn’t mean that you should abstain from good online business practices. In our modern world, half of the converting that we do starts online. So, without using online tools, you’ll be severely stunting the ability of your church to grow.

By defining, building, and monitoring your church brand, you’ll have an online presence you can be proud of. Consequently, it will help you reach others and see positive growth in your congregation.

Are there any churches you already follow online?