Marketing in Youth Ministry

At our previous youth ministry coordinator gathering, Julius ad Benjamin Bercasio came in to speak to us about marketing our youth ministry programs. The workshop showed us about some free online resources to make good and eye catching flyer, to using social media tools, to guerilla marketing. It was quite insightful.

Some of us in ministry tend to shy away from marketing our ministries, thinking that we do not need to market church and ministry. Consider that our young people are inundated with advertisements day in and day out, often for unhealthy products and immoral ways of living. Sex, alcohol, clothing, and fast food are just a few of the kinds of companies that are heavily advertising to our young people. To compete, church needs to be in that world of marketing, too. We won't market the way these kinds of for-profit companies do, but our young people need to know that we, our church, is out there for them.

I thought the most provocative thought that was shared before you can do any marketing, your ministry needs to have answers to the following questions:

   1. What are you and what are you about?
   2. What are your core values, mission, and vision?
   3. What is your core message?
   4. How do you effectively communicate this to you’re target audience?

Thinking about and naming these things are not enough. We need to write these down and educate our community about these things before we can begin to effectively market our ministries. The next step is to ask how you create eye-catching designs that would be able to communicate your messages to your audience?

Feel free to download the attached PowerPoint presentation that was used for the workshop.

Marketing Youth Ministry

(PDF, 823k)