The Final Marketing Push: Promotional Strategies for Strategic Sundays

Don't drop the ball at the finish line.

Too many leaders do everything right in the buildup to a big Sunday, then coast when they should be sprinting. In this solo episode, Josh walks through the final marketing push: the last few weeks before launch day, Easter, back-to-school, Christmas, or any target Sunday you're building toward.

You'll get a practical checklist, plus real examples from real churches, covering everything from your countdown posts to your Google Business profile.

In this episode:

• Why it takes about seven touches before someone walks through your doors, and why every touch should point to your website.
• The one decision your website should drive people to make.
• The most powerful post you can make: a personal invite from you, on camera. (Not a logo. A face and a voice.)
• Countdown posts that actually work: graphics, behind-the-scenes setup reels, POV walkthroughs, and the sticky-note "tomorrow" video.
• Creating anticipation and FOMO instead of making announcements.
• Launch day and the follow-up post: capture the energy in real time, then circle back later in the week.
• Turning your contact list into a nurture sequence four weeks out.
• Website essentials: service time, date, and location front and center, a photo of you and your family, and kids ministry info people can find.
• Local SEO, your Google Business profile, digital missionaries, and why you should search your church in incognito mode.
• Mailers, invite cards, outreach, and the non-digital push.
• Why you are the CIO of your church: the Chief Invite Officer.

Real examples featured from Boundless Church (Covina, CA), Waychurch (AZ), New Circle Church (KY), Balance Church, Awaken Church (Atlanta), and Discover Church (San Marcos). Screenshots and clips are on the video version, and links are below.

Resources:

• Hello Church, for turning your contacts into a nurture sequence: https://www.myhello.church
• REACHRIGHT, for church SEO and the Google Ad Grant: https://reachrightstudios.com
• Church of the Highlands free prayer resources: https://www.churchofthehighlands.com/prayer
• YourTeam.Church: https://yourteam.church/

This episode is sponsored by your team.church, the assessment app that connects every volunteer to a team where they'll actually thrive. Custom URL with your church's branding, AI-powered team matching, and personality insights your church has never had access to before. Schedule a demo, see examples, or start your free trial at yourteam.church.

Follow us on Instagram at @buildthe.church for a free resource every Friday, plus clips and best practices all week. If this episode helped you, leave a rating wherever you listen. Keep building and believing strong.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:12

Welcome back to the Build the Church Podcast where we help you gain momentum, grow your church, and go the distance in ministry. I'm Josh Robrie. The goal of this podcast is simple, and each episode will be a quick resource for you offering practical advice, best practices, and encouragement in your mission as a pastor. Today it's just you and me, and we're talking about something that can make or break your momentum, which is the final marketing push. I'm going to talk about this in terms of a church launch, but stay with me because everything I'm about to show you applies for any target Sunday you're building towards. Think about the biggest opportunities of the year. Beginning of the year when people begin to attend church again after the holidays, Easter, the start of the school year, where people again return back after the summer holidays and at the movie series and even Christmas. Every one of those is a launch day in its own right and a Sunday worth pushing hard for. So whether you're counting down to a launch day or counting down to Easter, this one's for you. Before we dive in, two quick things. First of all, I would love for you to follow the show's Instagram page at buildhea.church. Every Friday I share a free resource. Throughout the week, you get clips from the podcast, best practices, and more. It's one of the easiest ways to get practical help for your church each week to support the show and just stay connected. So go give us a follow at buildhea.church. Second, today's episode is brought to you by your team.church, the assessment app that helps you connect every volunteer to a team where they'll actually thrive. This makes it easy for you as the pastor and it makes it quick and fun for the volunteers going through the assessment. Go ahead and schedule a demo, see examples, or start your free trial at your team.church. Okay, let's get into it. You know, as we jump into this topic today, I am reminded of those really funny examples in sports where the athlete drops the ball right at the end. Maybe you've seen the clip where someone's running, you know, maybe they get a fumble or an interception and they're running into the end zone. And right before they get there, they drop the ball and start celebrating and they don't get any points. Recently on social media, I've been seeing examples of people doing this in track and marathons where someone thinks that they're so far ahead that they just start walking or they just start celebrating and pointing to the crowd and then someone else runs behind them. Man, I can't imagine the pain and agony of someone being able to win a marathon or win a hundred meter dash, and then right at the end they start show boating and somebody else takes the victory away from them and the crown goes to somebody else. The thing about it is in the final marketing push, I see churches do this all the time. The final marketing the final promotional push is where you get to capitalize on all the momentum you've been building. But here's the problem so many leaders waste their momentum right there at the finish line by not finishing strong. They do so much right in the build-up and the recruiting of teams, and then they coast when they should be sprinting. So let's finish strong in this area and hopefully these principles will help you do that. Here's an idea to keep in the back of your mind the whole way through. It usually takes about seven touches before someone takes action. For us, that often means about seven contacts before someone actually walks through the doors of your church. So your job is to get in front of as many people as often as you can and make every one of those touches point back to one place. Your website. Here's your checklist. And then once they get to your website, you want to make it clear that the one thing you want them to do is to come to church. To go to church on Sunday, to go to your launch day, to go to your target Sunday. Too many churches are using their website like a magazine that describes everything you do. And you need to think about it this way. If I could only get a visitor to make one decision, what decision do I want them to make and point them to that and reinforce it? So just as it's important to have seven touch points before someone makes a decision because that's how long it takes, you also need to remember that when you post something on social media, in all likelihood, less than 10% of your audience is actually going to see that. And even if they see it, they're going to forget it. So you need to post the same thing over and over again. You're repeating it to yourself, but for many, it's just a second reminder or the first time they're hearing it, and you need to keep that in mind. So here's your checklist for the final promotional push. First of all, point all of your social media to the big day, whether it's a Target Sunday or launch day. Everything you post in these final weeks should be driving towards that one day. Let me walk you through what a strong countdown actually looks like with real examples that I'm going to put up on the screen. The first post you need to be considering is to make a personal invite from you. Before the graphics, the single most powerful post you can make is a personal invite. You on the camera, looking people in the eye and inviting them to come. Not a logo, but a face and a voice. So film that first. A great example of this comes from Boundless Church in Los Angeles in Covina, California. In this video, Pastor Jenny Martinez is talking about her grand opening. She's making it personal. She's talking about how much they've been praying for the church, how much expectations they have, and how much they're believing God to do amazing things in the lives of those who are watching the post and are coming to the service. Not only is this a great organic post to make, but this is also something you can promote so that it gets in front of even more people. And then the caption says this Boundless Church, only nine days away. We're getting closer, and we cannot wait to welcome your entire family. Our Boundless Kids Ministry is ready to create a safe, fun, and life-giving space where your children can grow in their faith and discover the love of Jesus. And then it has the date, Sunday, January 26th, time, 9 30 a.m. English, 11:30 a.m. Spanish, the location of the high school, and then it closes with your family belongs here. Step into the boundless life together. Another thing you need to consider doing is making countdown posts where each day you post how many days there is into your way church in Arizona did this, and I'm going to share their example on the screen now. Instead of taking the approach of using a graphic, they decide to make a reel that has their team setting up and going through a kind of behind-the-scenes feel of what they're doing to get the church ready for people coming to church on launch day. And so the caption reads 10 days to go. We can't wait to welcome you to the grand opening. Then it gives the information about the church service and time. So this is just a great way to highlight your team members that are doing the work to get things started for your church and also give people a little preview of what to expect from your church. Okay, back to Boundless Church, and I'm going to show you an example of how they use a graphic countdown post, which is also something I think every church should do as they're preparing for launch day. Now look what they do with the caption. This is the one I want you to steal. It's launch week, and we couldn't be more excited. Would you join us as we pray for God to move in a powerful way this Sunday? We are believing for salvations, recommitments, and to be filled with hope through the message of Jesus. They didn't just promote their service, but they invited people to pray, which obviously we want prayer, and that's an amazing thing, and we should all be praying before we launch. But the other great thing about this is that it causes people to engage with the content and actually take a second and get invested in what's happening at your church. Each day you should do a graphical post starting about 10 days out, and then you can change the caption to say something different. It doesn't need to say pray for us in this exact same way every single day. You can give something else to pray for, like the children, like the worship, like the first-time guests. You can also just talk about things that are happening. You can change your audience instead of it being towards Christians who can pray, towards another group that you're trying to reach with your church service. Here's one from New Circle Church in Kentucky, also about six days out. The graphic says, we can't wait to meet you as the logo of the church, the church branding and colors, the pictures of someone giving a guest a hug. And the caption reads, If you're looking for a place to call home, look no further. T minus six days until the grand opening, and we can't wait to meet you. This is warm, personal, and it speaks right to the person who's searching for a new church. Another great idea is to give people a preview of your setup. Here's a video from Balance Church and their team setting up again, giving people who are going to go to a portable church for the first time an idea of how excellent the setup is. Now, to us, meeting in a portable space might seem familiar and something we're used to, but people coming for the first time don't know what to expect. And that's why I like these videos so much. It gives them an idea of how excellent it's going to be and kind of gets rid of some of their fears that might cause a hesitation to go. The caption says, only four days away. This past Sunday, our team came together with passion, preparation, and purpose as we gear up for the grand opening. From setting up to strategizing, we poured our hearts into creating a place where you can belong. And again, they list the date, both service times, and they're just showing people what they can expect. This builds trust before they even walk in the room. Another version of this that I've seen people do is to do a POV video tour, something like here's what it's like to join us for launch day and walk them all the way through from the parking lot to the kids' check-in to grabbing coffee in the lobby to a seat in the auditorium. If you shoot it on your practice Sunday, you can have volunteers smiling and waving in the background so people feel the welcome before they even arrive. And if you want families to come, go out of your way to show the kids spaces. You're asking parents to drop their kids in a room they've never seen with people they've never met. So put their minds at ease ahead of time. We also want to nudge them the day before they launch. And I like this simple creative video from a New Circle Church that they did. It's literally a handwritten sticky note that says tomorrow, and then the date of the launch, and another that says New Circle Church Grand Opening. That's it. They just filmed someone putting a sticky note on the wall and then another sticky note on the wall, and they made it into a reel. That's pretty cool. So the caption says, Sundays are better with you. Join us tomorrow at 9 or 11 a.m. This reminds us that you don't need a huge production to make an impact to promote your launch day. You can just do a nice little personal nudge and it'll probably get the job done. Of course, I think it's always important to post about the launch day or the target Sunday. On that day, let people know what's happening, let them see. You want to create FOMO, fear of missing out at all times on social media. Every post you do actually should be doing one of two things. It should be creating anticipation or creating a fear of missing out, that they've missed it. What too many people do on social media is they just make announcements over and over again. You got to build some tension. That's how the human soul is designed to work. That's how story works. That's why we engage with story. And it's important for you to keep that principle in mind on promoting your launch day or target Sunday. And so this post here is a post from Awakened Church in Atlanta on their Sunday. I like this. It's a reel of them going through a video of what happened on Sunday, including clips from the message and the service. And it says, We have a church. Welcome home, everybody. Today was one for the books. God is so good. You want to capture that energy in real time. Don't overthink it. Just the morning of post what's happening right after church so people can see it. And something as simple as we're meeting today and can't wait to see you. Be here at this location at this service time does the job. So love making a post right after church, but also think about posting something before church as well. Don't overthink it. Just capture the energy in real time. You could be simply standing there a couple hours before church starts in the building, and you're going to be so excited. It's just going to take about 30 seconds. Share your joy or maybe plan out an image that you can put on launch day so that's fresh in people's feed when they wake up. Something as simple as we're meeting today and can't wait to see you here. Share your location and your time. And that does the job. One more easy win is put your launch date, time, and location right in your Instagram and Facebook bio. So anyone who lands on your page instantly sees it. Another thing you need to remember is to follow up after the big day. So sometimes you can put together something quick right after service, but if you can produce something that takes a little bit more time and work and share it later in the week, I think it would be so good to do this. So New Circle Church, who we shared earlier. So here's their post. It says we are praising God for new beginnings and 626 people that came to the grand opening. More importantly, 61 people that made a decision to follow Jesus. Let's circle back, love that little play on their name and do it again this Sunday. Same place, same time. Great video showing the kids' ministry, showing people getting coffee, people connecting, hugging, families in the worship area, in the auditorium, shaking hands, getting ready. And then they have clips of the worship taking place of the band of people worshiping. And it's just a great thing to do again to create FOMO, but also to kind of describe to people what's happening at this church, because again, they don't know who you are. That people make so many assumptions about church. We want to help alleviate that to get them to show up. Another thing you need to do is if you've been collecting contacts through your buildup, don't let them sit there. A tool like Hello Church can help you put all those contacts into a nurture sequence starting about four weeks out, steadily moving people toward the big day. So if, for example, you have a startup party and someone signed up and they don't go to it, since you have their contacts saved, you can begin to use that information to promote your launch day and send them a different set of messages because maybe they didn't want to join the team, maybe they wanted to be a part and they missed their opportunity to come to a launch party, but now they can be there for Sunday. And I always think it's important to get personal. Send out as many personal videos and texts as you possibly can. You are the CIO of your church, the chief invite officer. You cannot delegate this completely. If you light a man on fire, they'll drive from all over to come and see him burn. You need to be burning with passion for this and you need to be inviting people and you need to model that for your church. Then afterwards, you follow up with a personal video thanking people for showing up. That's the kind of follow-up thing that separates great leaders from merely good ones. Almost nobody does it, which is exactly why it stands out. Don't just do the bare minimum. Go above and beyond, find the second mile to let people know that you love them, that you're serving them, and you're grateful that they gave you the most precious commodity they have, their time to show up at your church. You want to make sure your main website is up and you retire your recruiting site before launch. Now, if you're just doing a Target Sunday, one thing that I would do is I would go through your website and make sure that there's nothing out of date. And the big thing that you're pushing people to is front and center. When people see out-of-date information on your website, I recently went on a website this summer and saw something for Easter at a church that lets me know that I can't trust what's on your website, if that's actually happening or not, because you're not paying attention to it. It also communicates a lot of other negative things, like is no one going to this church? Is that why they don't care? Is no one catching this? Is no one else visiting this website? Make sure you keep that up to date. If you're launching a church, you should no longer be sending people to a recruiting website before launch day. Some people say, I want to reveal the church on launch day. That's a bad idea. It helps your SEO and it helps people know that you're a legitimate church when you release that website to the public four to six weeks ahead of time. On your website, whenever you're doing a big push, you want to put your service time, date, and location front and center, especially if it is a portable location. You need to let people know what it looks like. And that's why when you're launching a high school, it can really help because people, a lot of times people know where that high school is without knowing the exact address and it's easy to find. I'll put that up there. Another thing to consider is that when people land on your website, they shouldn't have to hunt for the essentials. A picture of you as the pastor with your spouse or family is important. Someone says, Well, I'm not here to promote myself. You're not promoting yourself, but you're just introducing yourself to people you want to come to your church. That's all that you're doing. It's allowing people to feel comfortable because they can get to know you before they go to your church. Putting a picture of yourself and that you're the pastor is not bragging on yourself. It's taking the time to be personal with people. So let's get that mindset out. So if you have information about the kids' ministry, don't bury that. If you want them to plan their visit, make sure they can get to that information easily. And your service times, again, needs to be clear. And we don't want to overlook SEO. There's two simple pieces here. Let's look at Discover Church in San Marcos. They did a really, really good job with their Google search results and their business profile. When you look at this, you can see you don't just get a link to their website, but you get all of the different quick links, which it totally dominates this first page of the Google search. You have their social media and you have their Facebook, their Instagram, clips from their church right there. And then what they've done is they've made sure they've created their Google business profile with reviews. So launch digital missionaries to give your church five stars. Make sure that they are giving Google reviews, empower them with photos, high-quality photos that they can post, but you also, as the quote unquote business owner, post photos of what you want people to see about your church and make sure this information is filled out. Here's the reviews. This is the stuff you want people to see when they're checking out your church. They want to know can they trust you because other people have trusted you? And taking care of local SEO and your Google business profile does that. The other thing you need to think about is general SEO. A lot of people say, well, my SEO is great. Every time I search my church, it comes up as the first thing. And that's because the cookies are saved in your browser and Google knows to put that church right on the front because that's what you always search. Many people would find a different story if they looked at for their church in a private browser window. And so you need to go into incognito mode or the private browsing mode and search for your church, and you may find you're not even on the first couple pages. Make sure that your rank is up and high. You need to be on the first page, and you really need to be the top of the first page when someone Googles your church name in your city, especially. But anytime someone Googles a church in your city, you need to be at the top, especially as you're getting close to launch. If there's any other time to invest in it, that's the time to do it. So that is something that you get a Google grant for, and there's people like ReachWrite that can help you. But I also recommend just investing in that outside of the Google grant as well to make sure that you're getting the most attention on that. The other thing is get your mailer out. Mailers, I believe, still work at a very high level. They pay for themselves by the amount of families that come back, and there's nothing else that saturates a whole marketplace like a mailer does. Make sure to get some feedback on that. We recorded a video Pastor Dave Thomas and I did on the mailer and why mailers don't work. So make sure to check out that episode so you can get some tips on knocking it out of the park with your mailer. And one rule of thumb for all promo your mailers, your ads, your graphics, get feedback from people. Okay, and let's not forget the non-digital push. This is where outreach comes in. Everything that we've talked about so far has been about digital and print strategy, but some of the most important things you can do in the final weeks aren't online at all. So, first of all, again, want to reinforce your personal invite, inviting people and empowering your team with print invite cards and random active kindness cards that you can give to your team so they can be out there and inviting. You want to be visible in your community. It's very easy to do some simple outreach ideas. Again, Pastor Dave Thomas and I went over 101 outreach ideas that are simple. Most of them are free that you can do. You can check out that podcast episode to get some ideas of things that you can do to get the word out about your church and to let people know that you love them even before you know them. Whatever you do in this area, make sure to capture on video. It's another thing that you can share on your launch day that your church is already mobilized and doing things in the city, but you can also use it in the promotion. And we want to keep the momentum going post-launch. The work isn't over when launch day ends on the Monday after you start planning how you'll promote your second Sunday. You want to take the best photo from launch day and post it with something like, Did you miss the launch Sunday? Don't worry, you can join us next Sunday and boost it. Ask people on your team to share it. Launch day is the beginning, not the finish line. And that's the push. None of these are complicated, but together that the difference between limping across the finish line or perhaps letting someone else run across before you and sprinting through it. Whenever it's your launch or your next big target Sunday, finish strong. And one more thing, remember it's important to pray. Always want to emphasize Church of the Highlands has a ton, a ton, a ton of prayer resources, whether you're doing a Target Sunday or your launch day. We do all we can, but really what we really need is for God to move in our churches, for God to move in the lives of our people. And all we're trying to do is to let them know about an opportunity where that can happen for them. Hope that was helpful for you. And before we go, let me tell you one more thing about today's sponsor, your team.church. Are you still matching your volunteers to teams with a pen, a legal pad, and a hopeful prayer they get the math right on their score? No judgment. I did the same thing before, but you don't have to live in this donate. That's where your team.church comes in. No more volunteers flipping back and forth through a paper packet, adding their scores, and squinting to a chart trying to figure out their next step. Your team gives your church a custom URL with your own branding so people can take the personality assessment right on their own device in a fraction of time. It actually uses AI to match them to the teams where they're Thrive and gives in depth personality insights churches have never had access to before. You can try the Pro Tier of Your Team for free right now at your team.church. Thank you for joining me today, and I can't wait for you to be here next time. Until then, keep building and believing strong.