Easter is just around the corner, and with it comes one of the busiest weekends for churches all around the world.
By and large, Easter weekend is the highest traffic weekend of the year when it comes to church attendance, even more so than Christmas. During Easter weekend, we see an influx of unchurched people, those who come because it’s a tradition, and those who come because of their family and friends.
Whether the people that attend Easter services come with good intentions or not, it does not diminish the beautiful opportunity we have to share the Good News of Jesus Christ with our lost and dying world.
This is the one service a year we have the ears of people we normally wouldn’t the other 51 weekends. This is our opportunity to speak the hope of God!
This time last year, we are all gearing up for extravagant Easter services, vivacious church egg hunts, and packed houses. And instead, we had a very different reality. We were met with a pandemic and the reality that Easter wouldn’t be quite the same this time around.
What the pandemic did for churches is something that would truly set them up for success for our highly digital future. We were pushed to truly take digital seriously and begin to implement online services to gather with one another. Churches were also challenged to invest time and money into their websites, social media presence, and overall digital strategy.
In 2021, we are still in the same boat as we were last year - digital is still a necessity!
While many churches have opened back up their physical doors, online church is still just as important. The hybrid church is rising and is making an impact for the Kingdom of God in the local community as well as online communities all over.
Last year we were blind-sighted; this year we have a bit more clarity as to how to approach Easter in our digital strategies.
We want to give a few simple, but highly effective, digital strategies for marketing your Easter events in 2021. This year, we want to see more and more people come to know the hope found in our Risen King - we want to help you be a part of that!
Video is one of the most powerful digital marketing tools we can utilize by a long shot. Video gives us the ability to convey information in an exciting, engaging, and beautiful way. Utilizing a promotional video that highlights your Easter service is an excellent way to serve as both an invitation to service and a way to captivate.
Your Easter video shouldn’t be just some boring, formal, logistics-packed invitation – it should tell a story! The story of Jesus’ resurrection is one that brings a beaming light of hope to the world; it is truly a story worth telling.
As far as content is concerned, you can get as creative as you want with what the video’s theme will be. Utilizing a poetic voiceover, captivating scenes of hope, and powerful music is a great avenue to explore.
Your church’s website serves as a hub to all things your church and will be a primary avenue that seekers will travel to get to know your church. Church websites are the new front door of the church. People will, most of the time, check out your online presence before they step into your physical church.
We talk extensively about this in our blog 7 Ways to Grow Your Church
This Easter, it would be helpful to utilize your church website as a way to market your Easter events and services. A simple way to do this would be to create a landing page. A landing page is a standalone web page that is specifically designed to be used for marketing purposes. This page has a single purpose that is geared towards a call to action on the part of its viewers.
On your landing page, you have a bit more wiggle room to convey important information, but you will want it to remain simple. As with a promo video, you want the landing page to pack and punch and convey your message clearly and powerfully. This page should include well-written copy, compelling graphics, and even a promo video. The landing page is a great way to forward your audience to the information you want them to know about your event in a unique, creative, and informational way.
Just as with a service promotional video, using videos in other ways will only help you in the long run because of the video's overall effectiveness and popularity. As mentioned above, video is a powerful tool that can be used to captivate your audience. For the most part, much of your target audience is on some form of social media, so what better place to share videos?
Within the realm of social media, being truly authentic and transparent is becoming more valuable than fake, polished content. A great way your church can ride this wave of authenticity is by sharing real, raw stories of people in your community. Seek out people in your congregation that have a compelling story of hope, have overcome adversity, or have another compelling story of God’s power in their life.
These stories serve to translate the hope of the Jesus we read about in the Bible to physical reality. There are so many walking testimonies of God’s providence in your community that is begging to be shared with the world! Not only will these stories inspire others, but they can also point them to the God who saves and who wants to directly meet them this Easter.
While we may be tempted to focus all of our efforts on our in-person experiences, we must not forsake the online communities we have built over the past year. These communities, for some churches, may even make up the majority of your whole congregation! We need to keep them in our mind and gear our experiences towards them as well
You will want to promote your online Easter services just as much as you normally would your in-person. What this comes down to is simply including your “online campus” in your promotional material and content.
(We talk a ton about a few different strategies to use for online church in our blog The Hybrid Church: The Church That Will Rule the Next Decade).
In promoting your online Easter service, provide basic information such as the time and streaming location, but also consider sharing what they can expect for the service. Easter tends to be a family-centric holiday, so make sure you share information about kids' church and youth options.
Covering your bases in your online digital marketing strategy is important, but don’t forget about some of the more traditional methods of marketing. There are endless ways to promote your Easter service in your community, here is a list of just a few methods:
In addition to these more traditional physical promotional materials, you should implement a few of these simple digital marketing strategies you may overlook:
Truly, there are many small ways to promote your Easter service or event that can make a major impact on your audience. When choosing your promotional materials and methods, make sure to always keep the goal in mind: making room for people to hear the hope of Jesus and the power of His resurrection.
This Easter, we expect that God will do exceedingly, abundantly more than we could ever ask, think or imagine! Jesus is the hope of the world and the message of the hope He brings is far too great for us to keep to ourselves.
Whether you share this hope through a compelling testimonial video, an engaging live stream service, or a one-on-one conversation with a seeking soul, we believe God will bless it and bring people to Himself.
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