What typically comes to mind when you hear the word “marketing”?
Ad campaigns
Products
Consumers
Demographics
Competition
Promotion
Marketing can seem like such a dirty word and can even be viewed as just selling products to mindless consumers. Merriam Webster defines marketing as this: “the process or technique of promoting, selling, and distributing a product or service.”
There is so much more depth to what marketing truly is that dictionary definitions and common misconceptions allow for.
The American Marketing Association gives a much more inclusive definition of marketing:
Marketing is not merely selling products to product-crazed consumers; marketing is a true art of learning what exactly it is that people value.
While basic advertising focuses on promoting a company’s products and services, marketing dives deeper into understanding customers’ needs and how they as a company can best meet those needs.
In short, marketing brings true human interaction and intentional dialogue onto the table.
If you are a company that sells or offers any sort of product or service, you should be marketing, plain and simple. Marketing is key to getting what you offer to the public out to where they are. Marketing strategies enable your potential customers to understand why your product or service could make a difference in their life.
You may seem to cringe a bit when you use words like “marketing” and “campaign strategies” in a church or nonprofit organization setting. We aren’t selling anything — so does marketing matter?
We must remember that marketing is not just about getting people to spend money on a physical product. It is about educating people on everything your organization, church, or nonprofit has to offer.
Although tithing and charitable donations are involved in the above examples, getting your “customers” to spend cold, hard cash is not the heart of what you do. However, getting them sold out to the mission and willing to contribute their service is!
Relationships are the most vital component of marketing as we know it. Marketing is truly all about building connections with people who want what we are offering. If we bypass the importance of people and their opinions, we may fail in our strategies altogether.
There is a specific strategy to how we do marketing wherein people are the main focus of our efforts. A simplified version of the steps of marketing are as follows:
Success is not always measured numerically, though. Are people buzzing about you on social media? Are consumers sharing their experiences with others and referring them back to you? While these successes don’t show up on a spreadsheet, they can lead to loyal customer relations in the future.
When we asked you at the beginning of this blog what comes to mind when you hear the word “marketing,” we doubt your first response was “love.” (If it was, kudos to you!)
For the majority of us, love and marketing are polar opposites. Though marketing is a people-focused technique, we don’t usually intertwine love in the mix. But this is an attribute to marketing that we often overlook in the grand scheme of things.
Churches and nonprofits are in the business of reaching and bringing value to the lives of people. This is exactly what Jesus came to do on earth. He brought love into the mix.
In Old Testament times, it was probably rare that the Jewish people would describe their relationship with Yahweh as one of “love.” While they rehearsed scriptures that referred to God’s lovingkindness and compassion, still yet their relationship with God was mainly marked by duty and works.
Although God was the Father of Israel, Jews were hesitant to refer to Him as their personal “Abba.” Jesus didn’t hesitate to do this, though, and the Jewish people were not pleased to hear this Nazarene talk about God in such a closely intimate way.
Jesus revealed an extra element in His relationship with God that set their relationship apart from the way people related to God during that time. Jesus would also make a new and living way for us to have full access to the God of heaven and earth. The added element here? Love!
Love transforms business transactions into relationships.
Love transforms obligation into desires.
Love transforms a sales pitch into a lifeline.
While this is a weighty comparison, marketing has the potential to become so much more than bringing in customers and making sales. When we begin to view our customers not as customers but as beloved children who have intrinsic value, everything changes.
If we ever want to love effectively and sprinkle compassion in our marketing strategies, we must evaluate why exactly we want to attract people.
Are we reaching people just for the sake of increasing our attendance and boosting our bank account, or are we reaching people to see them experience the hope of Jesus and partner alongside a mission they believe in?
These are tough questions we must ask ourselves before we even consider employing our marketing techniques. We must remember this: love matters because people matter.
When you choose to bring love into everything you do, there are more benefits than there are without love being involved.
When you choose to love someone, you choose to acknowledge their unique value to society and the world as a whole. When people feel valued, something changes within them. They become more generous, are more receptive to ideas, and are immensely loyal.
While marketing still may seem a little taboo in the context of the nonprofit world, it is a vital part of getting our message out there and establishing partnerships with others. When we choose to value the person over the transaction, it makes a long-lasting impression that goes much further than even the best advertising campaign.
How will you show love in your marketing?
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