3 years, 7 steps, 5 lives, 1 week

A couple of weeks ago I shared some exciting news from one of our beta clients on our FaithVox platform. The news was exciting because I discussed this church’s initial digital results.

You see, this church saw itself as ‘traditional’ and was a bit cautious in considering a digital strategy as part of their outreach. It took a while but over time, small wins were able to lead to where we are today.

[Tweet “See how @FatihVox is helping even traditional churches develop their digital strategy! #mobmin”]

Frankly, this church was seeing growth through their traditional ministries but proving that the marriage between online and offline are mutually inclusive was the challenge.

And finally, here was the clearest ‘proof’ that their decision to also consider implementing a digital strategy was the correct one:

In that previous email, I spoke about why this traditional church is only now beginning to see results; why it took almost 3 years to relaunch their website that saw 5 new online visitors who did a Google search to all walk through the door in 1 week. I said that the big win was a slight shift towards taking digital more seriously at this church – saving some time, money and energy over just using only traditional means of marketing.

Side note: Kudos to this pastor for personally tracking this data. We would not have known this if this pastor wasn’t physically present in the foyer of the church on that day. Are you tracking and sharing your visitors’ data?

I also promised that I would walk you through the process I used with this church. At that time, there was a slightly imprecise step-by-step digital strategy. Over the past three years, with the experience of working with this and other churches, this process has been much improved and refined to what we call the “7-Step Digital Process”.

The good news is that this process suits all churches from traditional to modern to anywhere in-between.

We think that digitalization is critical for all ministries. We want to do our part to help churches ‘think digital’.

So, over the next few weeks, I want to share this process with you, including examples, resources, and answers to common questions. This week we continue with the first few steps, Step 0 Audit, Step 1 Branding and Step 2 Content.

Step 2 of that 7-step process is Content Audit. Here’s a quick sample resource that you can even use this week to review or relaunch what you are already doing focusing on the most important information you should include for visitors.

http://faithvox.com/critical-questions-visitors/

Through working with churches for years, I learned which are the items that convert. It’s no different to what businesses are using. It taps into what I call the ‘Jesus Model’: focusing on the needs of your audience FIRST, then acting on your agenda.

What I am talking about is not just the pretty pictures of the choir singing or the inside jokes at the potluck. This is usually not the stuff that visitors are looking for – the aspects that turn visitors to your website into traffic into your ministry.

I have worked with dozens of churches over the last few years. Many have seen bigger results in shorter times for sure, but what’s special about this church, the one discussed above, is the fact that the process I implemented worked for even a more traditional church.

This case also reveals that not all churches are going to adapt to new ideas at the same rate and that’s ok. To avoid either frustrating the saints or kicking against a wall, being strategic can help move the entire church forward with the least amount of resistance.

So, here’s the resource I’d like to share this week: Out of the 100 questions we ask churches which go through our process, here are the top few that really matter. These are the exact questions that Pr. Angel answered, that led to a direct conversion from online visitors to traffic through the Houston Central ministry.

This is a copy that you are free to fill out, getting a copy for your records or a comparison with what you are already doing.

http://faithvox.com/critical-questions-visitors/

I hope it’s useful! By the way, at any point, if you feel we can be of further help, just drop us an email. We would love to help you increase your church’s website conversion.

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