Four ways to dramatically grow your Catholic audience & impact [even w/ limited staff & budget]
You can grow your audience and impact rapidly by avoiding four common marketing mistakes.
If you work for a Catholic apostolate, you should be concerned about shrinking Catholic audiences (and avoiding these mistakes).
Like most non-profits, your organization and in some cases, your job may depend on helping more people. If marketing has ever made you feel you confused, overwhelmed or frustrated, this article is for you.
The good news is, there’s a lot of outstanding Catholic content out there produced by Ascension Press, OSV, Relevant Radio, the Hallow App, dioceses and other Catholic ministries including yours.
For example, check out this video produced by the Archdiocese of New York:
There are dozens of comments on YouTube including these:
This is so beautiful, inspiring, amazing..simply amazing
Becoming a priest must be Epic!
love this. I want to be a priest and am currently a Senior in High School. It hurts to wait…
You, Your Ministry & Your Content Bring Hope
In today’s world, people need your content and more people should see it! Even your emails invite people to great events, and some of your events help to save souls and change lives!
So why aren’t Catholic content producers like you investing more time and money into reaching more people?
Because you have very limited time and resources and you’d probably rather focus on creating quality content.
Avoid the Bushel Basket
Lack of marketing places a “bushel basket” over websites, print publications and videos- effectively hiding them even from your loyal fans.
You can defeat the “bushel basket”. For example, the vocations video above could easily (& inexpensively) be watched by 10 times more people within the Archdiocese with a YouTube ad that targets only the seven counties of the Archdiocese of New York (more details further down).
Below are a few how to’s that will help you go from being a great storyteller and communicator to a more influential leader in your organization who motivates and influences very large audiences. But first things first…
Dramatically Different Thinking is Needed
Below are four damaging communication mistakes that Catholic ministries make. They come from this way of thinking:
If I produce great content, the rest will take care of itself.
Unfortunately, that ain’t true.
Here’s a better philosophy:
I worked hard to make great content, I need to invest more time and money so that more people see the content.
You Can Double or Triple Your Audience Now by Avoiding These Four Mistakes
Costly Mistakes that Catholic ministries Make and the Solution to Each.
Mistake #1- Not sending marketing emails at least weekly
Email marketing costs almost nothing, yet it’s the best way to communicate with your people and get them to attend your events, read your articles and more.
source: optinmonster
How email marketing led to a sold out diocesan event [three times more effective than Facebook]
A few years ago, I promoted an event for a diocese that sold out and had over 400 registrants. I used email, Facebook (including paid ads), and posted the event to the diocese website. Email was three times more effective than Facebook and the diocesan website in getting people to register!
When it comes to promoting your events, you can get rid of all your social media and your website and still have large audiences using email alone.
Solution #1: Spend more time on email marketing and work to grow your email list.
Source: BLUEFISH Marketing
Mistake #2- Posting on your website, Facebook, YouTube, and other sites without doing paid ads or email marketing
The main disadvantage of not using email marketing or paid advertising is you have to rely on people to come to your website.
Social media posts on Facebook and YouTube also require promotion. If we post without paid ads, the content only reaches a fraction of our intended audience.
Look at the YouTube analytics of your most popular videos, and you’ll likely see many of your views are from outside of your geography. With your YouTube ads, you can target a specific geographical area.
How to reach five to ten times more people
If you pay for ads, you can easily reach an audience 5 or 10 times greater. For example, I recently posted a video on YouTube of a talk given by a priest. The video got 154 views without ads. Then I paid three cents per view for YouTube Ads and the views exploded to 1,122 in just 13 days. These views were targeted to only the relevant geographical area, so the value was tremendous.
The average view time was over 12 minutes- which is over 70 times longer than the average view time on Facebook. YouTube charged three cents per 12-minute view!
Like paying postage to distribute a print publication, it was a no-brainer to pay YouTube for 1,000+ viewers especially since the video cost hundreds of dollars to produce.
Solution #2: Email very often (w/ links) to drive people to your website. Pay for ads to reach more people.
Do you need help running paid ads? Email me a question or schedule a call with me if you have lots of questions.
Mistake #3- Assuming that people have seen and remember your content.
Has anyone ever told you that “I wish I would have known about your event” or “I never know what’s going on with your organization?”
You probably thought, “Are you SERIOUS? We shared this info multiple times!”
Typically, less than 25% of your fans see your Facebook posts, 30% or less open your emails and only a tiny percentage of your people have seen the recent content on your website.
We (content producers) are the only people who see ALL of our content! Our audience sees only a fraction. In some cases they haven’t seen ANY of our content.
Solution #3: Assume a small number of people have seen your content. Email and share 2x to 5x more often
For important events, send more than one email about it. Use paid Facebook and Google (including YouTube) ads so that people can see your messages 2,3, or 10 times.
Create a checklist of your distribution channels (email, Facebook, website, etc.) When you create a piece of content (especially your most important content), make sure you share it on every platform on your check list. You’ll notice a surge in event attendance, audience size, engagement and more.
Mistake #4- Not looking at analytics enough. We have to know which of our communications is working best.
Google Analytics tells you which of your marketing channels (e.g. social or email) are driving the most traffic to your site and what content people like the most).
Eventbrite’s analytics tell you where your registrations came from.
Mailchimp’s analytics tell you what people click on the most, effectively telling you how to best structure your future emails.
For example, based on click behavior inside emails, I can see that many people prefer to read the text version (transcript) of videos. Your audience will get larger and much more engaged as you make these adjustments!
Solution #4: Have someone in your office look at analytics at least weekly and recommend changes. Your audience and impact will grow as a result (your donations should also grow).
This sounds like a lot of work. But remember, if your audience is too small or dwindling, your ministry, and your job may be threatened. The extra time it takes to look at analytics is worth it. You can also hire us to help you with your analytics.
A Few Easy Things you can do to Get More Readers/Viewers Without Spending Much Time:
Open an account with an email marketing service*
Send multiple emails every week.
Create a check list of your distribution channels (Facebook, email, YouTube, etc.) and print it and hang it in your office.
Go to Google Analytics and visit the “behavior” section to see what your most popular website pages are. Look at “acquisition” too.
*I recommend Mailchimp (at least for now)
You can save time by hiring someone to do everything I’ve written about in this article.
If you’re thinking that you don’t have the money to do some of the things I mentioned, consider this:
You’re already spending a lot of money on marketing and distribution. Let’s look at social media for example.
Assuming just one person on your staff spends 10 hours a week on social media, and gets paid $15/hour, you’re spending $7,800 a year on social media (or $40K+ for a full time person).
Social Media is a paid means of content distribution just like postage is a paid means of content distribution. This is what I mean by “you’re already spending lots on marketing and distribution.”
Can you imagine if I created a magazine but didn’t pay postage to distribute it or I put the magazine on an out of sight newsstand and relied on foot traffic alone to drive readership numbers?
Many Catholic ministries are unknowingly doing this with their photos, videos, and podcasts, and to an extent, their stories as well. I used to do it too before I specialized in digital marketing.
You’re Going to Lead the Change
You’re going to focus more on distribution from now on right? You’re going to start motivating and influencing larger audiences and help lead the New Evangelization, right?
I hope this article is helpful to your and our Church. I would love to see our Church grow more.
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Chris Pham
