Now that more and more churches are doing broadcasts, it’s become somewhat of a “chicken or the egg” scenario for some. The dilemma is which should get priority in a church’s marketing budget or which should be done first in the strategic plan. The situation I hear more often is, “Now that we’ve started broadcasting, we need to put up a better website”.  At the risk of sounding a bit self-serving, a much better strategy would be “Now that we have an effective website, we can start broadcasting”. I’ll explain how not having an effective website as a prerequisite can actually cause your broadcast to backfire.

Consider what a broadcast, and most other marketing is intended to do:

• Television Broadcast
• Online Broadcast
• Radio
• Print Ads
• Online Ads

Diluting Return on Broadcast Dollars

These days, the primary objective of each of the above marketing vehicles is to drive people to your website, where they will be compelled to make a purchase, donation or attend.  So if your website is not already effectively compelling visitors to these responses your broadcast might risk a backfire.  You can compare this to a restaurant chain launching TV ads, but taking no steps to ensure that the restaurant has staff and inventory prepared to handle the traffic and convert it into happy customers.  Those marketing dollars would be largely wasted and they would create unhappy, versus happy customers. A church broadcast could backfire the same way, delivering visitors who were obviously impressed but arrive at a website that diminishes their opinion.  In addition, if the website isn’t effective, the investment in broadcasting would not yield a good return and could probably not be supported for long.

Less People Who Show Up

The second way your broadcast may backfire is through a marketing term known as cannibalization.  The most valuable asset your church has is visitors and members who show up.  The people who show up are the people who are most likely to donate, volunteer or attend an event. When you start broadcasting, some of the people who currently show up for service, may decide it’s more convenient for them to just watch online. If your website is not doing a compelling job of of making visitors want to attend service, more than you would like would stop showing up. Some of the valued supporters who show up convert to people who watch online and are less likely to give, volunteer or attend than they were before.

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