Market Leadership Strategies for the Church

How to create a market position from which to increase congregational membership
and attract multi-generational congregant loyalty.

For years, every marketing plan was built on the “five P’s” — Product, Price, Place, Promotion, and PR. Then, experts began to recognize that market leadership strategies had to be in place before any of the five P’s could be implemented. This meant having a strategy for dominating markets, creating unique value, and keeping ahead of the market. Rather than get on the treadmill that nearly every other church has worn themselves out on, trying to be better, more appealing, more relevant, market leaders in ministry are looking for ways to do church differently.

There’s No Defense for Status Quo

Status quo leads to competitive parity. And, all things being equal, people will choose which church they will attend based on size.

The local church is at a defining moment. It is discovering that to mimic other mega churches in Texas and try to gain a step ahead of them through better programming and better management ultimately leads to competitive parity. And parity causes prospective visitors to make decisions on where they will attend church based on size, which leads to the mega churches continuing to grow and the remaining churches continuing to have to work harder to keep growing.

Making a Difference

Increasing church attendance and attracting multi-generational member loyalty is built on the foundational principle of making a difference.

Market leadership strategies has another name; it’s called “making a difference” and it’s grounded on two bedrock success principles for the church:

1. To be, in fact, a progressive church that provides a superior discipleship experience in an engaging people-centered environment supported by a pioneering spirit that fosters evangelistic outreach and spiritual transformation, and
2. To be perceived as different from other churches by a targeted group of people.

Doing church better is not the formula for achieving accelerated growth. The local church must begin to implement strategies that make people see and feel unique value in its services. To deliver unique value, there needs to be a new battle cry: Be a market leader!

Steeple provides fund raising and organizational development services to faith-based and community-based organizations of the nonprofit sector. Our efforts are dedicated to putting nonprofit managers and trustees in touch with the tools and resources they need to develop their organizations and to conduct successful capital campaigns. Our work with clients is for the long-term—to build internal capacity, to create brand equity, and to attract and retain funding. Since 2007, we’ve helped nonprofit organizations like yours raise more than $14 million.

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