#43 Advertise Changes of Schedule – 101 Ways to Attract More Visitors
Subscribe:
ITUNES GOOGLE PLAY YOUTUBE
Hey Digital Communicators, I’m John Falke from Johnny Flash Productions and Amplified Impact, and this is 101 Ways to Attract More Visitors, a practical guide for churches to amplify their impact and reach their communities. Now let’s amp it up.
#43 Advertised Change of Schedule and Cancellations. Now, this may sound obvious and you may think that you do this pretty well, but if you’re not doing this kind of exhaustedly, then you’re probably missing people. Let me tell you a quick story.
How many different ways does your church communicate changes of schedule or cancellations? @johnfalke Share on XA few years ago when I was on staff at a church, uh, we decided to cancel our services the week after Christmas. And so since I didn’t have very many Sundays off, it was an opportunity for me to go visit a church that I really had wanted to visit. And so that weekend I packed up my whole family, my four kids, and we headed to this church that was about maybe 45 minutes to an hour away. I checked the website and I knew the service times and everything so we went to the church, got there, and I was surprised that the parking lot was empty.
I looked on my phone, I pulled it up while I was in the parking lot and checked it. There was no mention of any kind of cancellation or change of services or going down to less services. And so then I drove up close to the front doors of the church and I saw a sign that said that we’re not having any services at our campuses today. We’re just having an online service and it had the time. And so I, I double-checked the website.
I was like, I couldn’t believe that they didn’t have this information on their website and other cars while I was waiting there, pulled into the parking lot, kind of circled a few times because they were confused as well, and so apparently I wasn’t the only one who didn’t get the message.
Now maybe they sent emails out to the people that go to their church and they tried to, you know, announce it in the service or tell people other ways, but the reality is they didn’t do a great job because I was going to be a first time visitor to this church and I didn’t get the message and I even looked for it.
So the irony is that it’s been a few years since this happened and I still haven’t made it back to visit that church. By not advertising your cancellations and your schedule changes you, you’re going to be losing visitors because people will come on those times and you’ll never know it and they won’t come back to your church.
So it’s super important to communicate those things. Do it in all the communication channels that you can and that will ensure that everybody gets the message and is able to come to your church.
In the next video, I’m going to talk about how to start welcoming people before they even get to the front doors of your church. Until then, amp it up.
Make sure you subscribe to the 101 Ways to Attract More Visitors podcast in iTunes, Google Play, or on YouTube so you don’t miss a video or download the free 101 Ways eBook.