by Karen Schenk

You may have the best website in the world, but if people don’t know how to find your site, you will not be able to minister to them. Take the time to discover how to market your sites. Marketing on the Internet changes constantly. You’ll need to stay on top of the latest techniques of how to work with the search engines. Learn how to combine online marketing with offline marketing. There are great resources available and your ministry will be much more effective if you and your team learn techniques to both brand and market your site wisely.

Understand Brand Perception

How would you describe the presence or personality of your ministry’s website? What experience do you want users to have on your site? How do you want them to perceive your website, your overall “brand”? For many ministries these types of branding questions go unasked and unanswered, leaving a disconnect between a website ministry’s goals and what their users are actually experiencing. Enter the concept of brand perception.

By clarifying a web ministry’s branding goals and comparing them to the actual user’s experiences you can discover the perceptions users have about the ministry website and its brand. Often we get hung up on what we want people to see and don’t bother with what they are actually seeing.

Just as a church will attempt to create programs and messages that reach certain “felt needs” in the community, your brand should try to connect with your target audience. If you and your staff are not members of your website’s target audience, you should not be making decisions about how your target audience might perceive your website without a lot of input from your target audience.

Adapt your Website

The best choice is to adapt your website to your audience’s perception. Perhaps you can plan to put a good idea on hold for future development on another site. Or maybe it’s time to implement a new idea that will really strike a chord with your readership and strengthen your brand by matching perception of the brand with the product. This web ministry process model will work with any given target audience.

As you draw in the traffic from your target audience, offer them articles that share the gospel, and then connect them with chat or mentoring to help them to discover Christ or to grow deeper in their faith. Once they make a decision, guide them through the steps to deepen their walk with God.