Easter 2013: A Communications Case Study

By Phil Bowdle

April 3, 2013

Easter 2013 has now come and gone. If you are part of a church staff or creative team, you know how crazy the weeks and months are leading up to a huge day like this. At West Ridge Church, we had an incredible weekend across 2 locations with our highest attended weekend ever. Here’s a look at the communications plan and some some things I learned:

THE PLAN

Early on in 2013, I mapped out a plan to work from on communicating Easter services at West Ridge. As we got closer to Easter and had a better idea of the theme and elements of our Easter service, this was tweaked accordingly. For big events like Easter, I typically create a one-page promo plan outlining how we are promoting the event in all of our major channels. This is a huge help to not only me, but our staff team. Here’s what that plan looks like:

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6 Observations From Easter Communications

Power of Prayer – Yes, we worked harder than ever to get the word out about Easter to our church and community. But the most important thing we did as a team and staff was pray. Our senior pastor Brian Bloye shared a strong vision for reaching 10,000 people this Easter, not just because we wanted to break an attendance record, but because we were praying for life-change and spiritual renewal in our church and community. Our prayers were answered as we saw 10,336 attend, 55 people get baptized, 100+ salvations and 75+ identified first time guests.
Marketing doesn’t have to be expensive – Our marketing budget for printing/advertising was less than $1,000. Instead of focusing on trying to cover a whole city with advertising, we focused on making our content easy to share and encouraging our church to personally invite and bring their friends. Word of mouth marketing is still the cheapest and most effective marketing tool. Just help fuel that with easy to share content like video links, service time graphics on social media and invite cards.
For video promos, focus on one desired outcome – Our promo video had one goal: a response of “I need to be there for that.” That helped guide decisions on music, style of video, shots and content.
Consistency – We know that the average person comes to church about 2 times a month. It’s crucial to keep that in mind when mapping out promotional plans for key events like Easter. If you’re only communicating Easter service times the week before, you’re going to miss parts of your audience. Have consistent communication across your various mediums for at least 3-4 weeks.
Kids Ministry Experience – Our kids ministry pulled off a great 3D Easter experience. This was something we were very intentional about so that our kids had something they were really excited for and would invite their friends and families to. We produced a video and invite cards for our kids to pass out to their friends. They passed out well over 5,000 cards in less than two weeks.
Building Buzz Through Social Media – At West Ridge, we had 13 services across two locations from Friday-Sunday. Our communications team was viewing Friday like a movie premiere in the idea that we wanted to build buzz through social media about the Easter services and upcoming opportunities to attend. I’ll be sharing a post focused just on this tomorrow.