Church Mobile Strategy 101: Everything Your Church Needs for Mobile Success
According to the Kleiner Perkins 2018 Internet Trends report, on average, people spend nearly 6 hours a day on digital media. Even more interesting is that 3.3 of those hours are spent on mobile devices. That’s a lot of time online!
As a church or ministry, this presents an exciting opportunity for you to reach a lot more people with your mission. Does your church have a mobile strategy in place?
Recently, our CEO, Chad Williams, presented a webinar detailing the best mobile strategies for various ministry needs (i.e. small churches, big churches, and external/internal communications). This blog provides a broad overview of his webinar, however, if you’re looking for in-depth strategy tips, check out the webinar here!
To get started, let’s dive into the 5 marks of a healthy mobile mindset. These key components will ensure your most important information is visible upfront, creating a positive and enjoyable mobile experience!
5 Marks of a Healthy Mobile Mindset:
Ministry
Mobile strategy is more than just another channel to communicate with your audience. It’s a unique way to connect with your congregation and visitors. Think about how you can best connect/relate to the needs of your congregation through mobile.
Relationship
Mobile gives you an avenue to build relationships and real conversations, not just promote upcoming events and opportunities. Remember, building relationships and authentic connections is a key part of the ministry, so strive to do the same when it comes to creating a delightful mobile experience. Think of mobile as a way to extend hospitality to your audience throughout the week.
Personalized
Website personalization is a game-changer for churches and ministries. Think about a potential church visitor checking out your website for the first time. You don’t want them to see the same message as everyone else, right? Instead, a personalized message, created for first-time visitors only, may encourage them to attend your church on Sunday.
Integrated
To avoid errors and confusion, a new mobile strategy needs to be integrated with all of your other organizational processes. When rolling out new communication methods, think “along with” not “instead of.”
Dynamic
It goes without saying that a static mobile method will get your mission nowhere. Working to keep things dynamic is the only way to reach a broad audience.
Now that you’ve thought about what it takes to keep a healthy mobile mindset, let’s talk about some ways to evaluate the success of your mobile strategy.
• Your mobile hub needs to be easy to use. People simply won’t use it if it’s not. Always design with “mobile-first” in mind.
• Make sure it works on all platforms, most notably Android and iPhone.
• The features you offer on mobile should actually be relevant to a mobile user. Content like podcasts, event promotions, and videos are useful in a mobile format. An app or website shouldn’t replace your weekly church bulletin.
• Most importantly, make sure the price you pay for your mobile strategy matches up with the needs of your church.
With these tools in hand, are you ready to take on a new mobile strategy for your church or ministry? You now know that people spend 3 hours a day on their mobile device; think about how many more people you could reach if they spent even a fraction of those hours on your website or app. Wow!