013- How a 12,000 Member Church has Used Digital Marketing to Reach Springfield, Missouri – Part 1

We dive deep into some strategies James River Church is using to grow to over 12,000 people in attendance every week. Steven Records developed a digital marketing department at the church and is actively marketing the church online using various inbound marketing techniques. Steven breaks down what he is doing and the strategies he is using to better serve the community and build the church.

Show Notes:

Steven’s Journey

• Steven is the marketing director of James River Church, which averages over 12,000 people in attendance every week
• He was a student at the James River Leadership College before going to Australia to work at Hillsong

James River Marketing

• The vision of James River shifts from season to season and the church rallies around the vision
• The core values are to reach the lost, expository preaching, discipleship, children and youth, developing people
• The digital marketing department uses any platform which helps them accomplish the goal of the core values

Website

• Steven started with the website to build it to meet the needs of the department in context with the goals of the church
• Social media points back to the site; it is used as a way to build awareness
• A blog is used to target keywords for those people in the community searching for help in certain areas
• The blog then has a call to action which gets people into an email list which can then be used to connect and invite
• Steven is able to connect the growth in online traffic to the growth of the church and even to salvations
• There is a path that can be tracked to take someone on a journey from not knowing anything about the church to becoming active members

Content Marketing

• Break down the analytics and look at multiple channels; look at what is working
• Provide better information on the site to improve SEO
• Have better content on social media to get people to respond
• Use paid ads to capture people’s contact information so you can continue to connect with them
• An email is a powerful tool for communicating and generating website traffic; it’s free to use
• Create great content to attract people organically

Measuring What’s Working

• Compare analytics from year to year so you can see how successful your tactics are
• Surveys a key tool for getting feedback on what is working
• Look at behavioral stats on analytics of bounce rates, time on site, page views, etc.
• Forms on the website are nice tools to collect information from the website and address questions
• James River has developed an online campus to keep people engaged in the church when they are not able to attend