Marketing Thought #2 - First Impression
The second marketing thought is First Impressions.
This is the guts of it all.
You can have the best marketing plan in the world and have hundreds of people walking through your doors each month, but if you do not create a great first impression, you will lose every single one of them.
We ran some reports at the end of 2005 and realized that we had somewhere around 500 people enter our church for the first time in the last 6 months.
Have all those people become members? No.
Can we account for the majority of those people? No.
Did they not come back because of our first impression? We don’t know.
We’re trying to figure it out and make sure we don’t repeat our mistakes.
First impressions are your buildings and facilities (cafe, childrens’ rooms, signage) and parking lot, your guest services (greeter, hosts, check-in, ushers), childrens’ ministry, audio, video and lighting. It’s everything that creates your environment and atmosphere during that service. It’s kind of everything else other than the music and preaching. Because a first impression has already been formed by that point. Some say it takes 12 minutes, others say 2 minutes. It’s probably somewhere in between that. But we know that by the time the pastor takes the stage, people have already made their decision.
I think a guiding principle in this is to “Be Remarkable.” Are you a beach front property or a cookie-cutter, suburban house? Are we a Four Seasons hotel or the Holiday Inn down the street? There are churches all across this country that are predictable and franchised. The question is are we committed to being something remarkable?
January 19th, 2006 at 6:59 am
I would suggest that even more fundamentally than even your “atmosphere” (signs, cafes, graphics, TVs, paint scheme, glass, or chrome) it comes down to the first impression that your people create. Anyone who goes to a church because it is “cool” based on those superficial things is in and of themselves superficial (I know harsh blanket statement).
What matters even more than that is that they feel welcomed and, even more so, loved. 1 Cor 13 clearly states that everything else, without love, is a clanging cymbal. The best atmosphere in the world that lacks quality people displaying God’s love means nothing. Sure those things are great, but I would wager if someone came into a church, saw all the cool stuff, said “this is pretty cool” and yet didn’t feel like they were loved and welcomed as they are, they will be more likely to never return. The purpose of the Church (Christ’s body) is not to create awe for our stuff (the Catholic church has done a great job with that - glitter and gold), but rather to love as Christ loved.
My question is are we creating a post-modern version of the Catholic church where our rituals are based on our programs and “stuff”, rather than genuine Christ-centered love?
You are correct, first impression is everything — in as much as the people who are impressed see Christ in us.
You said not too long ago that people go to a church where they feel welcomed, where their friends go. Needy people, people who desire something more than this life has to offer, generally don’t go into a church because it has chrome. They go into a church because Christ is evidently in their midst, whether they can put their finger on that or not.
My pastor made the comment recently about our worship team. He said this, “Maybe you should begin to strive less for excellence and more for authenticity.” That was hard to take, but he was so right.