As stated in the previous post, planning is an invaluable part of keeping your church moving forward. Around here, when talking about planning, we like to break it up into four categories:

Immediate: 1-2 weeks
Upcoming: 3-6 weeks
Seasonal: 3-4 months
Long-term: 6+ months

By breaking future events and plans down into these categories, it can help you to see what needs to be at the top of the priority list. Often times, whether it be a church or another organization which relies on events, there is a tendency to worry only about the next big thing and ignoring the events which come after it until said big event has been taken care of.

Instead of becoming laser-focused on the next big event, be sure to diversify your attention. Not only can this help you keep your mind fresh, since you will not be working with the same material for weeks on end, but also it can relieve some of that crunch-time pressure that may occur if you just focus on the single event.

Lead Time

When it comes to planning ahead, having your designers in the loop is of the utmost importance, as is getting them the basic concepts as early as possible. Generally, materials can be split into two categories: print and digital. For digital material, we recommend at least a three or four week lead time for your designers. When it comes to print, we recommend as much as an eight to ten week lead time.

Your own lead times should follow up on this. If you have an event that you are going to need print material for in, say, four months, then make sure to be working on the basics of it up to that ten week point, and then continuing to develop it once you have brought a designer on.

Invitation Time

Along with reducing the stress that comes with being pressed for time when creating material for events or not planning properly for events, having a solid plan for each event at your church can allow you to better mobilize your congregation. Instead of mentioning an invitation campaign only a week before a big event, now you can give them material and some three or four weeks in advance to invite their neighbors and coworkers.

This becomes especially valuable for online marketing. Remember, a church is much like a business in that you are selling a product to people who may not think they need it. By having multiple weeks to produce digital and face-to-face invitational campaigns, you massively increase the possibility of getting someone to come in for an event, as they will also have time to plan ahead and block off the time.

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Next week, we will discuss how you design forward; that is, how you can design your events and your marketing material to keep it innovative and valuable amongst the ever-changing tide of current events.

To learn more about this topic, check out this episode of ChurchMediaHQ: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8CxcyFohjRw&list=PLyKR6mIKUtvjbDUcqC6TDd8Jcnyzl8V8_&index=