Church Brand Guide Podcast | Logo, Website, Video, and Design

In many churches, a lot is happening, but people don't know what those things are. An excellent opportunity to let people know what is happening at church is by making some announcements in the service. In this episode, we explore how to make service announcements well. 

A logo is an icon that represents what your church stands for. It is the first thing people see of your brand, and it needs to be appropriately designed for them. The logo is a cornerstone of the church's brand, and you must invest in a great, sticky design to cut through the noise. In this episode, we unpack how your church can be sure it has the right logo.

A successful website is always working for your church to get new guests to come to a service. It's like an employee working 24/7 to get new guests, so it must be built as a tool to help people make their first visit. We like using Wordpress to build websites for churches with Divi Builder installed to make the site easy to design and update. This podcast episode discusses the tools for building an effective church website for your church.

As creatives, we are asked to be an expert in an area of communications, but it can be a struggle to get your ideas implemented. In this episode, we help creatives with tips so they can add value to the church in their area of expertise. Michael and Denis have years of church communications experience and share their best insights.

Churches that understand how to properly use emails and text messages are the ones that see people join the church, join a group, and join a team. These tools are very effective in helping people take their next steps. The problem is most churches do this all wrong. This episode will guide you through producing emails and text messages that move people. 

We will dive into tactics for creating videos that tell the stories of your church. Telling stories is the key to cultivating champions in the church, and one of the most powerful tools to do this is a video showing the impact God has through the church. A brand champion participates at a high level to volunteer, give, and invite others to the church.

The website is the front door to your ministry, and you must have a clear strategy to see new guests to your weekend services. Listen to the podcast episode about building an attractive church website so you can easily apply the tips and see results. We share insights to help you adjust your current site or determine whether you need a new website. 

Denis Estimon is our guest, and he shares the most effective tool your church can use right now to reach people: Instagram Reels. The effectiveness of social media is constantly changing, but you can get ahead of the game by listening to this episode. Churches are typically behind in using new tools for reaching an audience. Don't be like most churches. 

While serving on a church staff in communications, Denis realized he could reach many people through "digital outreach." He was able to cut through the noise to grow the church. He saw how his marketing skills could share the church's ideas like wildfire. All he needed was to shift his mindset from marketing to outreach to be more authentic, resulting in being more effective.

A great church logo design will get you noticed. It relates to people in your community and creates a recognizable impression. As a communications director, you must invest in a well-designed logo, so your marketing is more effective. The logo is the tip of the iceberg when building a brand. It has to be right so you can put it on everything from signs, to printed materials, to digital media. A great logo helps your church to be sticky in the community so people will recognize you.

In this new podcast episode, you'll learn how I implemented a new brand for a church that has been around for decades in the Church of God in Christ denomination. Now they are growing in weekly attendance and church membership. Building a brand is a powerful tool a church can use to clearly and concisely communicate its benefits. Clarity is what cuts through the noise to reach people, letting them know the benefits of coming to church in a visually appealing way. Get inspired by this new brand for Trinity Temple Church of God in Christ that is helping them see new members.

You can leverage events to grow the church, just like we help Cornerstone Church do to see new families join the church every month. The key is to think about building your brand instead of just promoting an event. When you get this right, you'll have effective promotions to get new guests to come to the church. You will steward the church money well and be more creative in your marketing. 

Many churches scramble to get promotions together at the last minute for an upcoming event, and they end up not seeing the results they want for the investment they make. The promotion package costs more money than it should and stresses everyone involved. With my "onramp" strategy, you can solve this problem to become a better steward of your time, creativity, and finances. 

In this new podcast episode, we look at eight tips for what makes a great church logo design, and you'll see the logo I created for Calvary Church, located in Pella, Iowa. 

What is your logo saying about you? People judge a book by its cover, and your logo is the most seen part of your brand. The problem may be that your logo communicates that you are not relevant to your community.

Get an updated logo that better relate to your audience and looks good in various forms of media. You will gain brand recognition in the community, so people know you exist.

A good logo increases the effectiveness of your marketing efforts by making you appear relevant.

A great brand is built by asking great questions. I have a list of 20 questions that I ask my new clients to help me get up to speed with their current brand and the vision they have for the future. Once I have these answers, I can choose the right colors, fonts, and graphic treatments that represent the vision and then create a visual identity that aligns with the vision. This alignment builds a high level of trust in the brand that compels people to take their next steps with the church. 

You will get tips for creating a sub-brand as I share the example of branding a men's conference. Tip: Create sub-brands only for significant events that reach many people. Otherwise, use the church's brand standards (colors, fonts, etc.) to create smaller event promotions. Tip: Have a target audience avatar for the event, so you choose your design elements and messaging specifically for that person. Tip: Create a simple brand guide that defines color values, fonts, and a logo that is consistent across all media. Listen to learn more. 

See the case study of the brand here: https://churchbrandguide.com/tip-for-creating-a-sub-brand-for-a-mens-event/

Since rebranding, True Life Church is seeing a great deal of momentum moving them toward growth. See the story of the True Life Church rebrand from First Assembly of Clay County. More people are attending the church on a regular basis. Pastor Billy knows the difference knowing God has made in his life to transform him from an addict to a provider of hope as a minister. He is passionate about helping others understand the truth of the Gospel so they too can live their best life. 

A fresh vision needed to be implemented at Legacy Church to take them from where they were to where they needed to be. Pastor John Dunn took over Legacy Church after the previous pastor built it 40 years. He changed the culture and has seen a growth of over 130% in attendance in 2021. Giving has increased by 300%, and this all happened during the pandemic. This episode will provide you with branding ideas as Pastor John shares his story of church growth.

Great brands reach people where they are and invite them in. Dain Jepson is the executive pastor of Montgomery Community Church, and he joins us to discuss how they are creating a brand to reach people as the dust settles on the pandemic. Dain gives insights on the branding process and how his team was able to come together to have meaningful discussions. He also shares the impact the new brand is having. This episode will help you understand what a good branding process looks like, so the results you get are excellent. For more resources go to churchbrandguide.com.

We discuss using some business tactics to reach people for ministry with Geno Guevara. This episode will open your mind to new possibilities for what is available to you as a ministry. We often get stuck in our own world, but the most significant innovations come from ideas outside our circle. Geno owns a martial arts business where he uses software to create sales funnels and automation to bring in new customers. He was inspired to use the same business tactics to reach people who are searching for answers online. Geno has a passion for ministry to millennials and wanted to reach them with the Gospel where they were. 

In this episode of the Church Brand Guide Podcast, our guest, Nick Agimudie, discusses how you can develop a culture of creativity in your church to attract creative people and keep innovating within the church. Many churches struggle with creativity. There is a tension between being genuine and innovating within the church. The result is that churches don't attract creative people, and they feel stuck doing things the way they have always been done. 

In this episode, we are talking about Christmas. How do we give people the Christmas experience to make them stay and become part of our church?

SHOW NOTES

Imagine Christmas as a tradition in your church, where people in your church and the community look forward to the Christmas season every year. Achieving this can happen with the mindset of a strategic marketing framework.

• Identifying Christmas problems in the community and providing solutions to a significant problem is an excellent key to getting more members on Christmas seasons.
• Many churches make the mistake of having a Christmas service for themselves. However, Christmas is when everyone in the culture is made aware of God, and your church needs to leverage this awareness to invite new people to come to your Christmas service.
• Let's talk about some of the problems people in our community encounter in the Christmas season,

1. People lack hope

If you think about it, hope is something people lack during this season. People take a toll after the first three quarters of the year without achieving their goals. What if, as a church, we build a brand around the idea of hope, and the goal is to make people stronger when they walk into our church for the Christmas season.

2. Providing a time out

In my many years as a guild and an adult, I've diagnosed the Christmas season to be the busiest time of people's life. If, as a church, we could give people the timeout feeling, where people have a moment with their family and loved ones and be glad they did,

PS>

I have a strategic playbook on how you can plan a Christmas event. I mapped out all the weekly strategies starting from October to December with all plans and promotions. Listen to the podcast episode 74.

Thanks so much for joining me again this week. Leave a note in the comment section below! Have some feedback you'd like to share?

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Clarity allows brands to thrive in our culture, and it's why I believe every church should build its brand. While we want to welcome everyone to church, good branding identifies who we are good at reaching and focuses on reaching out to that target audience. Branding is about knowing who you are as a church and positioning yourself to your target audience based on your identity. Joshua Riggs joins us in this episode to describe his experience in leading the church leadership in rebranding.

Your church matters, but does your community feel like that it matters to them? When a church focuses on creating a brand, it relates to people, so they believe that it is relevant for their lives. In this podcast episode, Pastor Lucas Forsthoff of Cornerstone Church just outside of Detroit shares practical branding tactics they are using to see new guests attend and create new members. Listen to the episode and get a fresh perspective.

Easter is coming sooner than you think. In this episode, I'll guide show you how to brand your Easter service to build your reputation, which causes people to come back. It starts by determining a value of your church that you want the Easter event to focus on. By choosing a value of your church as a theme, the Easter experience promotes the church wholistically and is not just a one-time event. Once you have a value chosen, design the service experience in this direction. The design for the promotional materials should communicate the church value so it creates alignment to the experience people will have.

Your church's website is where new guests come first to decide whether they will come on a weekend. The website needs to be designed like an employee with a specific job working 24/7 to get people to a worship service. In this episode, I want to give you a strategy to design a website that will answer the questions people have when they check out your church online. When you get this right, people will understand the benefits you offer them, and it will help them decide to come for a visit. 

Legacy Church had a fresh vision with a new pastor to reach all 3  generations of people in their city. They wanted grandparents to be able to come to church that is also appealing to their children and grandkids. We worked to design a brand strategy that resulted in the brand visuals for the logo, website, and facility signs. In this video, we discuss the process of how we went about creating the Legacy Church brand.

Good branding transforms a church from being the best-kept secret in town to becoming a pillar in the community. People will say, "we have been looking for you all our lives." Your church has a fantastic message that needs to be heard by the community. A well-designed brand allows the church to be perceived as relevant so people will be open to listening to your message. This is the final part of a 3 part series about rebranding your church.

Over the years, I have created a process that will allow your church to create a compelling brand in your city. A good starting point is a great logo and tagline. I have an agency that specialized in designing brands for churches. In the last video post I shared how GO Church experienced a 30% increase in attendance after rebranding, Vibrant Church planted in a new city and in seven months had reached over 200 in attendance on a  weekend, and Evangelistic Center saw a dramatic increase in giving after they launched their new brand.

Branding is the perception people have of your church. It's what they say about you. The question is, are they saying the right thing about your church? In this episode, we will begin a series where we take a look at 3 steps to rebrand your church and creates momentum. As an agency owner, I build brands for churches. I am passionate about helping churches understand how to leverage powerful branding techniques to reach their city.   Good branding transforms a church from being the best-kept secret in town to becoming a pillar in the community. People will say, "we have  been looking for you all our lives."  Do people stop to give your church a shot? The problem most churches have is they are invisible in their city.  Good brands present themselves as a solution to a problem in people's lives.

In this podcast episode, we take a deep dive into Pastor Kevin's church rebrand process who is part of the CBG Membership. He is working on building a culture that has the momentum to grow New Life Christian Center so they can reach more people. We discuss creating a new tagline that is more reflective of what benefits the church offers. I also provide some feedback on his website to make it more appealing to new guests. 

A church brand communicates why your church is important. The following 4 areas should be designed to be on point with the church's brand strategy in order to build trust: logo, branding guide, website, and sings. A clear brand strategy is the starting point of any great brand to define the overall direction of all church communications. Your church needs to get these 4 areas right so you can build a long term strategy that builds trust. This will increase the number of people who show up to your services and then decide to contribute to your vision.

Engagement with your church's vision can happen even now by telling the stories of life-change that have taken place in your church. In this episode, I'll share with you a storytelling formula that Hollywood uses to tell their stories in theaters. The formula makes it easier to put together compelling stories that people want to watch. This formula can be applied to the stories in your church so you can tell them more effectively.

This episode will provide you with 23 questions to help you shape your church’s brand. A church needs to focus on presenting their brand to its community to clearly communicate the benefits it provides for those who attend and those who get involved. If a church presents their brand well, it will reach more people than ever before as they are able to meet the needs of the community that is lacking community and purpose. Church membership will go up resulting in increased revenue, the number of volunteers, and the amount of leaders. The church will have a greater impact on lives than ever before as it ministers to a world in need.

Many churches struggle to get new guests to come to their events. There is a great deal of effort and money spent to put on the events, but if the events do not attract new people, then the church is not getting a great return for the investment. In this episode,

we’ll discuss an advertising system to help you promote your events more effectively to reach more people. This approach is based on the building on your brand so it creates alignment within the church.

It can be difficult to build a team of people who will help you produce creative content for you to do effective marketing. You need graphic designers, photographers, people to post on social media, writers, videographers, and web developers. The problem is figuring out how to get these people to serve the church, and then once they are on board, how do you keep them engaged. We’ll take a look at some ways to build your creative team so the church is able to have amazing content to share with your community.

Have you ever felt like you are stuck always working from behind and wasting resources that have been entrusted to your care? Are you struggling to turn your attention outward as a church to reach people who are in the community?

You need a system that allows you to plan in advance to steward your resources well while focusing your attention on engaging with those who are not already part of the church.

The results are you will be a good steward of your time and resources, reducing stress and serving at a higher level to reach those who are far from God.

In today’s culture, the church is a mysterious, complicated and exclusive environment where most people are confused about how to contribute. Churches that are growing are the ones who are intentional about helping guests feel comfortable by communicating their next steps. It takes some planning to lay out those steps and this podcast episode will help you determine your process. The result is guests will feel welcomed to become a contributing member of the church.

​​Do you have people visiting your church but not coming back? On average, churches see 1 out of every 10 visitors come back for a second visit. The good news is you can get better at getting people to come back! ​Imagine if you could keep just 20% of the guests you saw last year. What about if you could keep 40%. That would change the impact you have in your community and the amount of support your church has with people that are serving and giving.​

In a day where it’s never been easier to reach people through digital media, many churches are missing the mark because they don’t know the correct strategy. In this episode, we’ll discuss what a great church web platform looks like to engage with strangers using social media and the website. The result is you’ll have a clear path defining the purpose for your posts and the website to allow you to see more people coming to your church. You’ll be able to build a team of people that can help you with digital marketing because you’ll have a playbook. 

What if you could create a holidays so new people to come to your church on a regular basis? Would you do it? We will discuss how you can create on-ramps to your church where you rally the people and create alignment with your marketing to get a great result of new people coming to your church on a particular date. There are some natural times of the year that you can take advantage of like Easter and Christmas plus you can add a few more. I’ll show you what days of the year are great on-ramps and I’ll help you create a system around getting new guests into your church. 

Most churches struggle to communicate their vision in a way that causes people to contribute to it. Having brand clarity help you to cut through the noise to build an experience that is attractive to people and gets them to buy in. The result is a clear user experience that introduces them to the church and moves them to become contributors.   You'll see how we designed a brand for East Lake Church to reach young families in the area. A brand is not a logo, it's a lifestyle. You'll learn how to use a target audience to fuel the brand design.

In this episode, Pastor Chris unpacks the experience and the results of rebranding his church. Pastor Chris Georges needed to rebrand a church he was asked to pastor after his father passed away. He desired to take the church to a new place where he could lead it genuinely toward the vision God had given him. Pastor Georges contacted Michael to rebrand Fullness Church and he went through Michael’s process to create a new logo, website and more importantly a brand strategy. He has seen record numbers at his church and a renewed positive momentum created as a result of the clarity he is able to provide around the vision.

Most churches struggle to communicate their vision in a way that causes people to contribute to it. A brand strategy is how companies are able to sell products and services to consumers and a church can leverage the same techniques to present their significant vision in a way that is attractive. The result is that people will buy into a greater purpose and contribute to it with their time and money creating a culture of church growth.

Does your church have a communications strategy in place? What if you are able to have a playbook in place in advance that gets everyone on the same page of how events will be promoted, that allows you to budget accurately and allows for planning event promotions 10 weeks in advance? This would be a game-changer for most churches resulting in better church attendance and overall growth. Most churches struggle to plan when it comes to promotions. Things are rushed and details missed. It costs more because orders must be rushed and in the end you don’t know what you have accomplished. Jamey Santos is our guest who is the Executive Pastor at LifeMission Church in Olathe, Kansas to discuss some systems we implemented with them as part of their communication strategy. LifeMission is a church that focuses on global missions while reaching the local community. They have a mentality to go out into the world to share the gospel with everyone they can. 

Is your church growing and experiencing momentum right now? 

If not, you might have an alignment issue. Many churches drift over time from their vision and core values that unite people toward the God-given purpose. The result often is an unhealthy culture that can cause attenders, staff, and even the pastor to quit a church. 

John Opalewski is our guest on the podcast and he owns Converge Coaching which helps pastors and churches get back into healthy alignment. 

When alignment happens in an organization it unites all areas of the church toward the vision and the result is church growth. This starts with the church leader getting into alignment first so the organization can become healthy.

Are there people in your community who are skeptical about church and reluctant to attend? In this episode of the podcast we are sharing insights from Pastor Mike Signorelli in New York City who is fighting the good fight to invite skeptical people to V1 Church. You'll get practical ideas from Mike of what branding and marketing tactics have been allowing him to open up his second campus in 3 years in one of the toughest communities to reach. Mike believes he is dealing with a post-Christian culture in New York that will eventually be the reality for churches all across the country in 10 years.

Many church leaders face resistance when it comes to making changes with your church. People in the church get attached to what has been in the past and naturally resist the new ideas even when it is necessary.

Bobby Bogard is our guest on the Church Brand Guide Podcast to speak to us about implementing change and how to navigate through it. He has been in ministry for over 40 years in a wide range of rolls ranging from church planting, ministry conferences, multi-site churches, and he has been part of mega churches. He is now the director of LINC Network of Churches and started the Bogard Group Ministries to help church leaders succeed in making necessary changes.​

You'll gain key insights on how to navigate change from a church consultant to help you implement your new ideas. Bobby gives very sound strategy that will help you get your board, volunteers and the congregation moving forward with you to implement updates.

Ryan Wakefield is our guest and he is sharing 7 big Easter tips that will improve the results you have this Easter toward retaining guests. Ryan talks about starting with the end in mind and makes the distinction that Easter Sunday is not the end of the marketing plan, Mother's Day is. We discuss the having a win for your Easter marketing and what that might look like. After listening to this episode you will have what it takes to see people return after Easter because you'll have the clear strategy to get them back.

Brandon Sereg is a church planter with ARC and shares insights he has gleaned from his extensive research with successful church planters. This will help any church with marketing strategies that can be applied to reach those who are not already part of the church. ARC has been helping churches plant with an over 90% success rate by doing extensive training that comes from doing launches over and over again. They are an organization that does launches, learn from them, make adjustments and then teach others who are planting churches to help them succeed.