Word of Life Fellowship is a new church here in Billings. A few months ago, they consulted with us for some advice on how best to spread the word about Word of Life. The results:

Atendee goal for 1st service: 200
Attendees at 1st service: 580
GOAL EXCEEDED BY 190%

This was a classic “marketing triangle” challenge, featuring the “3 Ms”: which MARKET SEGMENT (aka demographic) should we appeal to? Which MEDIA should we use? And what’s the MESSAGE?

MARKET SEGMENT: Word of Life wanted to reach as broad an audience as possible, as they desired a multigenerational congregation.

MEDIA: We considered many media and ended up recommending a combination of billboards and print ads in the Billings Gazette. This provided lots of exposure across all demographics. Gibson also helped Word of Life with their logo and website, and the Word of Life folks created their own facebook page and started “planting their garden” of fb friends well before the launch. Smart!

Note: At Gibson we don’t favor any one type of media over another, but I will say this: whenever a client has a launch or a grand opening, I consider using billboards. They are often a cost-effective way to announce something new to the world, especially if the intended market segment is very broad.

MESSAGE: What to put on the billboard and the print ad? A rocket launching? Religious images? Something abstract? After talking with the Word of Life team and learning that their pastor, Alex Chai, is well-known in Billings, we recommended making his face the face of the campaign. They conducted an outdoors winter photo shoot which yielded some great shots of Alex and his wife, Debbie. One in particular featured both of them with warm, inviting smiles–this was the image we used. In advertising as in life, a genuine smile is rarely a bad idea.

Gibson was by no means the sole reason for the successful launch of Word of Life–many people made many incredible things happen for this launch–but when your goal is 200 people and you get 580, everyone can feel good knowing they contributed to a very successful campaign. Congratulations, Word of Life Fellowship!