10 SMART Goals for Church Marketing

It can feel yucky to set quantitative goals when your primary goal is to simply love people…
I get that! The last thing we want to feel like is a used car salesman, just hustling to hit his quota.

A SMART goal is Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, and Time-bound. Setting SMART goals and remaining true to your mission are not mutually exclusive.

For example:

Instead of telling your congregation members to invite their friends to Christmas Eve,

set a SMART goal along the lines of, “Determine the 3 easiest ways to invite friends to Christmas Eve. Before November 15th, create slides, text message templates, email content, and physical handouts encouraging people to do so with specific instructions and encouragement.”

See how that works? At its core, it’s the same sentiment — with some added intentionality.

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Here are 10 goals that are quantitative & measurable, but don’t make you feel like a sellout:

1) Have 1-3 avatars that encapsulate your community fleshed out & written down by the end of Q3.

Write down their name, age, gender, family details, socioeconomic status, hobbies, desires, and how they spend their disposable income. This will help you as you make decisions about words to use, events to run (or not run), and platforms to focus on.

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2) Increase my rank in Google search by 10% by Q4.

Use Google Search Console to determine your average rank. Follow a few of my SEO tips & spruce up your Google My Business profile, then check again in a month.

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3) During Q3, increase my shares on Instagram by 20% over Q2.

Use Meta Business Suite to get a baseline of how many times your posts are shared. Look at the posts that were shared the most, do a little brainstorming, and publish more posts along those lines.

Psst: I don’t really care about the posts that were viewed or liked the most. The biggest impact occurs when posts are shared (see me break down the math here).

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4) Increase my Facebook Event RSVPs by 25% over last year.

Take a look at an event that occurs every year. Make note of how many responses you received on the event last year, then follow my tips on setting up a killer fb event with the intention to boost your responses.

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5) During Q3, increase my email open rate by 15% over Q2.

Look at your average email open rate (if you’re not using an email service provider, make it your goal to get signed up for Kit!). Browse all my email tips and start to watch it climb.

Cheat code: delete all of your cold (inactive) subscribers. 🤫

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6) Lengthen Christmas Eve promotional timeline by 3 weeks.

If you typically start promotions on December 1st, try backing up your timeline to early November. Run your campaign as normal, but plan to produce 3 additional weeks of content.

The most common problem with church promotional campaigns is that they’re hardly ever given enough runway. This remedies that.

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7) Send weekly value-filled emails to my entire prospect list for the entirety of Q4.

That’s only 13 emails! Challenge yourself to come up with an idea that people will find valuable — then commit to staying consistent.

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8) Run a 5-week internal campaign teaching my members how to use our digital tools to share our church with others.

I just wrote about this here. The biggest asset you have? Your people and their social circles — both in-person and online. Program this into your communications and watch what happens.

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9) Complete a video course on how to set up a YouTube ad and run one by the end of Q4.

Might I suggest this tutorial on YouTube? Give it a try with your Christmas promotions—just a simple selfie video with nice audio and an enthusiastic speaker will do.

Just FYI: The video recommends targeting your audience based on interests, demographics, and life events. It’s a good idea to avoid doing this when advertising religious content to avoid violating Google policy. Everything else in the tutorial is spot on!

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10) Set up SMS messages and enroll 20 people in my first workflow by the end of Q4.

We just set up Text in Church in advance of our church’s launch service. You can text a keyword to a number and be added to a list. It took effort to set up, but will be an awesome tool moving forward.

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Which of these goals could get a 15-minute spotlight in this week’s staff meeting? Let me know!