Checklist for Church Event Promotion Online and in Print

Churches often have several notable events throughout the year that invite people in the community to attend.  This can be church rummage sales, bazaars, picnics, and more.    The following is a checklist to keep in mind when for church event promotion both online and in print.

 

7 weeks before event –

Design flyer for the church event.   Catholic Assist, LLC uses Microsoft Publisher and a free editing tool called GIMP.

You will want both a small flyer and a large flyer.  The large flyer can be put up on church bulletin boards and around town in coffee shops, libraries, doctor offices, fast food restaurants in the area, area businesses that might support the event, community boards at grocery stores, etc.  Here is an example of large one page flyer.

The small flyer is for your church or ministry members to pass out to friends and family.  One thing to consider doing is making this smaller flyer a coupon for the event on the back if you are selling items.  Perhaps for the final day of the event you could do 25% off selected items.  Here is an example small flyer developed by Catholic Assist

Send the design to an online printer – docucopies.com and psprint.com have sales and are up to 40% cheaper than Staples, even with shipping costs.  Sign up for their newsletters to get exclusive coupons for printing in the future.

5 weeks before the event –

After receiving the flyers and preparing them, begin distributing them to your ministry leaders for them to pass out in the community.

Submit a digital design for your church’s bulletin so it can run a few weeks before the actual event.  It is a good idea to ask the preparer of the bulletin how much space they will have to put in your bulletin announcement ahead of time.  You could even go ahead and format the design for them to make things easier.

Design a facebook ad for promotion.  When designing an ad, it is important to keep in mind dimensions that work for facebook both in the timeline, events, and when you boost the post.  This document from sproutsocial.com has the dimensions for facebook.

Give a physical print of flyer for your church to put on bulletin board.

Join area facebook groups on which you could promote your event.  You want to do this ahead of time because many times these groups are moderated and require that you be approved.

4 weeks before the event –

Begin promotion of the Facebook event on area facebook groups.  For church rummage sales and bazaars, you could post a Save the Date posting on area Buy Sale Trade groups  and Rummage Sale groups.

Distribute the one page flyer to put up around town, preferably color. This should have been sent to docucopies or psprint.com.

If you have a facebook page for your church or ministry, Set up a facebook event on your facebook page.  A later blog will detail things to keep in mind when setting up a facebook page for a church ministry and how to set up facebook events.

 

3 weeks before event

Encourage members of ministries to hand out flyers by sending out an email to ministry leaders or calling them on the phone.  Leave the flyers that are to be handed out at the church office for pickup as needed.  This is a very effective church event promotion strategy.

Continue posting flyers to area businesses.

Ask the person in charge of the church bulletin board to post the flyer to it.

2 weeks before the event –

Post again on area buy sell trade sites on facebook.

Post on Craigslist.org.  This is an online classified ads application that is free to post. Choose your region on the main site. For a church rummage sale, you would choose Event/class type posting, choose garage sale on next page. You will receive an email where you will need to accept posting terms.

Encourage members of ministries to hand out flyers.

If your church has a email/text system like flocknote.com, contact the person in charge of this and send them a writeup concerning your event.

 

1 week before event –

Boost the event posting to the community at large on facebook $25-50.  I recommend doing the boosted events close to the event because otherwise people often show up to your church the week prior thinking that the event is that week.  You can schedule your boost to be certain day and time.  I recommend scheduling for later in the week after 3 PM.  Marketing research shows that this is the best time. https://coschedule.com/blog/best-times-to-post-on-social-media/

Request to Post to flocknotes again this week to the church parishioners.

Post to twitter.  If you are promoting a church rummage sale, use #yardsale  #rummagesale tags.

Post to Instagram images of what is being sold if you have pictures.  Give information on when and where the event is.

Post to your facebook page promoting the event.

Post again on area buy sell trade sites.  This posting should make it clear that the event is this week!

 

This church event promotion checklist works!  Catholic Assist helped a church rummage sale raising funds for an orphanage  (https://olph-orphanagefoundation.org) and they saw a 20% increase in profits.