In December 2015 I spent the weekend with my friend Katie, who is a vicar. She had recently moved to a new parish, with a large church in a market town in Essex and a number of village churches. Because she was new to the town, Katie spent time during her first few of months watching the way things are being done at the church and getting to know her parishioners. Some things were done differently to the church where she trained and some things were the same. She had lots of ideas for what she wanted to do, but knew that she needed time to get settled in and learn the ropes, before making too many changes and perhaps upsetting some of her congregation.

Because my marketing brain never really switches off, during the weekend I stayed with her, Katie and I spent time talking about how to go about marketing a church and the similarities between churches and commercial businesses.

Here’s what we came up with:

• Create some inspiring goals. If Katie wants to make any changes within the church – to the services, the events they run to raise funds for the church, or other activities – she will need buy in from the majority of her congregation. The best way to do this is by creating some clear, compelling and inspiring goals that she can share with them. If she just started making changes, people would probably ask “Why is she changing the way we’ve always done things?” and object to the changes. Having clear goals also makes them much easier to achieve, as with any commercial business.

• Look after your existing clients first. While a church may not think that it has ‘clients’, it has. They are the people who use the services of the church – the ones who attend the actual church services on a regular basis; the schools and other groups who use the church for their events, such as concerts; and the people who rent the church hall for their functions. If one of Katie’s goals is to increase the regular congregation by introducing different styles of service, she first needs to look after the people who regularly attend the Sunday services. If she makes changes that they don’t like, they could stop attending church. However, if she keeps them happy, they are far more likely to tell their friends, neighbours and relatives about the wonderful new vicar, encouraging them to go to church. Looking after your clients means that they will do some of your marketing for you.

• Find the free marketing. Churches rely on public money – donations, fundraising and legacies – to keep going. This means that, like many businesses, they have tight budgets and a limited amount to spend on marketing, or encouraging more people to attend church. Luckily, these days there seem to be more and more marketing tools to use that only require time and not money, in order to make the most of them. At Katie’s church, they have developed a simple leaflet to give to people the first time they attend a service, to welcome them and tell them about the regular services and other events. It has a portion on which they can give their name and email address, leaving that with someone from the church. They can then receive the monthly email newsletter that is written by one of the parishioners (who happens to work in marketing for a local law firm and who enjoys copywriting!) This allows the church to keep in touch with them without spending any money, continuing to make them feel welcome and part of the congregation.

I’m hoping to do some more marketing work with Katie and her team in 2016, to help her to grow her church. In the meantime, think about how you can create some goals, look after your clients and find some free marketing, in order to grow your business this year.