It’s time to get your faith-based business off the ground. Regardless of the service you offer, these tips can help your Christian business thrive.
Are you looking to promote your Christian business?
The Christian market is as strong as ever, with over 140 million Americans identifying as Christian.
How can you take your God-given talents to serve the marketplace?
It’s not enough to rely on faith alone. You have to take action.
The Bible says in James 2:14 “What does it profit, my brethren, if someone says he has faith but does not have works? Can faith save him?” (NKJV)
In other words, you have to back your faith up with action.
Keep reading for specific ways you can market your faith-based business.
Define Your Audience
This may seem counterintuitive since you’re already working with the Christian market. You do need to get a little more specific than “all Christians.” To drill down a little further in your target market, fill in the rest of this sentence:
“I work with Christians who…”
This forces you to really think about who you want to work with. For example, if you’re a boutique gym, you might say “I work with Christian women who are between 25-35, married, have kids, and don’t have the time to work out.”
This enables you to develop messaging that speaks directly to your audience. You can speak to the fact that your audience doesn’t have time to workout, then you can explain how your studio helps them with short and effective workouts.
You can also talk about how it’s important for women to take care of themselves so they’re better able to handle God’s work.
Know How You Help and Why You’re Different
Once you get a better understanding as to who your target market is, you need to know how you serve them and why you’re different from other Christian businesses who do similar work.
When you’re marketing your business, you need to be able to communicate how you help people solve a problem. It might be to remodel their home, to help them lose weight,
You also need to know why people would go to you as opposed to another business. To do this, you need to write up a unique selling proposition, or USP.
Your USP needs to have three components:
- Solves a problem or need of your target audience.
- It’s sticky. In other words, people remember you and how you can help them.
- It is direct about the fears and problems your client might experience.
Let’s say you offer family devotionals.
You already know that your Christian business revolves around families and you know the importance of studying scripture together as a family. Sometimes, it’s hard for families to come up with material on their own.
Your USP could be “I created a program of family devotionals with discussion questions to make it easy for parents to teach their children about the life of Christ.”
This solves a problem and makes it easy for families to study together.
Get Your Christian Business Online
About half of all small businesses don’t have a website. Do not fall into that category.
The reason why you need a website now more than ever is because when people look for your services or product offerings, the first place they’ll go is online to do some research.
It doesn’t matter if you’re a retailer, a service-based business, or a restaurant. About 81% of consumers will research online before making any buying decisions.
Even if everyone in your church community knows you and your business, they will still go online to take a closer look at your website first.
There are options when you create a website. You can use website services like Wix, WordPress, or Squarespace. All of them have options for you to easily create a website with little technical experience.
You can also hire a website designer/developer, who will be able to design your website and make it unique. You’ll also have to purchase a domain name and hosting plan for your website.
Ways to Get Traffic to Your Website
Once you have a website set up, you need to find ways to get people to visit it. There are two main avenues you can take: paid advertising and organic traffic.
Paid advertising is paying for ads in places like Facebook, Google, YouTube, and other social media channels. With paid ads, you can raise the profile of your business and
But with advertising channels such as Google’s AdWords, there may be some challenges. For example, it can be very costly depending on your business and niche.
Organic traffic takes time to build, but the investment will pay off in having long-term relationships with the followers in your community.
To build organic traffic, you need to know about search engine optimization, blogging, and social media. The keys to successful organic traffic are to provide value to your readers and to work at it consistently.
Marketing Your Christian Business Offline
It also helps to have ways to market your business offline as well, which is a way to market your business as you’re building up offline traffic.
One way to start marketing your Christian business is through networking. Networking will put you in front of your local community, and you can start to gain referrals as you deepen relationships with other Christian business owners.
If you’re not sure where to start, check with your church and with your local chamber of commerce.
Depending on the type of business you have, you should consider attending trade shows. Trade shows are a terrific way to get your business in front of your target market.
For example, if you have a remodeling business, you can have a booth at a home and garden show.
The key to successful marketing is to keep your target market in mind and know where they will be, whether it’s where they shop, where they attend church, or what online content they consume.
Are You Ready to Build a Thriving Business?
Deciding to start a business can be an exhilarating and terrifying adventure. At times, you may feel that you’re on your own, but it’s important to know that there are thousands of Christian business owners who share your challenges and victories.
As your building your Christian business, it’s important to reach out and ask for help and advice from other entrepreneurs.
That’s why there’s an active community here at Small Business Brief. Take a look at our forum today.
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