Hit a Home Run with Your Web Ministry

By J. Sebastian Traeger
March 1, 2005

The home run. It is perhaps the most American of sports terms. You don’t even need to follow sports or baseball to know that the home run is the pinnacle of hitting. Hitting a baseball is considered the most difficult thing to do in sports as a 95 mile-per-hour pitch darts in-and-out and can reach the plate in just 0.4 seconds. Hitting a home run is, therefore, the quintessential sporting accomplishment, combining precision, power and presence.

The home run also has the power to make heroes and goats. The Babe, perhaps the first “one-name” American celebrity, captured the imaginations and emotions of fans with his prolific power, transforming the game of baseball with his ability to put the ball over the fence. Bobby Thomson became an instant legend when his “Shot Heard Round the World” rallied the New York Giants over the Brooklyn Dodgers in the bottom of the ninth to send his team to the World Series. This past post-season saw the Red Sox overcoming a 3-0 deficit to the Yankees by using the drama and excitement of late-inning homers.

As a former baseball player and pitcher for Princeton University, I have an admiration of and respect for those who routinely hit the long ball. One of my most vivid and bittersweet pitching memories was succumbing to a solo home run in the bottom of the ninth with two outs to lose a game 1-0. While a home run seems like a one-time event, it is really the product of years of hard work, batting practice, patience at the plate and proper mechanics. The home run is the epitome of instant gratification as all the hard work pays off in immediate results with a run and a game-changing event.

Your Web Ministry

Much like hitting a home run on the baseball field, hitting a home run with your web ministry [link to 12 Steps-Web Ministry white paper] requires hard work, discipline, practice and proper techniques. But, just like seeing a ball fly over the fence, you can also see the results of your efforts: your message will get out to more people; you will see an increase in your number of email subscribers; you will see your online donations grow; and you will see an overall reduction in costs. In the remainder of this article I want to share with you four bases that you will need to cover if you want to hit a Home run with your web ministry.

First Base: Strategic & Financial Plan

Your first base to cover is developing a strategic and financial plan. “Without vision the people will perish” and without a plan, your web presence will wilt. Has your ministry spent a substantial amount of time developing an “e-strategy?” In our opinion, ministries need to move past having an “e-strategy” toward developing and implementing an “integrated strategy.” Far from rendering traditional strategy obsolete, the Internet has dramatically increased the possibilities for organizations developing unique and creative strategies that leverage their core strengths in novel ways.

Many ministries are investing a lot of time and energy in their online presence, and many are doing a lot of good things, but in the absence of an integrated strategy these efforts are much less effective. A clear strategic road map with an integration of online initiatives with offline processes and functions is a necessary baseline for success on the Internet and for overall organizational success. In the absence of an integrated strategy, even though an organization may build a fine website, it will be hampered in its efforts to build an effective and life-changing web ministry.

So what is an integrated plan? Simply, one that considers your current strengths, assets, and communications’ tools as well as how your constituents use the Internet.

During the early days of the Internet, conventional wisdom suggested that the Internet had changed everything, and that the rules governing companies and competition in the “New Economy” were fundamentally different than what they had been before. As upstart dot coms flooded the market, established companies rushed to establish their own “e-strategy” or “e-business.” Many established companies, believing that old approaches would not work in the new economy, set up their Internet units as stand-alone businesses. Perhaps the most vivid example is Barnes & Noble’s decision, in response to the competitive threat presented by Amazon.com, to setup barnesandnoble.com as a stand-alone business. This decision ultimately played into the hands of Amazon, as Barnes & Noble failed to capitalize on the advantage provided by its network of physical stores.

With the benefit of hindsight, such decisions seem obviously foolish, and the example of Barnes & Noble can be contrasted with examples of companies who have integrated their online presence into their overall strategy and operations. For example, when the pharmacy chain Walgreens introduced the ability for people to order prescriptions online, they took into account the possibility that many people would still prefer to pick up their prescriptions at a nearby store. This is in fact what happened, as 90% of customers placing orders over the Internet pick up their prescriptions at a physical location, as opposed to having them shipped. In this case, the Internet bolstered the value of Walgreens network of stores, helping it to maintain its competitive advantage over online pharmacies.

Take the time to invest in developing an Internet strategy. Think through the various aspects of your organization and align your strategy with operations.

Second Base: Marketing & Constituent Segmentation

Once you have a strategic plan, you can head to second base by focusing on marketing and constituent segmentation. Every organization in the world has constituents—whether you call them donors, members, clients, leads, or listeners. A strong marketing focus will allow you to “segment” or differentiate between your various constituent groups and it will allow you to “target” or communicate with them in different ways. Segmentation allows you to move away from building a one-size-fits-all communication strategy, to developing a personalized, targeted approach.

Ministries, in particular, need to think carefully about how they position themselves in a crowded marketplace of ideas (both Christian and secular) to a limited pool of potential donors and to an increasingly skeptical culture. Most importantly, they have a theological and Biblical need to be careful of what they say and how they say it. This is basically the advice Paul gave to his young protégé Timothy: “Watch your life and your doctrine closely. Persevere in them.” While I don’t want to reduce Paul’s teaching to marketing principles, I do think Christian organizations—by virtue of the message that we have been entrusted with—have a special obligation to consider how we are understood by our various audiences.

When developing your marketing message, remember that it’s not about you. Or, more positively, it’s about the psychology and interests of your audience. This might seem like an overplayed directive. But this is often the area where most organizations go wrong. Especially on the web, ministries use their marketing message as an opportunity to think through their organizational chart with each department inheriting a section on its site. Obviously, when you consider your site’s messaging, what your ministry does and how it ministers to people is important. But, try putting yourself in the shoes of your target audience and think about how they will be interacting with your ministry and using your site and what they are interested in discovering about you. “Why are people coming to my site? What are the primary things they will be looking for and what are the secondary things?” It sounds really easy, doesn’t it? But it can often be surprisingly complicated.

Think through your constituents and have a slightly different message for each one. Talk to them with words that they will understand.

Third Base: Creative Design

With a strategic plan and a marketing message in hand, you are almost home. The third base to cover is to have a creative design that grabs people’s attention and reinforces your message with compelling images and graphics.

We live in a society where first impressions matter. Even if we strive not to judge based on appearances only, sometimes we find ourselves avoiding a restaurant because of the way it looked (or smelled) from the sidewalk. We also know the importance of meeting the in-laws for the first time and how necessary it is not to speak poorly, criticize the food or drool uncontrollably. I can still remember the first impression of my university—the gothic architecture, ivy covered walls, falling leaves on open greens and the quaint town—all immediately conjuring up every romantic notion of college. Even the title of this article probably influenced your decision whether or not to read on.

While design is somewhat subjective, there are a couple of ways you can make sure that your design is compelling. First, make sure your visual identity is consistent. It is essential that you communicate one identity every time and in every way that you communicate. Whether you are a church or a ministry, everything from your logo, your signage, business cards, to your website should incorporate the same look and feel. Since you have so few opportunities to communicate with your constituents, it’s vital that every time you do, you come across the same way. Multiple identities cause confusion which leads to an appearance of disorganization or even distrust. Starbucks is the king of following this principle. You can recognize their shop fifteen miles away in a snow storm because you’ve seen their identity consistently delivered on everything they do.

Secondly, your web design should match the personality of your organization and your audience. Not only should you be communicating the same message every time, but you should also communicate the right message about your organization. Your look should match the personality and the target audience that you are trying to reach. This is obvious in the physical world: If you go to a bar-b-que, you wear jeans. If you go to a wedding, you wear a suit. The same is true of good web design: there should be a clear personality and target audience in mind. Ask yourself, who are you trying to speak with? What are their likes & dislikes? Ask the questions that expose their personality. After you find out who your audience is, discover your church’s or ministry’s own personality. If you and your constituents are backyard BBQ people you should not be using swans or ice sculptures as imagery to set the tone (maybe steers and hay bails).

Strive for excellence in design and just like after seeing a long blast from a home run hitter, see people gasp with excitement at your work.

Home Plate: Technology & Web Production

Once you’ve hit the ball out of the park and you’re rounding the bases, your last 90 feet to home plate are the easy part. Similarly, the most difficult and important parts of your web ministry are the strategy, marketing and design. Technology is easy. That might sound strange to you as conventional wisdom tells us that success on the web is about using cutting-edge technology.

Actually, these days, success on the web has little to do with technology. By that I certainly don’t mean that technology isn’t necessary: it is essential. What I mean is that because the technology is essential, it has already been figured out. One benefit of the billions of dollars that were spent and wasted on the Internet during dot com boom of the 90’s is that we now have incredible technology available at very low costs.

Just a few years ago, a Content Management System (CMS) was still a novel technology, eliciting “oohs and ahhs” during demos. Today, most ministries don’t even need a demo as they understand what a CMS is and what it does. This market maturation is normal and expected and it provides your ministry with an incredible opportunity: rather than focusing your resources on technology, you can instead direct them to strategic thinking, marketing messages, and creative design. In essence, you can “swing for the fences.”

Announcing Thomson’s famous home run, announcer Russ Hodges said: “The Giants win the pennant and they’re going crazy. They’re going crazy, I don’t believe it, I don’t believe it, and I will not believe it.” Watching and cheering for sports and for home runs is certainly exciting and I think we’ve all experienced the joy of “going crazy” when our team wins. But there is something so much more substantive for which we should be excited. We know that Jesus went to the cross because of the joy set before him. Let’s cheer for our sports heroes, but let’s commit our organizations to excellence because when we hit home runs, and people repent of their sins and believe the good news of Jesus Christ, lives are changed and cheers are elicited from the angels in heaven.

If you would like to find out more about how to implement these strategies and ideas in your organization, please take a moment to let us know a little about your needs.