Yes, I’m concerned about your online ministry effort. If you lead an organization, ministry, or church that is using online streaming or programming, I have a concern. It’s not with the fact that you are online. It is with the reality that you can easily get lost in the sea of other online products and programming. If you ask Google to show you “online radio stations” you get over three hundred thousand responses. How does someone find you?

Marketing and promotion are the answer. What is marketing? A good definition is this:

…the activity or business of promoting and selling products or services, including market research and advertising.

It is critical to get your online product name across to the potential audience if they are going to find you…and if you are going to build an audience for your programming.

You can find any number of steps for marketing that can help guide your thinking. One comprehensive plan gives these steps:

  1. Understand your market and competition. Who else is competing for the eyes and ears of the audience?
  2. Understand your customer. What are their needs? What are they dealing with?
  3. Define your market niche. What makes your programming stand out?
  4. Develop your marketing message. How are you going to position your program?
  5. Determine your marketing medium(s). What are the platforms you are going to use to market your program?
  6. Set sales and marketing goals. What do you want to accomplish? How quickly?
  7. Develop your marketing budget. What can you spend to build your audience?

This list doesn’t take the place of trying to teach these steps or principles, but to alert those producing online programs to the need to consider marketing and promotion strategies to be sure your good work doesn’t get lost.

As I was thinking about this, I began to wonder if there were illustrations of this topic in the Bible. OK…these might be a stretch but think about them. God used a guiding star and a host of angels to announce the birth of Jesus…in a stable in a small, obscure village. These were devices to point people to this miraculous birth of our Savior.

I even thought of the encounter of Jesus with His disciples when He asked them, “Who do people say that the Son of Man is?” (Matthew 16:13 NLT) And Jesus followed that question with a more pointed one, “But who do you say I am?” (v.15) In a sense, the Lord was checking the market to see what message people had received. Of course, Jesus was doing much more than that!

Maybe one of the more interesting references to “advertising and marketing” comes from Jesus’ teaching in His Sermon on the Mount:

No one lights a lamp and then puts it under a basket. Instead, a lamp is placed on a stand, where it gives light to everyone in the house. In the same way, let your good deeds shine out for all to see, so that everyone will praise your heavenly Father.

Matthew 5:15-16 NLT

With your Christian programming, you are shining the Light of Jesus into a dark and needy world. Don’t let that light get lost in the online sea and be hidden. Let it shine for all to see and hear…to the glory of our Lord Jesus Christ.

God’s best,