Amitabh Singh's Blog, page 4

Leading In The Age of Tech-celeration

Take a picture of all the gadgets you use currently. They will all look slow and uglier in the next decade. All content providers are about to be disrupted by Artificial Intelligence (A.I.) in the first five years and Virtual Reality (VR) in the next five years.

Schools, universities, and churches need to prepare for dramatic changes in consumer behavior. Content will be available on-demand, frictionless, and interactive with artificial intelligence to create an experience bubble based on individual preferences.

In the age of technology acceleration (tech-celeration), data is the new oil. Amazon, for instance, knows what you search for, what you play on television, your music tastes, and your favorite books. It knows what you listen to, what you watch, how you watch, and what you buy. We are in the midst of a digital transformation. Education, entertainment, and experience are the three legs of the stool that is about to be battered by a tsunami of changes.

Zoom’s user base increased from 10 million a day at the start of 2020 to 300 million a day by April 2020. Eight thousand seven hundred stores closed in North American in 2020. Yet, in the final three months of 2020 Amazon exceeded USD 100 billion in sales for the first time.

The internet has put consumers in the driving seat. They have more choice. They can get what they want and where they want it. Our church strategy will have to keep up with this rapid change.

James Clear, author of Atomic Habits, presents us with a concept of “time assets” and “time debts.”
(Source: https://jamesclear.com/time-assests)

Time Assets: “actions or choices you make today that will save you time in the future.”
(Example: Automatic Scheduling System)Time Debts: “actions or choices you make today that will cost you additional time in the future.”
(Example: Doing things incorrectly the first time)

The Smart Dashboard on my website has been put together to help you make the right decisions in the age of tech-celeration. While you review your strategy, one thing is certain: digital technology is here to stay.

How Will You Provide Value?

“Your customers don’t care about you. They don’t care about your product or service. They care about themselves, their dreams, their goals. Now, they will care much more if you help them reach their goals, and to do that, you must understand their goals, as well as their needs and deepest desires.” – Steve Jobs

We’ve moved from bricks to clicks as a result of digital transformation. Church leaders are trying to create an omni-channel strategy that complement their resources (both time and money). Omni-channel communication encompasses many online and on-site touch-points – desktop or mobile devices, voice, email, web, chatbots, kiosks, and brick-and-mortar (onsite) location.

Content marketing aims to build awareness, position your church, and attract guests while preventing channel conflicts and data living across many platforms. Does your content strategy ensure deeper engagement by people with your church?

You should think both inbound and outbound marketing so that you can engage with your audience both online and offline. Creating content that adds value to your audience is a wonderful way of drawing your visitor to your church.

Make it about the mission, not the personality. Your roadmap to providing value to others should be consistent across all your brand touch-points. Spend time alone to clarify your vision. Identify what you don’t want to be as much as what you do.

You need clarity across a variety of touch-points including Google Ads, your website, social media accounts, online church, blogs & podcasts, video content, learning management system and online courses, online forms, printed material, surveys, events, annual reports, and giving platforms.

Take some time to reflect about five areas as you provide value to others:

Channel – what communication channels will you use?Mission – what is the mission and objective of these channels?Content style – How will you structure the content?Call-To-Action (CTA) – What CTAs will you use?Metrics – What metrics will you use to measure success?

It is a “never-ending journey that extends well beyond social media… It is about making a full-time commitment to the journey and defining yourself as a leader and how that shapes the way you bring value to others.” – Glenn Llopis, Forbes journalist, in Personal Branding Is a Leadership Requirement, Not a Self-Proclamation Campaign.

Will Your Visitors Remain Loyal?

Leaders have limited time. We survive by giving little attention to things that are not urgent. We find ways to solve problems quickly and efficiently. There is a word for this. It is called “heuristic.” It is a mental shortcut that allows leaders to solve the issues and make judgements quickly and efficiently. It is a survival technique. We operate on little information all the time.

Important areas need a significant amount of time. Church Relationship Management (CRM) is one such areas that needs you attention. I suggest that Senior Pastors should not compromise on the choice of CRM platform they use. Your CRM is the most effective way to bridge between all incoming requests and timely follow-up. You cannot afford to lose the trust of your constituents simply because connections keep slipping through the cracks. The best CRM should create a case, automate task, offer case escalation, and provide live reports and dashboards to you.

CRM business is expected to generate more that $80 billion in revenue by 2025. Marc Benhoff, founder and first CEO of Salesforce realized the potential for cloud computing. Salesforce CR uses the cloud to help organizations manage their customer relationships. CRM and data will be critical as you respond appropriately to your visitor’s journey. Online and onsite experience needs to coexist.

A platform that covers only your marketing needs is not going be enough. Among CRM platforms, Salesforce is a leader in the field. As an Executive Pastor, I have been working with Salesforce CRM since 2016. Here are four ways in which Salesforce CRM can help your church:

Aleph: Salesforce CRM offers 10 free licences to churches and charities. It can help you track your relationships and interactions with your contacts, prospects, automate workflow and tasks.

Beth: Instead of using a more expensive full license, Ask Amitabh can show you how to utilize 10 free license and Salesforce Partner Portal ($72 per user per year) for churches that have more than 10 employees.

Gimel: In August 2019, Salesforce CRM acquired Tableau for$15.7 billion. A year before that Salesforce bough Mulesoft for its integration and API Expertise. Ask Amitabh can help you build Live Reports and Dashboards so that you can make data driven decisions with Salesforce CRM and Tableau CRM that can help church leaders make data-based decisions.

Daleth: Do you need a document retention platform with OCR scanning that is integrated with Salesforce CRM? As a former CEO of a hospital, I have utilized my hospital administration background to create a strong document retention and governance structure for churches. When you are ready to move out from storing things in a bankers box, this is an option available to you. You don’t need to spend hours finding documents when OCR scanning is one click away.

The church was and always will be about people. The innovation challenge we face is about integrating both online and offline points of engagement to offer total frictionless church experience. Innovation will require the confluence of a leader’s mindset, team’s skillset, and the right toolset that covers technology, data, marketing, operational, and church relationship management (CRM). Church leaders needs to focus on return on relationship (ROR). We need to build trust and loyalty.

Are You The First Choice?

“Where’s the best place to hide a dead body? On page 3 of Google’s search results.” – Lori Randall Stradtman, author of Online Reputation Management For Dummies.

More than 3.2 billion people are online today. People go online to find further information. Search Engine Optimization (SEO) assists your church in growing its online presence and attracting quality visitors, so the right prospects can find the contact they need.

First five search results on Google get 70 percent of all clicks. The purpose of SEO is to rank your church website on Google and other search engines. SEO generates traffic from the free and organic search results on the search engines. The point is to make it easier for people to find you.

As a church leader, you need to make sure your church is present online. Google dominates the search market, while Microsoft owns Bing and sets it as the default engine and default setting for many people. Are you the first choice on search engines?

In February 2021, Google had a global search market share of 92.05 percent. Search engine result pages (SERPs) on major search engines seem to get more complicated. Most experts estimate that Google adjusts its search algorithm around 500 to 600 times each year. In 2018, they reported 3,234 updates and are constantly refining what they find, rank, and answers queries. Google began making significant updates to its search algorithm with the code name Panda (named after a Google engineer, Navneet Panda).

Small changes to church website can make them more visible in search engine results. The single biggest reason the search engines don’t index your sites is because they don’t know they exist. Church website needs to be indexed better.

The foundation of SEO is trust. If you are not showing up at the top of search results, you are missing out on opportunities. 81 percent of consumers search online before buying. 84 percent of clicks are organic rather than paid. 99 percent of people never search on page 2. 75 percent of searches click on top three organic listings.

SEO puts you on page 1. SEO gives you the opportunity to be seen by people looking for the products and services you provide. Check the “Smart Dashboard” on my website to find SEO services that are available through Ask Amitabh.

Will A Visitor Grow With You?

2020-21 was the tipping point. 2022 to 2030 will record a technology carnage that humankind has never seen before. Take a picture of all the electronic gadgets that you are using today. They will all look slower and uglier in the next decade. Yet leaders are still not realizing the full scope of 5G, the internet of things, and voice-enabled technology that is about to hit us. Every content provider, church communicators included, is about to be rocked by Artificial Intelligence (A.I.) in the first five years and Virtual Reality (V.R.) in the next five years.

More and more people consume content on their smartphones. Paper tests and in-person training are outdated in the fast-paced world in which we live. The advancement in technology has revolutionized the e-learning space.

An estimated 83 percent of organizations use a Learning Management System (LMS) today. Your LMS should take care of all aspects of your church learning process – content, delivery, tracking, certification, registration, payments, quizzes and assessments, and gamification.

Mukti Volunteer Village (www.muktivillage.ca) is a registered Canadian charity that is committed to providing free education to children. Teachers, students, and Salesforce CRM professionals come together in Canada to volunteer as we provide online education to the underprivileged children in India.

It is critical to our charity on how we invest in our LMS and how it integrates with Salesforce CRM. Live reports and dashboards are crucial to tracking individual progress while reducing administrative hassles.

The same can be said about church leaders. We provide training to our congregation, volunteers, and staff. Your audience will grow and flourish when you can provide a mobile-friendly solution that is accessible 24/7.

When choosing an LMS, church leaders should consider the following things:

Users need to have access to the course catalogue, complete assigned course, and any evaluation to help them evaluate their performance.The church academy administrator needs to be able to manage the LMS, create courses, and assign specific learning groups with ease.The pastoral team must have access to user progress and communicate with e-learners.The cost considerations should include website, church app, CRM, LMS, e-Commerce, and direct marketing (email and text messaging). If you reach out to Ask Amitabh, we can recommend an affordable solution based on WordPress.

You must solve learning challenges your visitors face in order for them to grow with you.

Will A Guest Permit You?

The church website serves as a lead generator. It needs to fit into a larger digital ecosystem that supports your mission and vision. The goal is to encourage engagement through the website for both retention and spiritual formation. The key is whether your online visitors will permit you.

In The Brand Gap, Marty Neumeier articulates the danger of bloating your website with unnecessary information. Studies show people give websites 3 to 12 seconds to answer the question: “What is in it for me?”

Marty mentions two words:

· ‘Featuritus: Inexperienced communicators believe more is better.’· ‘Turfismo: Every department wants to be on the home page.’

Many of our church websites do just what Marty is warning us not to do. Behind every bloated website are leaders who have asked for it that way. Too much content is what you get as long as you treat a website like a glorified electronic bulletin. It is no longer 1990s. Our approach needs to be different.

Leaders need to remember:

Half your audience is not going to go beyond your home page.50 percent of all people who leave the website do it within 8 seconds.90 percent of people will not come back to your website.80 percent of people who visit your homepage are researching.Visitors are not reading your material. They are skimming the content while surfing the website.

 

Here are ten signs that your website needs to be changed:

If you like another church website better than yours.If your website design is outdated.If your website is not compatible with modern browsers.If your website is not mobile-friendly.If your website has poor content. If your content is not geared for Conversion Rate Optimization (CRO) and reflects a poor lead generation strategy.If your content is not optimized for Google Search Optimization (SEO). Copywriting, photographs, and videos should have the correct tine, look, feel.If your website is not visual (poor photographs) and lacks in beauty.If your website does not have the right type of videos. The era of Charlie Chaplin’s silent movie is over!If you are paying too much to update your website and find it difficult to make quick changes.If your website is unclear and fat (bloated with unnecessary information).

Your church website should tell an outsider how you and your services will solve their problem or meet their need. It is only then will the guest permit you by sharing their name and email with you.

Does Your Audience Like You?

“…if we are in the missional mode, we have no choice but to use social media to engage the culture. In God’s sovereignty, in the providence of God, God has raised us to serve in the moment God has given us. That’s the challenge of Christian response to technology.” – Leonard Sweet, American theologian, pastor, and author.

Your church needs to consider the main reasons behind social ministry. Social media is now a way of life. Your audience is connected to 20 plus social networks, ten plus messaging channels, and several chatbot platforms. Social ministry needs to take place in real-time.

The benefits of social media marketing include:

Offering online engagement to your audience.Building church awareness and sharing storiesReaching new people.Promoting events and services.

Ten questions that can help with a church social audit:

What social channels are appropriate for my church?What social platforms are performing well for my church?What type of marketing strategies have been effective in the past?What is your niche audience’s expectation from you?How are they engaging with social platforms?In what ways can your church use social ministry to reach out to them?What kind of posts have worked well in the past?What can your church offer the online audience through social channels as a solution to their pain points?Do you need to get rid of any irrelevant or outdated content on any of your social channels?Is your church social media strategy consistent with the bandwidth of your digital ministry team?

Those leading churches in North America are grappling with the extent to which technology and digital media now permeate people’s lives. Does your audience like you on social platforms?

A word of caution to leaders. Your church cannot be using too many social networks. Doing too little on social media is a mistake, but doing too much is even worse.

Several staff members of Elevation Church manage their social media and YouTube strategy. Most of the churches do not have such a team to work their digital marketing strategy. It is a flawed model to copy. The size of your team determines what needs to be done.

Does Your Audience Trust You?

It is tedious, but crucial, to cultivate an online presence for your church. People don’t show up at the first church they see. They research options beforehand. Churches cannot have a negative or a nonexistent presence online.

Online audience does not care about who you are, what you do, or what products and services you provide. They care about themselves, their wants, and their pain points. While they are forming an opinion about your church, they are processing four questions.

Do you support me or are you against me?How do I feel about what is going to happen?Am I more important than you are, or do you have more power over me?Do I have a say or not?

There is a growing need for church leaders to understand the impact that online conversations have on the reputation of their churches. People read online reviews of a local church, follow social media, and visit church websites. Engagement in an online conversation is more important than ever.

On the internet, word spreads quickly. Websites, online church, listings, reviews, and social channels offer visitors with a chance to learn about you and trust you. People rely on word of mouth and online reviews to inform their choices.

Sadly, negative words seem to resonate more powerfully online. Church leaders must make sure words that are more positive gets written down about their church than negative ones. Capturing the positive voice is possible if you can offer a simple way to encourage others to write a review about your church.

Did you know that consumers trust online reviews as much as personal recommendations? 92 percent of buyers are more likely to purchase after reading a review. Only 13 percent will purchase from a business with a one to two star rating. 70 percent of consumers will write a review for a business when asked.

People are more likely than ever to look for online reviews to assess a place before they engage. The reviews that a church receives should never be left to chance. Churches should ask their guests to leave reviews.

Church leaders should care about online reviews for five reasons. Firstly, it drives engagement. Secondly, referrals has always been the best marketing channel. Thirdly, it plays a vital role in local search rankings. Out of hundreds of SEO ranking factors, reviews are rated the fifth most important. The fourth reason is that online reviews provide the church with a chance to enter the conversation and establish trust. Lastly, reviews are a way for leaders to find out what their church is doing well and what needs improvement.

In the future, churches that actively manage their online reputation will flourish. They will built trust in virtual communities.

Can People Find You Online?

The need for churches to be found online is increasing. People use hashtags and find information using search engines. They search anywhere and at anytime. Search engines such as Google have improved the ability to locate information.

Consider this:

Local searches make up 49 percent of all Google searches.Around 18 percent of local searches end in a conversion (sale).Consumers who conducted local searches on their smartphones visited stores within one day.About half of all mobile searches are looking for a business name, address, phone number, or service information.

In all places where people are looking, your church details need to be available and accurate. This includes your online presence, apps, voice searches, and GPS navigation system. Finding and accessing church information is an important step in modern customer engagement.

Findability is a measurement of how easy it is for prospective members to locate and access church information. Visitors will look elsewhere for information if it isn’t there, lost in translation, or not intuitively structured. Though it can seem complex and overwhelming at first, findability is a critical component of a church’s digital marketing strategy.

Local listings are the data point across this broad, searchable ecosystem. It’s easy for church data set to get scattered across multiple sources, to change constantly, and to lead a prospect astray if not managed correctly. Proper local listing management connects three essential layers of data:

Layer 1: Data aggregators provide local data to sources like Google, Facebook, Yelp, Bing, Uber, and more.

Layer 2: Data amplifiers provide a standard format of business information that is used by thousands of developers to build other search tools.

Layer 3: Known as the ‘presentation layer’, data publishers seamlessly publish submitted local data to a range of accessible online, mobile, and navigating systems.

The church leadership has the responsibility to determine how they plan to appear online, through mobile apps, voice searches, and other methods. You do not need to be an expert in data layers. You can ‘Ask Amitabh’ about how to find a local listing management solution that works for your church.

 

 

Do People Know You?

Seth Godin, in “This is Marketing”, presents a few simple marketing questions. Here are seven that I think about:

What is the world view of the audience you’re seeking to reach?What change are you seeking to make?How will it change their status?Why will they tell their friends?What will they tell their friends?What asset are you building?Are you proud of it?

With our fast-paced and physical (physical and digital) world, people communicate with brands and online content more quickly and easily than ever. More than 4.2 billion people are already connected online, and 3.4 billion are publicly sharing their personal information with the world. How do you connect with them?

There have only been five Nike ads in traditional media that have reached more than a million views. Digital marketing is different. What this means is that if churches are not active online, they will miss out on the opportunity to engage with people on platforms they enjoy.

New technology has changed the customer journey, but the stimulating moment remains. Brand, product, or church leaders must cultivate strong stimuli. Digital marketing is a good start. Smart curation includes $120,000 USD a year of Google Ad Grants available to churches.

Studies show consumers are not interested in generic marketing messages. 74 percent of customers feel frustrated when brands send them irrelevant content. 79 percent of customers won’t consider an offer unless it is tailored to their prior interactions with the brand.

Churches ought to track all Google Ad campaigns. Leaders need to know positive return on relationships (ROR). Church Relationship Management (CRM) platform has enabled leaders to become more targeted. We can monitor response rates around digital campaigns.

As you review how people will get to know you, consider these three questions:

Where is your ideal audience?What will you be communicating based on what your audience needs?What is your strategy, free $120,000 USD of Google Ad Grants included, behind people getting to know you?