More from Jay Conrad Levinson’s Guerilla Marketing Excellence, as adapted for church marketing. Part 1 of the series has a general introduction to Guerilla Marketing [Link]

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The designated Guerilla, Guerilla Marketing’s golden rule #27:

Marketing will succeed only if time and energy are regularly devoted to it [by church leadership] or someone [they] designate]….

We all know that marketing is a lot like flossing your teeth. It is not a whole lot of fun, but there’s agony ahead if you don’t do it. So too with marketing. Unless you market daily, there’s going to be trouble in the form of low or no visibility…. Unless you have the time and inclination to market [yourself] with verve, imagination, and intelligence, be sure you have a designated guerilla.

From the point of view of a church, I believe the designated guerilla has to be someone who is available several days a week; who fully gets the central mission and values of the church, and who sees the big picture; and someone who has “verve, imagination, and intelligence.”

Often, the designated guerilla will be the minister in a small church, or one of the ministers in a mid-size church. This will mean that the Board and other lay leaders will have to remove things from the minister’s task list so that s/he will have time to devote to marketing. (Large churches might think about finding a membership coordinator or executive director to be the designated guerilla.)

What if the minister of your small or mid-size church doesn’t want to be the designated guerilla? Maybe you’ll luck out and find a retired marketing genius in your church. Maybe you can count on a dedicated chair of a membership committee. Or maybe the minister should learn how to do marketing. Remember, it’s like flossing: if you don’t do it, all your teeth will eventually fall out.

Who is your designated guerilla? If you’re the designated guerilla, how much time do you spend doing guerilla marketing?