Last night I went to dinner at one of my favorite local restaurants, Andrea’s.  The owner, who has referred to me as ‘the bad economy lady’, said a lot of people have been asking about BADecono.me.  So what is BADecono.me, you ask?  It was our Easter marketing campaign.

BADecono.me is a microsite.  If anyone is not familiar with that term…

Ours was designed for a temporary purpose, to market Easter services, but with the intention of keeping it long term.  The advantage to keeping a microsite is that it can still generate traffic from the topic.  Just because we’re done with that message doesn’t mean the economy is better.  ;)  Microsites can be geared toward any specific topic.  We had another one a while back called mymiserablemarriage.com.  We still get frequent traffic to that site and that was used over two years ago.  Easter is almost two months past and BADecono.me is still generating 10% of the traffic to our website. 

Here’s some info that might help if you want to do a microsite.

Create mystery.  We are a seeker church and we are always looking for new ways to connect with people that might not have a church home, or for that matter, might not even be looking for one.  When using a microsite, a catchy domain name that sparks some interest and has people curious as to what it is works best.

Simplicity.  Keep it simple.  We decided not to use a tag line or give any other info.  We had magazine ads, a billboard, bringer (biz) cards, car stickers and more, all with just the domain name.

Website design.  We didn’t want to take them straight to our church website.  We needed them to know what this was about.  Add a short flash movie and some text, then point them to your church site.

Culturally relevant.  Get your message to people where they are.  Even if you’re not struggling in these challenging economic times, chances are you know someone that is.  The domain BADecono.me could have been about anything or anybody related to the economy… credit counseling, a store with a sale, a bank, credit card company… you get the picture.  It made people curious.

Get the word out.  How do you get your message out there?  Be creative!  First, start with your budget.  There are many inexpensive, creative ways to get your message out there!  The biggest one for our church was equipping our attenders with tools to invite people to church.

Okay, I’ve bored you with enough text, how about a few photos?

BADecono.me billboard

BADecono.me window sticker

Okay, so maybe a little more text…  How did we get the word out?  Here’s a quick-list:

• A billboard, which we got on sale, paid for one month but it stayed up for 2.5 months.
• 700 car window (soccer mom) stickers.  We made these in-house so the cost was $20.  Wooohooo!
• Lots of bringer cards.  Again, a cheap way to give your attenders a way to invite people.  These are 4×6 photos cut in half.  Some had just the domain, others had Easter services info.
• A bringer video.  We had a video that was emailed to our email list that people could forward to a friend.
• We gave away money.  $1000.  One dollar bills with BADecono.me stickers.  Don’t worry, they peel off.  But giving them out, well that is soliciting, and the police WILL stop you.  ;)
• Magazine ads in Frisco Style Magazine
• Online ads through frisco-online.com

You get the picture!  Lots of ways… so little time.  ;)  Oh, and here’s a pic of the money.

FREE MONEY!!!