I was walking the streets of New Orleans yesterday, taking in the sights of this interesting city before I had to catch a plane.
I didn’t expect to get a church marketing lesson from a salsa shop.
I wandered into the Pepper Palace, a store that specializes in all things sauce and salsa. The store has it’s own products — salsa, hot sauce, wing sauce, barbecue sauce, dips, spreads, you name it. It also carries a large variety of other brands. Obviously, the main goal is to push its own brand first. (Really, I don’t need to buy Tabasco or Tapatio in New Orleans when I can buy it at Walmart, right?)
The Pepper Palace has a large rectangular counter in the middle of the store that displays all of their Pepper Palace products. There were at least 50 different Pepper Palace products — all of which you could sample. They had tortilla chips stationed strategically around the counter so you could freely take a chip, dip it in the sauce and have a sample. The other, more commercial brands were spread out on the shelves that lined the walls. Jimmy Buffet was on the stereo. And two friendly guys stood behind the counter, ready to assist and answer any questions.
I tried a dozen or more sauces (hence, my current heartburn) and settled on a bottle of something fun for a relative. Effective marketing that worked like a charm!
The church marketing lesson is this:
My focus rarely left the center counter. I was drawn to the main thing — the Pepper Palace brand.
As Christians, our brand is Christ.
When people come to our churches, it’s easy to get caught up in the myriad activities and lose sight of the main thing — worshiping God. When people come to our churches (this includes the staff), we need to have in place an atmosphere conducive to keeping everyone focused on Christ, not on the myriad other things that fight for our attention.
How does your church work to keep people focused on Christ?