Building a Platform: How to Reach 140 Million Christian Customers

The Purpose-Driven Life, The Passion of the Christ, and The Chronicles of Narnia were three global success stories shaped by effective marketing. When I met one of the two marketing minds behind them—Greg Stielstra—and discovered that he had co-authored a book called Faith-Based Marketing: The Guide to Reaching 140 Million Christian Customers, I had to know more.

In my blogging days—when I focused on how to do advertising well and how to heal its afflictions—I had a conversation with Greg that I haven’t forgotten. And it complements our discussion here at The High Calling on Building a Platform.

At first sight of the book title, I wondered, Was Greg an insider leaking church information to the adman, or a friend trying to redeem current marketing practices? Was he using his success to promote buying more stuff, or calling on businesses to love customers better?

In an age where many have to build a platform to make it in the world, Greg reminds us that it’s possible to market as a Christian.

Greg, what started Faith-Based Marketing?

While working on the marketing for The Purpose-Driven Life and The Passion of the Christ, I noticed how their success had opened business’s eyes to the size and influence of the Christian market segment. I also saw how poorly equipped many business people were to effectively reach it.

I heard an evangelist say, “We don’t serve people so we can convert them; we serve because we’ve been converted.” I suppose you could say the same about a marketing evangelist. But is it possible for marketers to see people as the bottom line and not as a means to an end?

Not only is it possible, it’s how things were for centuries and how, very soon, they will be again.

For most of history, markets were places where people gathered face-to-face. Buyers explained their needs. Sellers offered solutions. You still encounter a remnant of this era today when the store clerk asks, “May I help you?” The focus was on people and their needs first, and product solutions second.

Mass marketing rudely interrupted this market conversation from 1920 to 2000, give or take a few years. Mass media gave business a megaphone that allowed it to speak to millions of people at once, but prevented people from talking back. The conversation became a monologue. Instead of asking people what they needed, sellers used media to tell nameless masses what they were selling. This shifted marketing’s focus from people to products. It insulated business from its customers, dehumanized markets and transformed people into consumers. And it encouraged business to view people as merely a means to an end.

Fortunately, the digital revolution is transforming markets again. Not only does the Internet restore the conversation between buyers and sellers, it also enables buyers to talk with each other on a global scale.

The digital revolution wrested the megaphone from the marketer’s hands. Business can no longer shout about itself over the crowd. Instead it must, once again, join the conversation by focusing on people, not products, and learn again to ask, “May I help you?”

I see this transformation taking place, Greg. A frequent theme in the book is encouraging this healthy relationship between marketers and consumers. Writers talk about it in terms of building a platform, where they grow an audience and eventually sell books to it—a tricky thing when that audience (often fellow Christians) began in friendships. We know money strains relationships, so what advice would you give to the sellers among us?

I don’t agree that money strains relationships. If we value money more than people, then that attitude will certainly strain relationships. However, if we put relationships first, then the money will take care of itself. C. S. Lewis said, “Aim at heaven and you get Earth thrown in. Aim at Earth and you get neither.” I think that insight applies to doing business with the church: Aim at serving people and you’ll get fair compensation thrown in. Aim at money and you’ll get neither.

Early on you tell readers, “We won’t provide you with ways to exploit Christians….” I wondered if you crossed the line at times, especially with some of your marketing tips.

There’s a difference between effective marketing and manipulation. Churches put their signs in front of the building rather than behind it because in front it more effectively communicates with passersby. Is that manipulation? Good design or handwritten mailings make a person more likely to read and consider an offer, but in the end, each individual still makes his or her own choice. A free gift sweetens the pot for those who take fast action. It gives the buyer more value for their money which is hardly the “devious influence” that defines manipulation.

But if I’m trying to build my platform or grow my franchise, I don’t want to sound like an infomercial, or be the salesman who can’t be told “no.”

I don’t like high-pressure tactics either, but realizing there is a deadline does encourage people to consider the offer rather than putting off that consideration. It’s certainly not unfamiliar to Christians: “If you died tonight, do you know where you would spend eternity?”

Touché.

In several places, you do address the concern about marketers exploiting Christians. And rightly so. The Church needs to be a cultural model of simplicity and stewardship, not a new frontier for any and all marketing explorers. But your book, in a way, seems like unfiltered access-granting by influential insiders like yourself. I fear it could build corporate marketing arsenals that infiltrate the church. Help me understand your intent.

I think you’ve woven several questions/issues into one and I’d like to identify and answer them individually.

First, Does Faith-Based Marketing Encourage Consumerism? It’s not as if Faith-Based Marketing will suddenly cause Christians to be exposed to advertising; that’s happening already—at an average of 3000 ads per person, per day, regardless of religious beliefs. Rather, Faith-Based Marketing will help ensure that the ads we already experience respect Christians.

In the book we expressly warn business against appeals to greed or encouraging people to covet. If anything, our advice should result in more responsible advertising that better aligns with Christian beliefs.

Second, Unfiltered Access by Insiders allows Corporate Marketing to Infiltrate the Church. The idea that we should restrict access to the church, or that the church has “insiders” and, therefore, “outsiders,” is very troubling to me. Restricting access to the church flies in the face of the Great Commission. Should we send missionaries to the remotest parts of Africa but stop business people at the church door? Are churches bunkers that protect believers from society or a haven of hope for all the people God made and loves? Are churches private country clubs for believers or field hospitals for all people wounded by sin?

Third, the overall theme of this question seems to be, “When Business and Christianity Meet, Christianity Loses.” Whether you fear collaborations between businesses and churches, or Christians and those who haven’t yet found Christ, depends, I suppose, on which you believe is superior: the corruptive power of greed or the redemptive power of the gospel?

My God created the universe. He is more powerful than Satan, sin, and death. He has preserved his church throughout history and will continue to do so. And he will save whomever he chooses and nothing, NOTHING, can stop him. Wal-Mart is hardly a threat.

Years from now, what indicators will make you say, “It worked, praise God!”?

One indicator will be business people, agencies, and media talking about reaching and serving Christians as often, and with as much respect, as they talk about market segments like African Americans, Hispanics, Soccer Moms, or Gays and Lesbians.