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Dr. Mary Manz Simon Reviews

Faith-Based Marketing: 

The Guide to Reaching 140 Million Christian Customers

During the 2009 M2Moms®-The Marketing To Moms Conference, to be held October 21st & 22nd at the Chicago Cultural Center, Dr. Mary Manz Simon will be moderating a panel on marketing to the faith-based Mom. So, we thought she would be the perfect person to review the latest book by Bob Hutchins and Greg Stielstra, Faith-Based Marketing: The Guide to Reaching 140 Million Christian Customers. Here, the children’s market expert for the Christian Booksellers Association, host of a daily radio program which airs on 200+ stations and award-winning author with 3 million books sold in the Christian channel, gives us her thoughts on why this book may (or may not) be a good addition to your marketing to mom library.

In Faith-Based Marketing, veteran marketing execs Greg Stielstra and Bob Hutchins give an overview of how to reach the 140 million Americans who worship weekly in Christian churches. In the first section of this handbook, the authors sketch an overview of the evangelical Christian market in the United States.  The second section applies basic marketing to develop WOM, radio, print, online and other strategies to reach this demographic. The third section offers resources. Case study vignettes and brief resource lists are included throughout. Readers are offered a three-month free subscription to an accompanying website with more lists, data, videos and additional market-specific information.          

Respect this audience. That’s a strong, underlying message in Faith-Based Marketing. And it’s a valid one. Corporate giants from children’s entertainment to publishing have attempted to penetrate the evangelical market, only to retreat after unsuccessful ventures. That is why Stielstra and Hutchins re-state and apply simple marketing truths: Get to know your customer. Study success stories. Speak the language, and when you do, know what you’re saying. Be authentic. These points are important in any market but critical to successfully reach the Christian demographic.

Readers who want Christian mom-specific information won’t find it here. Only MOPS (Mothers of Preschoolers) and ACSI (Association of Christian Schools International) contact information is included. Hearts at Home, Moms in Touch, and even the massive (and growing) home-school market aren’t mentioned. It’s apparent that content is slanted toward the authors’ background in publishing. Yet readers would have been well-served with case studies on Big Idea (birthplace of Veggie Tales), Precious Moments, Chick-Fil-A and other companies that connect successfully with church-going evangelical Christians. The Catholic market, appropriately not included, deserves a complete and separate treatment.

As an academic, I missed documentation. For example, the authors report on a survey sent to 70,000 ministry leaders, a sizeable research population by any standard, yet specifics are not provided. I also missed analysis of the large (and costly) marketing campaigns conducted recently by denominations, including the United Methodist Church and the United Church of Christ. Studying strategies applied from the Christian market to the general market can also be helpful, though the authors didn’t delve into that.

Yet there is valuable content worth digesting before anyone enters the Christian market, because ignoring the nuances of the faith-based world can derail the best-intentioned, best-designed plan. Readers would be smart to study this book with a highlighter, as Stielstra and Hutchins pinpoint many potentially fatal errors.

The authors correctly label the Christian consumer market a “power niche.” Books from the Christian market routinely reach bestseller status, including the current title The Shack. Yet despite record-breaking sales of The Purpose Driven Life and the large audiences that filled theaters for The Passion of the Christ and The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe, the Christian market is still a bit mysterious. Although the faith-based market will remain elusive to those who look only through a dollar-sign lens, readers who apply the helpful content of this book will be one step ahead.