VisitorTap
Everything Churches Need to Know about VisitorTap
Every day, people in your city are searching for spiritual connection. In the U.S. alone, there are more than 1,000,000 monthly searches for “churches near me.” At the same time, Americans now spend over 4.5 hours a day on their phones. The opportunity to reach people digitally has never been greater.
By Kalye Antonyuk
Every day, people in your city are searching for spiritual connection. In the U.S. alone, there are more than 1,000,000 monthly searches for “churches near me.”¹ At the same time, Americans now spend over 4.5 hours a day on their phones.¹ The opportunity to reach people digitally has never been greater.
But here’s the challenge: 79% of churches admit they don’t have a clear digital strategy.¹ That means many pastors are missing the very place where people are looking first—online.
To help you bridge that gap, here are 7 proven church marketing strategies every pastor can use to reach more people, make meaningful connections, and grow a healthy church.
Social media is a core part of your church digital marketing strategy. That means treating every post, caption, and video description as searchable content—not just updates for people already in your congregation.
Your Facebook page, Instagram posts, and YouTube videos aren’t just seen inside those platforms, they’re also indexed by Google. That means when someone types “non-denominational church near me” or “church with child care” into Google, your social media content has the potential to appear.
In fact, having accessible answers on your socials is now critical. A report from eMarketer found that 46% of Gen Z and 35% of millennials prefer social media over traditional search engines when looking for information.² If seekers can’t find your church on socials, you may be invisible to an entire generation actively searching for spiritual connection.
By weaving phrases of what your church has to offer naturally into your captions, video descriptions, and hashtags, you’re doing more than making your posts engaging—you’re making them discoverable.
Texting has become one of the most reliable and effective ways to communicate in 2025. 98% of text messages are opened and most are read within minutes.³ For churches, that means nearly every message sent has the potential to be seen and acted on.
But the true power of texting isn’t in sending mass reminders—it’s in building personal connections. A short, well-timed message can open the door for conversation, encouragement, or even prayer in the moment that someone needs it.
Research also shows that timing matters. The first 36 hours after a guest’s visit are critical for retention.⁴ When contacted in that window, up to 85% of guests return.⁴ Wait 72 hours, and the number drops to 60%. Delay a week, and it falls to just 15%.⁴ How quickly you follow up can determine whether someone becomes a regular attender or quietly slips away.
When someone in your community searches for “churches near me,” their first impression is made online. This happens before they ever enter your sanctuary. If your church’s information is missing, outdated, or inconsistent across platforms like Google Maps, Apple Maps, and social media, many seekers will quietly move on to the next option. Research shows that less than 1% of all clicks go to results on the second page of Google.⁵ In other words, if your church isn’t showing up on page one, you’re practically invisible to the people searching for you.
Voice assistants like Siri, Alexa, and Google Assistant are becoming the main way people search for local needs. When someone says, “Hey Siri, find a church near me,” the results come from digital directories like Google Maps, Apple Maps, and Yelp. If these platforms lack your church’s information or show inconsistent details, you won’t appear in the results at all.
The challenge? Only 2% of churches are optimized for voice search.⁶ Research shows that 58% of consumers have used voice search to find local businesses in the past year.⁷ Nearly half of these users use it every day.⁷ This means that many churches are not visible in one of the main ways people find local places.
To help pastors measure where they stand, VisitorReach created a free Digital Health Assessment. In less than a minute, discover how many people searched “churches near me” in YOUR city and receive your 9-Page Report on if your church is digitally positioned to connect
with them.
One of the most effective forms of church marketing today is running ads where people already spend their time—on Facebook and Instagram. Social platforms now account for the majority of ad traffic, and they consistently drive the highest engagement for churches.
The strength of this kind of church advertising is that it connects you with people who are already searching for a spiritual home or open to exploring faith.
Instead of running broad awareness campaigns, churches see the greatest impact with lead generation campaigns that open the door to real 1:1 text conversations.
Because at the end of the day, likes and impressions are not true measures of engagement, conversations are.
That’s why VisitorReach helps churches run multi-platform campaigns that go beyond clicks and impressions. Every ad is designed to open a 1:1 conversation, always via a text message where pastors take personal prayer requests and send personal church invites.
In fact, churches using VisitorReach typically start 30–120 new text conversations every month with seekers in their city. That means your ad spend isn’t just creating visibility; it’s creating real opportunities for connection.
As Pastor Jake from The Father’s House explains:
“There’s tons of different ways that you can market as a church, but it’s really hard to actually measure success. Like, are you talking to the people that are clicking on those ads? And the answer is no. VisitorReach helps you to market in an intelligent way because not only do you know people are clicking on these ads, but you actually can one-on-one have a pastoral conversation and answer people’s questions and make sure that that touch actually turns into a visit to your church.”
Attracting new people with church ads or online marketing is only part of the challenge. What happens when they visit is just as important. In fact, nearly 80% of guests decide within the first ten minutes if they’ll return, yet only 21% ever come back.⁹ That means your church marketing strategy must go beyond visibility and address the full visitor journey.
Every detail matters: Is your website clear about service times? Is your parking lot easy to navigate? Is children’s check-in safe and welcoming? Do guests know where to go after service, and are they followed up with personally? These touchpoints shape how visitors experience your church long before they hear a sermon.
To help churches strengthen these areas, we created a printable Church Guest Experience Assessment Checklist. You can use it with your team to review and enhance your visitor pathway.
Visiting a church rarely happens after a single ad or invitation. People need time—and multiple interactions—before they feel comfortable engaging. Research shows it takes 12–15 meaningful touchpoints before someone decides to visit a church.¹⁰
These touchpoints are the building blocks of effective church marketing. They can include seeing a social media post, reading a devotional email, receiving a text, hearing a testimony, clicking on an ad, or being personally invited. Each one builds trust and communicates your church’s heart before a person ever walks through your doors.
With VisitorReach, churches can create these layers of interaction—appearing in search results, running targeted ads that look and feel like your church, connecting through 1:1 texting, and following up with personalized outreach. Every step adds up until the seeker feels ready to visit.
Follow-up is one of the most important parts of church marketing, yet most churches miss it. In fact, only about a quarter of first-time guests ever receive any kind of follow-up.¹¹ Yet, research shows that growing churches with intentional follow-up keep around twice as many guests compared to churches without a clear system.¹¹
That’s where VisitorReach helps. More than traditional church marketing, it’s a digital outreach platform created by pastors to help churches grow. With personalized ad campaigns, stronger local visibility, and 1:1 text conversations, VisitorReach takes digital marketing for churches beyond awareness and into real relationships.
And with VisitorTap NFC cards—included in every subscription or available on their own—guests can share their info with a quick tap on Sunday. Their details flow straight into the dashboard, connecting them to a follow-up journey right away. To learn how VisitorReach and VisitorTap might look like in your church, book a 15-minute call today.
As Pastor Jake from The Father’s House shared:
“VisitorReach helps you to market in an intelligent way because not only do you know people are clicking on these ads, but you actually can one-on-one have a pastoral conversation and answer people's questions and make sure that touch actually turns into a visit to your church. VisitorReach helps the church be the hands and feet of Jesus if we respond appropriately.”
At the end of the day, it’s not about impressions or clicks; it’s about souls. Every ad becomes a doorway to a conversation, and every conversation is a chance to point someone toward Jesus.
Footnotes:
Create 100+ monthly connections with people in your area, have meaningful SMS conversations, and watch new visitors walk through your doors — All through the VisitorReach App!
