Each year, I look for the most effective ads of A/V/L gear targeting the House of Worship (HOW) market. I can tell you that, once again, the vast majority (greater than 99 percent – I’ve looked through hundreds of terrible examples) of the current ads for the HOW technology market are either A) too niche […]

Is the church market profitable for you? Or is it the ‘elephant in the room’ that your sales and marketing teams don’t know how to address? This market, which will likely spend over a billion dollars in 2016 on Audio, Video, Lighting (AVL) technology and infrastructure, seems to be harder than other verticals for many […]

Every local church should be making a difference — a notable impact — on and in their local communities. Technology is a force multiplier and can be a helpful part of churches making an impression and fostering an environment for attendees. There are four aspects to helping facilitate this kind of impact that technology providers […]

Reaching the right church decision-maker with your technology solutions for AVL is obviously important; what’s less obvious is exactly how and where to reach them. I’ve included a starting list of potential places to reach churches online as well as the kind of messaging your firm should focus on in order to maximize your qualified […]

The church bought all of your gear and are fully equipped to leverage the best of your technology. While this sounds like a sales dream, the natural progression will now turn downhill unless you continue to provide the church with what they really need most: your expertise. Interestingly, the Second Law of Thermodynamics provides us […]

“We don’t have enough sales in the church market,” laments an audio/video/lighting (AVL) integration firm owner. “We need to find a way to do more of these church installs…” he says, letting his sentence trail off as an open invitation for me to answer with some huge epiphany or closely-guarded secret about having success in […]

I’m not a fan of link baiting titles (“Five ways to better…three steps for…”, etc.) but I was tempted to entitle this article “The Five Questions to Ask Churches” because, well, that’s what I’ve written about. However, there’s a warning that comes with this article: These are not sales techniques, but are a paradigm shift […]

I have a love/hate relationship with Google; it serves me ads that it thinks are relevant to me, but often they key in on something that’s simply not representative of my needs and the frequency and repetitive nature of seeing an irrelevant ad irritates me. In a similar way, I think that churches are irritated […]

I used to make my living as a consultant focused on the large building programs of churches investing millions of dollars at a time. It was not difficult to allocate 10 percent to 15 percent of a $20 million dollar budget on audio, video and lighting and make a very comfortable living. Many of my […]

A casual perusal of the house of worship facilities and technology magazines is enlightening: the majority of advertisers push marketing pablum to reach every church, yet fail to identify with almost all of the audience. Their failure is not the inclusion of church lingo or boring stock photography, but in missing the first maxim of […]

Vision drives need. Need drives technology. Technology drives budget. This simple truth is needed not only within the AVL industry, but within local churches, where purchasing decisions are often made in a vacuum of vision. Solving today’s issue may be a temporary fix, but ‘band-aids don’t fix bullet holes’ that are left from poor planning […]

It’s just a matter of time. The house of worship market has grown up, and with it, has come the need for specialized staff, beyond the technical arts directors, to include a new team member focused on leveraging the digital communications channels that crop up daily. We are about to see a Pastor of Digital […]

While you’re at InfoComm, take a look for technologies that are NOT typically associated with the AVL market but have clear in-roads for systems integrators: networking, cloud computing and storage, automation technologies (and not just AV automation) and even Bluetooth Low Energy. The trends that look beyond thin displays, LED lighting and new levels of […]

The debate between those who want technology turned off during church services versus those who not only want it on, but want to actively use it as part of the church-going experience, is a matter of personal preference. That being said, there are plenty of churches using passive technology that would jump at the chance […]

The old sales trick of providing a list of desired features and benefits to overcome purchase barriers may still work with some church leaders, but the Internet has taught consumers a thing or two about what is offered and what they really want. To justify the expense, churches need metrics from real data. Rethinking Repairs Technology […]

I posted an article here on rAVe I wrote about IMAG (Image Magnification — live video projected onto a screen) and stated that it was overused in small venue churches where it wasn’t difficult to see the action on the stage without a live video image. There are times where limited usage of live video for infrequent […]

Audio. Video. Lighting. Budgets. Safety? When churches think about audio, video and lighting (AVL) technology, safety isn’t on the radar for the vast majority of pastors. However, with the exponential increase in the use of flown speaker arrays, screens, and lighting fixtures, keeping the technical staff and congregants who sit below these devices safe needs to […]

How much should a church set aside for making audio, video and lighting (AVL) upgrades? As each church is unique and budgets are vastly different from church to church, the best way to answer that is to look at what drives their budget. Considering about 50 percent of a church’s annual finances are dedicated towards […]

When churches realized the value of video had also intersected with high brightness and low cost, the multi-site and satellite campus model went from a handful of mega churches (churches with greater than 2,000 in weekend attendance) to tens of thousands of churches. With this exponential explosion of multi-site churches — that is, a separate […]

For an industry that leads in so many ways, the Audio/Video/Lighting manufacturers still have a lot to learn when it comes to reaching targeted prospects and clients. The dissonance from engineering to marketing is jarring. I have identified “Three Mistakes AVL Manufacturers Are Making” in this month’s Trends article, hoping to help re-frame the conversations […]

There’s a great quote from an article by John Chambers, CEO of Cisco Systems, about hacking into systems: “There are two types of companies: Those who have been hacked, and those who don’t yet know they have been hacked.” While Mr. Chambers point is about securing data, networks, and storage, the quote prompted a different […]

As a house of worship consultant to manufacturers and systems integrators, I’ve seen and heard from a wide array of companies in the Audio/Video/Lighting (AVL) space about their experience with the church market. I think your experience at a manufacturer or dealer will likely follow one of these patterns of thought and leadership. All the […]

“I’ve tried to escape the AV industry multiple times… but I just can’t,” laughed Anthony Coppedge as he talked about his life in AV. Anthony needs no introduction, but instead, deserves one. For nearly 20 years, Anthony has worked in the secular world of AV, the ministry world of church staff, and the para-church ministry […]

Churches. They’re still not on the front page of many manufacturers and systems integrators based on past experiences with this market segment or perceptions about what church even looks like today. And, still, there it is: The underserved market that’s got money to spend and a need for what you make and sell. 2015 has […]

Fellow geeks have united and converged upon Las Vegas, Nevada once again for the annual tech-fest that is the Consumer Electronics Show, and the future’s digital handwriting is on the proverbial wall: audio/video/lighting (A/V/L) technology is once again the dominant technology. With prognostications aside, the trends of these present-future technologies have a direct impact on […]

2014 has been a banner year in the A/V/L tech world. We’ve seen more innovations — deep, significant changes that are still reverberating. It’s certainly exciting, but as much as there’s been change, some things never change, including the need for better training for the operators of all this marvelous technology. With a new year […]

At the end of 2014, I rounded up half a dozen ads of A/V/L gear targeting the house of worship HOW market. I chose ads that were placed in more than one publication and published through at least two different publishing companies. All ads were scored in three categories, on a one-to-five scale where one […]

If your firm had the goal of growing the bottom line by 10 percent next year, would you consider the possibility that you might just be able to do that by selling into and serving the House of Worship market? It’s true, and there are manufacturers and systems integrators focusing on this underserved vertical market […]

“This church market — it’s kind of a thing now, eh?” This is how the A/V/L industry sees the church market. Manufacturers and systems integrators are highlighting their House of Worship (H.O.W.) market products and installations more than ever before. The emphasis is directly correlated with the increase of sales into churches, which are starting […]

Near cinema-quality field video capture is available for well under $10K, a price point so low that the A/V/L industry feels threatened by low cost technology dazzling the focus and buying power of consumers. A visit to InfoComm or NAB quickly reveals a rush to service the exponential growth of the sub $10K market space, […]

This month, I highlight one of the biggest innovators not in the A/V/L market: Dell. For reasons that will become abundantly clear, this company has figured out how to listen to customers, solicit feedback and incorporate customer service into a commoditized market — and still have steady revenue. It’s important to learn what Dell can […]

A digital software company that focuses on building platforms for customer service knows a thing or two about what happens when customers are unhappy with customer service. Zendesk released a study in 2013 of 1,000 customers in the U.S. to understand consumer habits and complaints, and a few of the findings are especially noteworthy for […]