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Marketing Your Pregnancy Center Online

Tips for website design & promotion: Early Stages of website planning

Before you even begin looking for a website designer, be sure you have thoroughly thought through the reasons why you have decided to have a website and what your long term strategy is online. Without a clear, well thought foundation and a long term online operational plan, you are destined to merely waste money while accomplishing little.

Why should a pregnancy center have a website?

Ask yourself the following questions:
• Who is this website really for? (donors or clients)
• What expectations do I have of this website? (will it magically, inexpensively draw a crowd or will it require much ongoing work to be effective)
• How much money am I willing to invest in this website? (initially and long term)
• Who will initially design the website? (a board member’s son or a professional)
• What will we do with the website once it is live on the web? (leave it alone or constantly modify and update it)
• Who will provide ongoing management for the website? (can someone in-house be trained & are you willing to purchase the software in necessary)

Let’s look at the above questions in detail:

1. Who is this website really for?

Are you going online with a site visibly targeting clients but philosophically existing merely to please donors? For a client targeted site to truly work (and appeal to clients), you have to think completely with the client in mind. How can you attract abortion minded teens & women (if that is your targeted client)? What wording will attract them and what wording will repel them? Some of the traditional pregnancy center phraseology which we use will send red flags immediately up to the contemporary abortion minded teen and make them leave your website after a few seconds’ read.

Look up a dozen or so pregnancy center websites and compare them. Then, pull in a handful of teenage girls from a local public school and have them give you feedback on those pregnancy center websites. You’d be surprised how valuable such a survey can be toward helping you develop a site which appeals directly toward your target audience.

Remember, today’s young people live online. Abortion clinics and their physicians/owners know that all too well and spend hundreds of thousands of dollars annually attracting these young people to their sites and their teachings.

We must—yes, we must—develop powerful online presences to reach out to our young people and let them know the other side: the truth. Today’s young people don’t flip the pages of the yellow pages; they merely type in a phrase or two online and find their answers on the web.

2. What expectations do I have of this website?

The old adage “if you build it, they will come” does not apply to pregnancy center websites. All too often, a pregnancy center will invest hundreds (if not several thousand) of dollars into having a very attractive website built, and then they will do nothing further with it. Apparently they believe that potential clients will just stumble across it, even though it doesn’t appear in a typical search engine listing’s first several pages unless you specifically type in the organization’s full name.

Having a pregnancy center website can be a complete waste of your money— unless you are willing to promote it and keep it up to date. Both take a lot of work and can also take a lot of money. If you want your website to “work,” then you’ve got to work hard to get it to work. If you do it just right, then you’ll be completely surprised by the results. An effective pregnancy center website
marketed properly can bring in more clients & phone calls than a full page yellow pages ad.

3. How much money am I willing to invest in this website?

For a website to truly work, you’ve got to get serious and be willing to invest some major funds into the initial design, the ongoing maintenance, and the site marketing. If you still believe that yellow page advertisements are the premiere means of attracting abortion minded clients into your center, then think again.

Research studies show that people are relying more and more on obtaining their information online in contrast with the paper yellow pages.

In my studies when I was director of a pregnancy center, even the poorest of my clients still regularly accessed the internet (at libraries, schools, etc.) and had email addresses. Teens I interviewed told me consistently that the internet was their number one source of information (with Google being their primary search engine).

If you are still spending hundreds or thousands of dollars each month on yellow pages advertising but only a small amount in comparison on your website/online marketing, then it is time to rethink your strategy.

4. Who will initially design the website?

Has a teen at a local high school who has experimented in class with html or possibly owns a version of FrontPage volunteered to do your website? Or perhaps the son of a board member or volunteer has said he’ll do it for “cheap.”

A website should directly reflect the quality of your ministry. Many people, when considering visiting a local business, search for it online. When they see the website, they will make an instantaneous judgment about what your organization is like. If your site is not up to par with other professionally designed sites, then you may never see that potential client walk through your doors.

If you hire a professional to design your website, it is important that they understand pregnancy center ministry. PRCs are unlike many other businesses, especially in the sense that they focus on women who are probably not looking for pregnancy centers. Ideally, you would find a professional web designer who is pro life and who has spent time at your pregnancy center. Ideally, this person would even donate his/her time, but this is quite rare as a quality site will take
many, many work hours to set up properly. Don’t be afraid to budget a couple thousand dollars to have a well designed site made. Remember: you get what you pay for.

5. What will we do with the website once it is live on the web?

As I mentioned earlier, it is a grave accident to launch a website and then do nothing with it. It is vital to regularly update each page (possibly once a month do some minor wording/picture changes) as well as constantly add new content. We’ll get into the reasoning behind that in future articles. You must constantly tell your clients about your site, promote it in your yellow pages ad, promote it on billboards and on the radio, and tell your donors & churches about it. A center
must also aggressively promote the site online, and I will discuss that later in a future article.

6. Who will provide ongoing management for the website?

Some website designers conveniently incorporate content management software into their sites so the end user can easily make minor changes (usually wording) to individual pages. In this case, it is usually not difficult for a volunteer or paid staff member to be assigned the responsibility of regularly updating the website. With many custom made websites, you will need to purchase software such as Adobe’s [Macromedia] Dreamweaver in order to make changes (major & minor). This involves a bit more of a learning curve, but a staff member can be taught
how to use this. Obviously, more complex operations would need to be done by a professional, but minor updates can be taken care of in-house if you are willing to purchase the Dreamweaver (or other) software.

If you wish to not get entangled with having to make regular updates/changes to your website, then you may enter into a contract with your web designer (or some other professional) to have them make changes upon request.

It is usually best to keep your pages gradually being changed so they will not get stale. It is also good to make major design changes every so often, but this involves more expense and depends upon the level of importance you assign your website.

What is your long term strategy?

With every step you make in pregnancy center ministry, it is vital to look ahead, way down the road, and develop a plan which you can take to reach a future goal that you develop. Without the roadmap, you’ll find yourself wandering all over with no purpose at all. Without the long term strategy for your website and without a set list of goals to accomplish with your website, you’ll never know if you’ve succeeded (or failed).

A website is a tool, and it is important to never forget that. If you were to go out and buy $1000 worth of top quality auto mechanic tools for your vehicle and then leave them to rust in your tool chest in the garage, don’t be surprised when your vehicles still break down and your tools become useless. After a website is begun, it must be constantly used and you must constantly invest more time & energy into it in order for it to accomplish your goals.

Your long term strategy for your website is directly related to the amount of money & time you’re willing to invest into your site. You might start it off small for the first year and then gradually increase how much you invest & expect from it over the next couple years. Keep your long term strategy flexible, because your perspective on the effectiveness of online advertising just might change when the phone calls to your center pick up and clients keep telling you they found you online.

We’ll touch more on long term strategy planning throughout the next three articles.

Andrew Jensen is president of Sozo Firm, an SEO/web marketing consulting agency which helps corporations, small businesses, colleges, pregnancy centers & churches effectively promote themselves online.

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