Beyond Profit: Embracing Christian Values in Your Marketing Strategy

By Ashley Monk

Truth At Work member, Ashley Monk, is the founder & CEO of Onya, an online advertising agency that helps clients reverse engineer their desired results through strategic and innovative outcomes. As a Facebook Verified Marketing Partner, contributing writer for Databox and JotForm, in addition to having clients featured in Forbes, Entrepreneur, and Huffington Post, Ashley helps growth-minded companies who have been unable to scale their services & digital products because they cannot dial in strategy or solve their own marketing problems.

Introduction

In a business climate dictated by profit margins and bottom lines, there is plenty of room for organizations committed to their mission to show up radically different and in alignment with a higher purpose. As Christian business leaders committed to Jesus, we have a responsibility to not only run organizations that produce profits for their shareholders but also to use the roles we’ve been given as a vehicle to transform the lives of others through our faith. That happens through transformative marketing. 

While many leaders deduce marketing as a results-driven function of the business designed to increase the volume of top-line revenue, marketing plays a far greater role. The most effective leaders understand that marketing is an amplifier to further the reach and impact of your organization. 

In this article, we’ll explore how you can leverage marketing not only with sound strategy but in a way that holistically leads with value and authenticity, allowing for impact that spans beyond just one organization. This is what happens when we incorporate our Christian values in marketing strategies.

Leading with Your Christian Values in Marketing

While there are many reasons marketing may fail, one common theme presented is the misalignment of marketing with core values. This produces various challenges, from emulating others’ tactics without genuine resonance to misaligned messaging and inconsistency. 

Unfortunately, many organizations lead with tactic first, and strategy second. They look at the trajectory of the competitor landscape and make shortsighted decisions to get ahead. This leads to a loss of perspective of the big picture. When our marketing efforts are rooted in values, they carry weight and resonance that transcends mere marketing campaigns – and instead become a reflection of our identity and mission as an organization and as followers of Jesus. 

As a result, this foundation ensures that our strategies are not exploitative, deceptive, or manipulative. Instead, they are driven by a genuine desire to serve. If the purpose and function of marketing exist to drive customer action, it’s crucial that the correct values are incorporated from the get-go to ensure congruence from that brand.

“But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, forbearance, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. Against such things, there is no law.”

– Galatians 5:22-23

Authenticity and Transparency

In a world saturated with advertisements and countless brands vying for attention, consumers have become adept at discerning which messages are genuine and which are purely transactional. 

From a marketing standpoint, authentic forms of communication not only allow us to further our mission but also position our companies correctly in the marketplace from the beginning. Given so many utilize bait-and-switch tactics to squeeze quick profits, authentically showing up builds trust naturally with your audience.

Utilizing messaging and campaigns that align with the makeup of who you are and how you serve your customers is one of the key pillars of authentic marketing. Ephesians 4:25 reminds us that this is a Christian value in marketing as Paul speaks of the importance of being transparent and honest with others: “Therefore, having put away falsehood, let each one of you speak the truth with his neighbor, for we are members one of another.”

Balancing Profit and Margin

While we’re called to further our mission, we’re also called to steward profit for our shareholders to utilize our resources with wisdom. Christian values in marketing require wise stewardship of the resources God has given us, doing so in a way that honors and glorifies Him (2 Chronicles 29:12-14). Effective marketing prioritizes profit and accountability to move the needle.

It is important to note that while results are critical, just like the sustainability of any sound organization, great marketing takes time and testing. To balance profit with your results, it’s essential to build sustainable practices through the long term. Utilizing practices with KPIs and objectives to measure over a 6 month period is the most effective way to measure this. To ensure there is accountability on both sides to follow through and that we are stewarding our resources well we must measure progress.

Impact Through Marketing

It’s been said that when we move the audience, the needle will follow. While it’s imperative to measure progress, instead of creating content for algorithms and the sheer purpose of its production, we must remember the best marketing is designed to serve others. Our Christian values in marketing lead us to approach business as missions. This means we have a lens for marketing that considers how God wants to love and serve others through our products and services.

This translates to creating campaigns that highlight service to customers, focuses on presenting the best foot forward on our services, and avoiding unethical tactics or language that diminish others.

Takeaways

At the end of the day, there are many parallels between marketing and the great commission. As a recap, here are a few takeaways to implement in your Christian values in marketing immediately:

1. • Align your core values in every element of your marketing, making it the foundation. 
   • Be intentional for your marketing efforts to be congruent with what you provide your customers. 
   • Remember that what isn’t measured doesn’t matter, but find a balance to sustainably test and scale your marketing efforts.
   • Leverage marketing not only as a tactic but as a vehicle for impact in and through your business.

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