Why Marketing Costs More Than You Think

This week’s article comes from guest contributor Joe Graves—a pastor, author, and nonprofit communications consultant with years of experience helping churches and grassroots organizations clarify their message and expand their reach. Joe approaches his work with a deep theological lens and a thoughtful, distinctive voice.

If you know me, you know that I value learning from a range of differing voices and perspectives—and Joe’s is one I’m glad to share with you today.

Read on:

“Suppose one of you wants to build a tower. Won’t you first sit down and estimate the cost to see if you have enough money to complete it?” - Luke 14:28

When it comes to launching a new nonprofit, church, or significant event, most leaders underestimate just how much marketing actually costs. From branding and websites to print materials, mailers, and digital ads, the expenses add up quickly. A strong launch campaign can run into the tens of thousands of dollars, and even a single fundraising banquet or community festival often requires a significant marketing budget to succeed.

In fact, marketing tends to always cost more than we think. Here are a few reasons why:

Reason #1 – Marketing Means Paying People

Whatever marketing strategy you employ, know what its costs are. In many situations, the costs associated with marketing are tied to people who are trying to provide for themselves and their families through their professional work, and it’s ethical and appropriate to compensate them fairly (Luke 10:7).

If you ask a professional graphic designer to come up with a compelling logo mark, it's suitable for them to be compensated. The same goes for a mailer. The reason they cost so much is that someone has to print them, find the addresses, make sure they are sorted correctly—and don’t forget the mail person who has to walk your neighborhoods to deliver them. (You can actually save some money if you do some of this yourself through the USPS website.)

A marketing firm will help you develop a social media strategy, but it will cost you. A part-time intern might be willing to volunteer for a summer to run your social media, but eventually, you'll need to find a way to do it long-term. If you can find volunteers to help with marketing, great! Be sure to express lots of gratitude, because the work of marketing is worthy of compensation.

Reason #2 – Most Efforts Will Fail Before They Succeed

Most of my leadership and coaching experience is working with small, grassroots organizations that have long cut their marketing budget due to decline (or are old enough to not have one). When I propose they might need to spend money on marketing, the best of them will invest a few hundred dollars on some social media advertising, or if they are feeling really courageous, maybe a few thousand on a mailer. When these efforts produce very little return, they become even more convinced that marketing isn’t worth their investment.

The truth is more complicated. Marketing takes more than dipping your toes in the water. If you want it to work for your mission, you’ll need to jump all in.

Jesus explains it well in his parable of sowing seeds. If you want the seeds to reach good soil, you’ll need to waste a lot of seeds along the way. If, in the spirit of “good stewardship,” you only throw a few seeds out, it’s likely they will land on the path and be trampled or amongst the weeds and be choked out. This is the same for marketing.

If you ever felt like marketing didn’t work, it’s possible you haven’t done enough of it or you haven’t created the systems needed to ensure your marketing translates into organizational growth.

Take direct mail as an example: sending 5,000 postcards might only get a dozen people to respond, but it still costs you three to four thousand dollars. If you spend a few thousand on mailers for an event, and only a few people come, don't be surprised. You got just as many people as you'd expect with that level of investment. To reach hundreds, you may need to send 100,000, but it might only cost you around $10,000.

Scale brings savings.

It would be better to spend $10,000 on a mailer that will produce the number of people you hope to see than to pay half that on a mailer that doesn't make any significant results.

Reason #3 – The Smaller You Are, the Bigger it Feels

What percentage should I spend on marketing? I have bad news for small nonprofits. The smaller the nonprofit, the higher the percentage of advertising costs.

National studies show averages under 1% of budgets, with the larger the nonprofit, the less percentage they spend. [1] This might sound like a small percentage of your annual budget, but this number is misleading. This study on nonprofit advertising only took into account organizations with 1.4M annual budgets or higher, with the average annual advertising budget equaling $47,000. This was even higher if attendance was essential to fundraising.

As Koby Langer, SEO Manager at Whole Whale, wrote in 2022:

“If your revenue stream is contingent on audience attendance, you may want to consider allocating more advertising budget than usual to your overall fundraising budget.” [2]

“The rule of thumb is that an organization needs to be spending about 5% of its bottom line to maintain and 10% to grow.” [4]

Smaller nonprofits generally lack the built-in visibility, brand recognition, and donor base that larger organizations already enjoy. For big nonprofits, existing reputations, established networks, and recurring donor pipelines reduce the need for high proportional marketing costs. In contrast, smaller nonprofits must invest more aggressively in outreach just to be noticed, attract first-time donors, and maintain attendance at events that often drive their fundraising.

Here’s why the numbers are misleading: national averages make marketing look small, but if you’re a grassroots church or nonprofit, you’re not the average—you’re at a disadvantage.

Churches or nonprofits tend to have much smaller budgets than the study area [3] and rely heavily on attendance, and that’s why the cost of marketing increases exponentially. This might be why Jeremy Steel, a United Methodist Church leader, said:

Reason #4 – Lasting Growth Requires Systems

When we think of marketing as just a few boosted posts on social media, it’s easy to assume it won’t cost much. But that narrow view misses the bigger picture. If you only invest in the individual acts of marketing, without crafting a powerful message and building the infrastructure to sustain it, you’ll miss the forest for the trees.

Marketing well means building entire systems, not just hosting a few individual promotions. Here are a few examples:

• Coaching & Consulting: Often coaches, consultants or other leaders can help nonprofit organizations clarify their mission and refine their message. Without a clear message and mission, no amount of paid advertising will make a difference—in fact, without first doing the work of clarifying your message, advertising might hurt your overall goal.

• Branding: A professional logo, visual identity, and messaging guide should be done by a professional if you want it to have a positive impact.

• Website Design: A well-built, mobile-friendly site with a clear call to action is essential to developing your organization's digital front door.

• SEO & Online Presence: Optimizing Google Business, Yelp, online reviews, web pages, and social media with consistent branding so you show up where people are searching.

• Audience Research: Demographic studies and community assessments to understand your target audience and how to reach them effectively.

• CRM & Data Systems: A way to track contacts, manage donor/member relationships, and send mass emails or texts to keep your community engaged.

• Workflows & Automation: Systems to follow up with people who show interest—automated emails, thank-you notes, or event reminders that build trust over time.

• Hospitality & Retention: If attendance matters, getting people in the door is only half the battle. Creating a welcoming environment, training greeters, and building follow-up systems ensure people return.

• Content Creation: Quality photography, video, blog posts, and social media content don’t come free—whether you pay staff, freelancers, or invest in equipment.

• Analytics & Evaluation: Tracking what’s working and adjusting strategies requires tools (Google Analytics 4, email tracking, survey platforms) and expertise.

Every one of these costs money to get started and even more to maintain, but without them, your promotions will only have limited impact.

Closing Thoughts

If you only have limited funds, the best approach is to prioritize where your dollars will make the biggest impact. Start by investing in clarity of message—through consulting, coaching, or professional branding—so that everything you communicate is rooted in a clear and compelling identity. Once that foundation is set, build your digital home with a strong website and a basic CRM system that allows you to capture contacts, follow up, and stay connected with your community. Only after those pieces are in place should you look to scale your reach through advertising or mailers, ensuring that every dollar spent on promotion is supported by the systems and message needed to make it effective.

Some leaders hesitate to spend money on marketing because it feels like overhead or waste. But here's the reality: people give to things that matter.

If you won't invest in telling your story, why would anyone else invest in it?

When you throw seeds out into the world, hoping they will grow, you’re not throwing them away. They’re not being wasted. They are being invested. That’s why when you throw seeds out, you also need to build the systems to till the soil, reap the harvest, and store the produce. To throw seeds out without expecting anything to grow would be a waste.

With the right preparation and tools, marketing is an investment that brings new life to organizations.

Interested in how to start something new—from developing a mission, ministry action plan, to marketing?

Check out Joe's book, the Progressive Planter. The book comes with hundreds of free resources, including marketing and branding examples and guidelines.

[1] Whole Whale. 2024 Nonprofit Ad Study: How Much Should Nonprofits Budget for Ads? Data from Cause IQ. Published 2024. Available at: Whole Whale and Cause IQ

[2] Langner, Koby. “These 3 Types Of Nonprofits Spend The Most On Advertising According To This 2021 Study.” Kindful Blog, January 5, 2022. Accessed [date you accessed it]. https://kindful.com/blog/these-3-types-of-nonprofits-spend-the-most-on-advertising-according-to-this-2021-study/

[3] According to this study, the median income for churches is 169,000—much less than the 1.4M that Whole Whale included in their study. Jeremy C. Thumma, Finances and Faith: A Look at Financial Health among Congregations in the Post-Pandemic Reality. Exploring the Pandemic Impact on Congregations & Faith Communities Today Survey. Hartford Institute for Religion Research. Published July 2024. Available at: https://www.covidreligionresearch.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/07/FinanceReport2024.pdf

[4] Jeremy Steele, “How Much Should Your Church Spend on Marketing?,” ResourceUMC https://www.resourceumc.org/en/content/how-much-should-your-church-spend-on-marketing

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