Launch
Plants, new campuses, and relaunches
from $1,200/month
Get found, fill a launch team, and make the first ninety days count.
What's includedChurch marketing, media & technology · Spartanburg, SC
Go.
With purpose.
The communications team your church rents instead of hires. Websites, campaigns, weekly content, streaming, and follow-up — run by one senior team for less than the cost of one staff position.
REACH ✦ WELCOME ✦ GATHER ✦ TELL ✦ SEND ✦ GO
01 The problem
A church can do everything
right and still be invisible.
Almost every church we sit down with has a clear vision, a pastor worth hearing, and people who'd love it there. What they don't have is the twenty hours a week it takes to keep a website current, cut sermon clips, run the ads, answer the guest email, and keep Sunday's stream from dropping. It isn't a vision problem. It's an execution problem, and it's the one nobody on staff has time to solve.
Try this before you call anyone
Open your phone, search “church near me,” and count how far you have to scroll to find your own church. That number is the honest state of your outreach, and for most churches it's the first thing we fix.
AZLU / GO
Azlu is Aramaic for “go.” Not grow at any cost, not chase every trend — go, with clarity and the tools to meet people where they are. A name shaped by the Great Commission and built for the next faithful step.
02 Where it starts
Find out what's actually
broken first.
Before anyone signs a retainer, we run the Sunday Audit — a fixed-price, two-week look at whether a family new to your area could find your church at all, and what to fix in what order.
The "church near me" report
Where you actually rank for the searches a family new to your area would use, against the churches you're really competing with. Most pastors have never seen this, and it's usually the most uncomfortable page in the report.
Google Ad Grant eligibility and application path
Whether your church qualifies for up to $10,000 a month in free Google advertising — that's $120,000 a year — and exactly what standing between you and having it. If you're eligible and not using it, this line alone pays for the audit many times over.
Plan Your Visit teardown
We walk your site the way a first-time guest does, on a phone, and write down every place they'd stall. Where do I park, what happens to my kid, how long is this, what do I wear. Most church websites answer none of those in the first minute.
Stream and AV check
We watch a service the way someone at home does and look at what's actually running the room — audio path, camera, lighting, ProPresenter, network. No other church marketing agency will put this on an audit, because no other one can.
A twelve-month plan, in order
Not a list of everything that's wrong. A sequence — what to fix this month, what can wait until spring, and what you should genuinely not spend money on yet.
$950flat · Two weeks from kickoff
The full $950 is credited against your first month if you move into a retainer. If you don't, you keep the report and the plan, and we part as friends.
See what's in the auditExperience behind Azlu includes work with
First Baptist SpartanburgSt. James UMCFirst Baptist Indian TrailSouth Carolina Baptist Convention
03 The packages
Three ways in, split by where
your church actually is.
Not good, better, best. A church plant and a ninety-year-old congregation aren't shopping for the same thing, so we don't pretend they are.
Momentum
Established churches that need new people finding the door
from $1,800/month
The weekly engine — content, campaigns, and a website that converts a search into a Sunday.
What's includedEverything
Multi-campus, multi-service, and churches with real operational load
from $3,600/month
The whole picture — marketing, production, worship technology, and the network it all runs on.
What's includedPublished as floors, because a 90-seat church and a multi-campus church shouldn't pay the same number. Tell us a budget range in the form and we'll scope against it honestly — “not sure yet” is a real answer.
04 The comparison that matters
Compare us to a hire,
not to an invoice.
A full-time communications director in the Upstate costs a church a salary plus payroll tax, benefits, software, a camera budget, and the training to keep up. Then that one person still can't be a web developer, a video editor, a paid-media buyer, an AV engineer, and an IT tech at the same time.
Momentum runs from $1,800 a month. That's a fraction of one hire, and it's a strategist, a designer, an editor, a media buyer, and a technologist who've all done this in a church before.
One staff hire
Salary, tax, benefits, software, gear, training — and one person's ceiling.
One senior team
Strategy, web, design, video, media buying, AV, and IT. Same budget line, no PTO coverage problem.
05 What's in the work
Everything a church needs to move.
Every package is built out of these four. One senior team across the whole picture — so the message, the experience, and the follow-through finally work together.
Reach
Help the right people find the door.
Plan Your Visit funnels, local search, paid campaigns, and Google Ad Grant management — the work that turns a search into a Sunday morning.
Campaigns · Google Ad Grants · Local SEO · Visitor journeysTell
Make the message clear—and worth sharing.
Visitor-first websites, sermon clips every week, ministry films, photography, and social content that sounds like your church instead of a template.
Web · Film · Social · PhotographyGather
Make Sunday work the first time.
Live streaming, worship technology, AV strategy, and the network underneath it. The part every other church agency hands back to you.
Streaming · AV · ProPresenter · Planning Center · Managed ITKeep going
Build the systems that carry ministry forward.
Guest follow-up over email and text, practical AI tools, communications counsel, and steady hands through launches, transitions, and hard weeks.
Follow-up · Sermonix · PR · Crisis · Transitions06 Why us and not them
Six things the other
options can't do.
We run the room, not just the ads
Live streaming, audio, cameras, ProPresenter, and the AV strategy behind them. Search the ten best-known church marketing agencies and not one of them will touch your booth.
We can run your network too
Managed IT for the church office — network, UniFi, endpoints, backup, support. One relationship instead of a marketing vendor and an IT guy who blame each other.
Broadcast habits, church budget
Sidestreet has kept NBC News Channel happy for almost ten years. That's why we're fast: we were trained in a business where the story airs at six whether you're ready or not.
Sermonix is ours
Not a reseller license. A Slack-native AI toolkit we built for the actual rhythm of a church week, included for your staff on the retainer tiers.
We can be in the building
Almost every agency in this category is remote-first nationally. We're on North Church Street in Spartanburg, and in the Upstate we show up on a Wednesday because someone asked on Tuesday.
The hard week is already planned for
Crisis and transition communications with the playbook written before you need it. Staff departures, facility incidents, a story that gets out ahead of you.
The part most agencies won't put in writing
Sometimes the answer
is don't.
If your church has stopped growing, marketing is sometimes the reason and sometimes just the symptom. We've finished an audit and told a church to spend the money on a worship leader, a nursery renovation, or a hard staffing conversation instead. You'd have paid $950 to find that out, and saved a year of retainer proving it the expensive way.
07 Where we go
South Carolina roots.
East Coast reach.
We're on-site routinely across the Upstate, we drive the Carolinas and Georgia for production days and AV installs, and we run remote-first up the coast. Every location page says plainly which one you'd be getting — because a church deserves to know whether we can actually show up.
08 The people
New name.
Deep roots.
Azlu is the church practice of Sidestreet — senior strategists, storytellers, producers, and technologists with more than fifteen years alongside faith communities, and almost ten keeping NBC News Channel happy as a client. That newsroom background is why we're fast: we learned this work somewhere the story airs at six whether you're ready or not.
15+years serving churches and ministries
10years, nearly, as NBC News Channel's agency
1senior team from first call to final delivery
09 Built for the week
Meet Sermonix
Your message can
keep moving.
Sermonix is the Slack-native AI toolkit built for the actual rhythm of church work. Profile your church once, then turn one message into the useful things your week still needs. Included for your staff on the retainer tiers.
Sermon prep briefSermon to socialWeekly newsletterGuest follow-up5-day devotionalSmall group guideImage generationAsk anything
Less time recreating. More time with people.
Explore Sermonix ↗10 Good questions
Before we
go.
How much does church marketing cost with Azlu?
Retainers start at $1,200 a month for Launch, $1,800 for Momentum, and $3,600 for Everything, scoped to the size of the church. Most churches start with the Sunday Audit at $950 — a fixed-price diagnostic that's credited back in full against your first month if you move into a retainer.
How long before we actually see something?
Local search fixes and the Google Ad Grant can show movement in four to six weeks. A rebuilt visitor path usually shows up in guest numbers inside a quarter. Organic search and content compound over six to twelve months. Anyone promising a full congregation by Easter is selling you something.
What should we fix first?
Almost always the website's visitor path and your local search presence — they're the cheapest things to fix and they gate everything else. Running ads at a site that can't convert a visit is how churches waste a year of budget. That sequencing is the whole point of the audit.
What is the Google Ad Grant, and does our church qualify?
Eligible nonprofit churches can receive up to $10,000 per month in free Google search advertising — $120,000 a year. Most churches either don't know it exists or had it suspended for a compliance issue nobody explained. We handle eligibility, the application, campaign structure, and the ongoing compliance work to keep it active.
Do you work with small churches and church plants?
Yes, and we'll be honest about what fits. For a church with a tight budget, a one-time audit plus the Ad Grant application is often a better answer than any retainer — we'd rather set you up to run it yourself than sell a package you can't sustain for a year.
What if marketing isn't actually our problem?
Then we'll tell you. If a church has stopped growing, visibility is sometimes the reason and sometimes the symptom. The audit is built to find out which, and we've told churches to spend the money on a worship leader or a nursery renovation instead. That answer costs you $950 and saves you a year.
Do you only work with churches in South Carolina?
No. We're based in Spartanburg and on-site routinely across the Upstate, we drive to the Carolinas, Georgia, and Charlotte for production days, and we work remote-first up the East Coast. Every location page on this site says plainly which of those you'd be getting.
Who owns the website and the content?
You do. Once the bill is paid, the site, the files, the footage, and the ad accounts are the church's — on WordPress or our EmDash CMS, both standards-compliant, and both portable if you ever leave. Ad spend is billed to your own account and we don't mark it up.
Do we have to sign a long contract?
Six-month initial term so the work has time to show up, then month-to-month on thirty days' notice. A one-year term is available at a discount if you'd rather lock the rate.
What is Sermonix?
Sermonix is a Slack-native AI toolkit we built for the church week. Profile your church once, then turn a single message into sermon prep, social clips, a newsletter, guest follow-up, a five-day devotional, and a small group guide. Included for staff on the retainer tiers.
11 Next step
Ready when it's
time to go.
If your church has a launch, a stuck point, or a next faithful move already in view, we'd like to hear about it. Most conversations start with the audit — and if a retainer is obviously the wrong fit, we'll say so.