Have you had any experience starting/marketing a church?

I did about a year ago by posting YouTube vids anhey are still #1.

Direct mail can be a godsend (pun intended!) for this.

EDDM, some exciting copy and graphics, and you've got a winner.

Honestly there are many ways to market a church. I would stay away from direct mail in most cases since the price is high and turn around is low. That doesn't mean it may not work in your area though. I would personally use facebook to build a "following" for a new church and then move on to local meetings at free places to meet such as a hotel lobby and such. You could use many different methods of advertising from there.

P.S. I used to pastor a small home church.

A small newspaper display ad would probably help you out a lot too.

Especially if you have a website in place to direct the readers of the ad to. Most small ads are around $35. Just make sure you put it in the appropriate section of the paper. Make sure you also have some good copy.

As far as which section, I would think in the "events" section would be a good place. Or on the local news page. However, I can't tell you for sure if this is the optimal section, you would have to go by what section you think would be most appropriate in your local newspaper. Obviously, "sports" isn't the place to put it.

Don't let the newspaper people talk you into putting it where they want you to put it. They often just want to fill blank ad space. You tell them where you want it and stick to it.

Go Jehovah's witness on them
Are Jehovah’s Witnesses Great Salespeople? What Small Business Can Learn | Mule Management Online Marketing

One of the issues you face is the fact that you're obviously local and that you have to really get into people's personal lives. You're not necessarily going to make a "sale" which in your case is having someone show up to service, youth group, or a prayer meeting if you're not incorporating the "personal touch."

One thing for churches that I've seen go well are to have community-based events. Pre-Easter Easter egg hunts, unfortunately, were super popular this year as a way to bring the community together and encourage people to visit your church Easter Sunday where you can "pitch" them a second time. Sorry - I'm not going to contribute Christianese to the forum.

So since we're obviously about 10 months away from that, your next reasonable time frame that you can work something out would probably be to have a cookout July 2. One thing that you can do is have the jar of jelly beans where the amount must be guessed. Instead of people paying to do this, or it being free, charge a parent or even reasonably-aged teenagers to put down their email address in order to take a guess. Now you have emails to work with and potential "subscribers."

As far as being online, I would do a couple of things. On your website, I would have a daily "blog" that you have linked to your fan page on facebook where members/subscribers can expect to get their daily fill. Another thing that I would try out is that if you have other churches in your "niche" and they have a site/blog that you can comment on, go comment on their site and backlink to your site. This will bump you up on Google slightly along with any other SEO that you have.

If you can find blogs that you can guest post for, I would really suggest going that route. A lot of blogs will take testimonies, missions info, devotional info, discernments and prophetic wisdom for the future (if that's the niche you're in), and biblical interpretations. By doing this, you can backlink the church site through that. Do this 5-10 times a year, and you'll be doing well in that regard.

On a non-SEO note, there are two things that you need to understand about the body. First - if you believe that the right people who are meant to be in your body, then do not allow yourself to stay in the box that the congregation can normally pressure a pastor to stay in. You have to keep shooting your arrows and do not stop going after whatever it is that you and your body is going after. If that's to get homeless off the streets, great. If that's to see the widows and the orphans cared for, great. If it's to see the book of Acts in the body, great. If it's to see the body "do greater works than these," even better. But you have to be doing #2 - prayer in the secret place constantly. Never stop. Without prayer, nothing can shift, nothing can change and nothing can progress. IMO, you don't need SEO. If you're in your closet praying and fasting and acting in faith, the shift that would come as a result wouldn't constitute an SEO plan, even though in these days it is wise to do it.

Hope this helps.