If there were a place where everyone who’s most likely to attend your church hung out, would you advertise there? Well, that place exists. It’s called Facebook. With over 700 million users (50% of which log on every day), it’s safe to say that the majority of your community is getting on Facebook regularly.
This creates a great opportunity for us as leaders to strategically place ads that attract people to attend our churches. At Calvary, the church I Pastor, we’ve seen hundreds of people attend for the first time because they saw an ad on Facebook.
But it’s not as easy as slapping anything up on Facebook and then waiting for everyone to show up. Instead, there’s a strategy to using this type of outreach.
In fact, here’s 5 tips for creating killer Facebook ads that get results…
1. Know What You Can and Can’t Do
Online evangelism/ marketing is most effective when you’re inviting someone to a church event. With Facebook ads for example, you have so few characters to work with that you can’t give a complete Gospel presentation. Instead, your best bet is to invite them to your church where you can present the Gospel in an environment conducive to them responding.
2. Think Active Not Passive
At Calvary, we use both Google and Facebook. I prefer Facebook because it’s a more active outreach approach. Instead of waiting for someone to type “Church in (my town)”, you can craft a message they can respond to by speaking their language in the copy.
3. Focus on Benefits, Not Features
A feature is “Batteries included”. A benefit is “Ready to play with right of the box”. So write copy that explains the benefits of attending your church.
4. Track Results
The great thing about online outreach is that you can track results through analytics programs (such as Google Analytics). This way you can see how your ad is performing and modify/ adjust it as necessary based on its’ performance.
5. Buy Clicks Not Impressions
Here’s the short answer: clicks. When you buy clicks rather than impressions, you get the impressions anyway because Facebook doesn’t get paid unless people click. That means Facebook is going to put the ad up as much as possible so that you can get clicks.
The other reason clicks are better is because it allows you to track your results more effectively. You can’t track the results of impressions. However, you can track clicks.
The bottom line is, clicks will give you the impressions and clicks will show you if your ad campaign is being effective or not.
If you want more helpful tips that will help you with you Facebook ads, I’ve written a FREE special report called, “Double your Guests with Facebook” that you can download here.
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