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Nov 15, 2012 | Luke Blount

Facebook Ads Can Help Promote Events, Grow Church

Facebook LogoAt the start of the school year, Trinity Episcopal Church in The Woodlands planned a blessing of the backpacks. In order to spread the word, the church’s new member ministry coordinator, Nick Earl, deployed a new strategy: Facebook ads. When the day arrived, the church reported one of their largest attendance numbers for the year and many new faces for a total cost of just $127.62

 

Facebook advertising can generate incredible exposure. With features that allow ads to target certain demographics and non-members, churches can reach the desired audience quickly and cheaply. Facebook makes it possible to narrow the desired audience based on the event. They can exclude members of the church if the goal is to find new folks, or they can search interests of people living near the church to find people who are most likely to be interested.

 

“We wanted to limit our advertisement to those located within 25 miles of The Woodlands, which instantly yielded a potential audience of over 280,000 Facebook users,” Earl said. “By comparison, a large regional newspaper recently indicated to us that they have an online distribution of only 250,000 for the entire Greater Houston area. The potential reach of social media cannot be understated. To further target our advertisement, we narrowed the search by users’ precise interests. This is a search capability offered by Facebook that pulls information from users’ stated interests, activities, posts and group memberships. In our case we wanted to reach teachers and parents of school age children, so we used keywords such as teacher, high, middle and elementary school, college, Conroe or Magnolia ISD, or the specific phrase ‘back to school’.” 

 

This same strategy can be applied for events at churches across the Diocese of Texas. The first step is to create a Facebook Page for your church, connecting with members and posting important events. This makes it possible to share events with members and non-members alike. After your members have “liked” your page, you can exclude them from the advertisements that you wish to promote, therefore you are not paying for clicks on your ads from current members.

 

Try this strategy for your next event, and let us know the results.

 

Facebook has a streamlined process for this work, and is ready to help you in any way possible. To learn more about Facebook advertising, visit facebook.com/advertising or call 1.800.608.1600.