Every year my church puts a lot of time and energy into putting on an exceptional, creative Christmas production. It’s an important part of our outreach strategy as we’ve found most people are open to attending Christmas services, even those who are not believers.
This year it was a Blue-Man-esque production called Me and My Drum.
In addition to putting a big sign out front and encouraging members of the church to personally invite their friends and neighbors, the church decided to try something new to help get the word out:
Facebook Ads
There were 4 performances the weekend before Christmas. They were free, but to prevent overcrowding of any one performance people were asked to reserve free eTickets through the church website.
The ad was run for 9 days prior to the weekend of the performances. Over that time, it was displayed 900,000 times and clicked on 600 times. Total cost of the ad campaign was about $475.
The results?
144 tickets were reserved by people who indicated they heard of Me and My Drum through Facebook.
Wow! I was blown away when I heard the news.
Of course, it will be important to find out how many of those people came back on Sunday, how many have begun attending services regularly, how many may have been unbelievers who have come to faith in Christ. It’s too early to tell for most of those things, but I can tell you this:
One of the families who came to the Christmas performace after seeng the Facebook ad is now in my small group.
Because of the success of this campaign, Facebook ads are going to be a part of the church’s outreach strategy throughout 2010.
Has your church ever used Facebook ads as a part of its outreach strategy? If so, how did it go?
29 Comments
Excellent post, Paul! Would you mind sharing a little more, though, regarding what kind of ads you purchased? Did you pay for the Cost per Click or Cost per Impression? I'm about to launch my own campaign and am wondering which is the best. Thanks! I also plan on linking back to this in a future post.
Hi Rodlie, I'm glad to hear you're going to do a Facebook Ads campaign. This week is a great opportunity to invite people to Easter services. I'm pretty sure Facebook only does Pay Per Click. That is what our church did & even if they do offer pay per impression, the click rate on Facebook ads is so low, I would definitely recommend paying per click.
I would also strongly recommend you do something to track how many people show up at services because they heard about your church on Facebook. That's the only way to know how well the campaign worked. Have everyone in the service fill out a card or something.
I look forward to hearing how it goes! Have a blessed Holy Week!
This looks freaking awesome!
As you may recall my pastor is not a user and not a believer of things internety when it comes to ministry so I need items like this to show him what can be done, what can be achieved, etc …
facebook ads guide
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