3 Successful Facebook Ads From Real Churches

Alex Mills: Well, hey there and welcome to Pro Church Daily, the show where in 10 minutes or less you’re going to get a daily dose of tips and tactics to help your church share the message of Jesus while we navigate the biggest communication shift we’ve seen in the last 500 years. I’m your host Alex Mills, joined as always by the boss man, it’s Brady Shearer. Today we’re talking about three successful Facebook ads for real churches.

Brady Shearer: On episode 170 of Pro Church Daily, Alexander-

Alex Mills: Yes?

Brady Shearer: We talked about how to run a successful Facebook ads campaign at your church, four step strategy breaking down exactly how to use Facebook ads to reach into your community and connect to people that are not yet connected to your church and really how Facebook ads and Facebook is the greatest outreach platform that we’ve ever had-

Alex Mills: Yeah, it really is.

Brady Shearer: Because of the attention and because of the affordability. Now, if you’re feeling a little bit skeptical, we wanted to give you exact examples to show you how to do this and how other churches have already done it.

Alex Mills: Okay.

Brady Shearer: Let’s dive in with the first example. This is an Easter advertisement and the copy for this advertisement reads, “Easter at blank church, a live petting zoo and Pastor Jim’s new series do-over.” If you’re watching this episode of Pro Church Daily, which we highly recommend that you do because there are a lot of actual image graphic examples-

Alex Mills: Yeah.

Brady Shearer: … of these Facebook ads to look at them, you’ll be seeing it on the screen. If you’re listening, the picture that accompanies this ad is the Easter eggs that you paint.

Alex Mills: Classic.

Brady Shearer: Very bright and colorful-

Alex Mills: Super bright.

Brady Shearer: “Big Easter at blank church” text on the graphic.

Alex Mills: It’s going to jump right off the screen.

Brady Shearer: Yeah. And then a photo of the painted Easter eggs. There’s a purple one, there’s an orange one, and all that good stuff. A couple of things to note about this actual example, bright colors.

Alex Mills: Yeah.

Brady Shearer: When you’re scrolling through Facebook, this type of image is going to really stand out-

Alex Mills: Of course.

Brady Shearer: … because it’s so bright and so vibrant. At the end of the day, the number one behavior that you’re trying to trigger with Facebook ads is stopping the scroll. That’s how people are using Facebook. They’re scrolling their feed. Scrolling, scrolling, scrolling. If you want to actually connect with them, the first thing you need to do is stop the scroll.

Alex Mills: Yeah.

Brady Shearer: I think this photo does a great job of that.

Let’s talk about the specifics of this Facebook ad campaign. There were $433 spent on this Facebook ad campaign. When it came to the targeting, this church targeted everyone between ages 18 to 65 plus, within 30 miles of the church’s geographic location.

Alex Mills: A classic.

Brady Shearer: More than 100,000 impressions on this ad, with a 4.23 frequency, which meant of those 100,000 impressions, the average person saw this ad four times, that’s what frequency means.

Alex Mills: Is that a pretty high frequency?

Brady Shearer: It’s a very high frequency.

Alex Mills: Yeah, I thought so.

Brady Shearer: Yeah. 1,164 clicks to the website-

Alex Mills: Also high.

Brady Shearer: Cost of 37 cents per click, very low. That’s very great. What happened when someone clicked on this ad?

Alex Mills: Okay.

Brady Shearer: A person would go to a landing page that had, for this Easter service, location, service times, directions to the church, a summary of everything going on at the church for this Easter weekend, photos from the Easter petting zoo of the year before, there was Easter graphics, series artwork, basically, a landing page dedicated to this Easter service where a person could figure out, “Oh. Okay. This is exactly what’s happening.”

Alex Mills: Yeah and-

Brady Shearer: And take-

Alex Mills: … showed them things from last year’s Easter service. Yeah. Say, “This is what we did last Easter. This is kind of what you’re getting yourself into.” That’s great.

Brady Shearer: Real photos of the church. Oh, okay. This is really helpful.

Alex Mills: Yeah. I love that.

Brady Shearer: Let’s talk about the results. This was a church of 2,000 people. They spent $434 on this Facebook ads campaign and they saw these results. The senior leadership estimated that 1,500 additional visitors came to their Easter services.

Alex Mills: We’ve got room for that.

Brady Shearer: The only other advertising they did for this Easter weekend, in addition to Facebook ads, was a single print ad in a magazine.

Alex Mills: Wow.

Brady Shearer: A church of 2,000 people with an additional 1,500 visitors on Easter Sunday.

Alex Mills: Wow.

Brady Shearer: That’s example number one.

Alex Mills: Yeah.

Brady Shearer: Example number two was for a Fall festival. The photo of this Facebook ads campaign is a stock photo of a bunch of Halloween candy, really bright orange, and then one of those plastic Halloween … What’s that called?

Alex Mills: A jack-o’-lantern.

Brady Shearer: A jack-o’-lantern. Right. It’s a jack-o’-lantern.

Alex Mills: Full of candy.

Brady Shearer: Full of candy. Not a real pumpkin, like-

Alex Mills: A plastic one.

Brady Shearer: The one that you bring to trick or treat and then they put the candy in it.

Alex Mills: I wouldn’t know anything about that, I’ve never gone trick or treating.

Brady Shearer: No, because you’re sanctified, that’s good. So the Facebook ad copy for this read, “Fall Festival, this Sunday at blank church from one to three pm. Bring your whole family for a day of free candy, food, carnival games, face painting, and bounce houses. This event is 100% free and open to the public, we can’t wait to meet you.”

Alex Mills: Smiley emoji.

Brady Shearer: Smiley emoji. Now, what happens when you click on this Facebook ad? You get taken to another landing page and on this landing page, you’ve got date, location, service times, directions to the church, a summary of everything going on for the Fall festival. It’s all there. Let’s talk about the specifics for this Facebook ad campaign.

Alex Mills: All right.

Brady Shearer: The spend cost, a total of $61.

Alex Mills: That’s more my kind of budget.

Brady Shearer: And 58 cents. How much would you pay for a billboard?

Alex Mills: $5,000.

Brady Shearer: How much would you pay for mail outs?

Alex Mills: Hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of dollars?

Brady Shearer: $61.58. They’re targeting everyone between 18 and 65 years old within 10 miles of the church’s geographic location, so this would suggest that the church is in a more densely populated location, so their radius didn’t have to be as big as 30 miles, bring it all the way down to 10 miles.

Alex Mills: Right.

Brady Shearer: 8,000 impressions with a 1.26 frequency. There were 167 clicks to the website, 37 cents per click.

Alex Mills: Nice.

Brady Shearer: And the results, this was a church of 120 people, spent $62 on their Facebook ads campaign, over 500 people showed up-

Alex Mills: Stop it.

Brady Shearer: … to the Fall festival in this leadership’s verbiage, they were totally slammed, they had dozens of people give their lives to Jesus and reached a ton of people in the community for the first time. A church of 150 with a Fall festival of 500 people.

Alex Mills: Maybe you don’t want that many people.

Brady Shearer: What if I only spent like $2.00 on Facebook ads, maybe that. Yeah. All right, example number three, this is for a direct service promotion. A lot of times we talk about finding the intersection between faith and culture, so Fall festival is a great example, that’s a good bridge event before actually inviting someone to your actual service, but if you want to go straight for a service promotion, here’s a fun way of doing it-

Alex Mills: This is a great way to do it.

Brady Shearer: … so here’s the copy for this Facebook ad. The photo is like a photo of a big church with a stage-

Alex Mills: Hands raised.

Brady Shearer: … a bunch of people hands raised, and the title on the graphic, on the overlay just says, “We’re saving a seat for you.”

Alex Mills: Nice.

Brady Shearer: The ad copy’s really what’s fun, it says, “This Sunday is International Go Back To Church Sunday.” Did I just make that up? Yeah, I sure did. But if you’re reading this, it’s not an accident. What if this Sunday is the day that everything changes for you.

Alex Mills: Yeah, so good.

Brady Shearer: “What if this Sunday is the day you finally find what you’ve been looking for? You can wear whatever you want, drink coffee in the sanctuary”-

Alex Mills: What?

Brady Shearer: … “meet some great people, we don’t judge, we help people win.”

Alex Mills: I want to go to that church.

Brady Shearer: I’m excited to win, and I want this church to help me do that.

Alex Mills: Yeah.

Brady Shearer: So there’s some fun and playful copy here, they’re injecting personality. Don’t feel like your Facebook ads need to be corporate, need to be all formal. If your church is fun, engaging, family friendly, if you’ve got a bit of personality, inject that into the Facebook ad-

Alex Mills: Yeah, lean into that.

Brady Shearer: … your vibe attracts your tribe, Alex.

Alex Mills: I’ve heard that said once before.

Brady Shearer: I’ve said it often, actually. And this is the type of thing that is a great example of that. Specifics for this Facebook ad campaign, $675 ad spent, everyone 18 to 64 years old within 15 miles of the church’s geographic location. More than 200,000 impressions with a 2.85 impression frequency. More than 2,000 clicks to the website at 32 cents per click-

Alex Mills: Nice.

Brady Shearer: … the landing page again, had the location, service times for the different campuses, directions to the church, photos of the main service, kids ministry, sermon video so you can watch through what’s this pastor going to be speaking on, what’s that like, with the heading, and I love this, “Test Drive a Service.”

Alex Mills: Yeah.

Brady Shearer: Which is very cool. What were the results you might be asking? Well, a church of 6,000 spent $675 on this Facebook ads campaign to these results, the lead pastor said that when he got up to preach at their second service, it looked like an ocean of people in the sanctuary.

Alex Mills: Too many to count.

Brady Shearer: Too many to count, I mean they’re already a church of 6,000.

Alex Mills: Yeah.

Brady Shearer: Three examples, a church of 2,000, a church of 6,000, a church of 100. It doesn’t matter how big or small your church is, these are exact examples when it comes to targeting creative copy, ad messaging, the followup, the landing page, the exact specifics and results, you can do this, and you might be asking, Brady, three examples is fun, but what if there were three more examples?

Alex Mills: What if there were three more?

Brady Shearer: Well that’s what we’re going to tackle on the next episode of Pro Church Daily, we’re going to show you three more completely different examples of successful Facebook ads campaigns in Pro Church Daily episode number 172. This was 171.

Alex Mills: Yes.

Brady Shearer: The featured resource we wanted to highlight for this episode of Pro Church Daily is the perfect church homepage infographic, when you’re sending people from your Facebook ads, you’re sending them to your website, and your website home page is where your first impression is going to be made. We’ve looked at I-Tracking studies to identify every single thing that needs to be on your church website’s home page, it’s called The Perfect Church Website Home Page Infographic. It’s a long title, but it’s an awesome resource. It’s free, it’s linked in the show notes, check it out. That’ll do it for this episode of Pro Church Daily, we’ll see you in the next one.