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?
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This post was mentioned on Twitter by OurChurchDotCom: New blog post: How Facebook Ads Filled My Church – http://bit.ly/aKPs9Y…
[...] here: How Facebook Ads Filled My Church « Christian Web Trends Blog by … Share and [...]
[...] This post was mentioned on Twitter by Brandon Cox, OurChurch.Com, Bill Reichart, Paul Steinbrueck, Vern Sanders and others. Vern Sanders said: How Facebook Ads Filled A Church (for about $3/person) http://is.gd/7jJjm #churchmusic #worship #leadership [...]
This is awesome stuff Paul.
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 …
Thanks.
Paul. Is it possible to put some of your articles on my websites or blogs where appropriate with credit to you and to OurChurch?
I think it may make visitors think more about the reasons for having a website.
Charles
Please don't post entire articles, but you're welcome to post excerpts and link to the rest of the article.
[...] it a few times for various properties and I’ll admit that the return was quite limited. But here’s a story and example of how it was used well and had a healthy “return.”The advertisement for [...]
Paul,
This is an awesome post!
I do want you to know that I am writing a guest post and THIS my friend has EARNED a place in the trackbacks:)
Be blessed!
Wow! Thanks Mike. Look forward to reading it.
Here's the link Paul: http://churchbrandarchitects.com/blog2/?p=251#dis...
Mike, thanks for the mention. Lots of good stuff in that article.
[...] few weeks ago I wrote How Facebook Ads Filled My Church. I was surprised by the ROI of the Facebook ads. And we would never have known how effective [...]