Josh Burns > Are facebook ads worth it for your church?

This is a question my wife asked me the other day as were driving home, and we were talking about social media for churches. It’s a valid question. Since resources are usually limited in a church, and you’re usually scraping for every last penny you can get. Even then, probably the last thing on your leadership’s mind is allocating some money to Facebook. Right?

My Answer To This Question
I think every church should make space in their budget for social media this year. I don’t care if it’s $10 or $500. If your church would allocate resources for a neighborhood flyer, then your church should be willing to allocate resources to boosting Facebook posts. In fact, I would even argue that a paid Facebook post could be more effective in some situations than a printed flyer. I know, that’s probably blasphemy in some of your churches, since the printed flyer has been the end-all-be-all of invitation strategies for the last 50 years, but I would argue that those days are long gone. We’re constantly meeting new people in our church who visited because they found us online, whether that’s through social media, or a Google search. Lives are being transformed through social media, and it’s not going to stop.

Print vs. Social Media
You can spend $300 to print a quality color postcard, and hand it out to 1,000 people. This is a piece of material that in the best case scenario someone will put on their fridge and will actually take action on whatever the ‘ask’ is. Or the most common scenario is that it will end up in the trash.

OR

You can spend $30 to create a sponsored story on your church’s Facebook Page that will potentially reach thousands of people. It is also something that is interactive, and best case scenario you create value for that person, and they “Like” your Facebook Page. Since your church’s social media presence are the new greeters anyways, this is exactly what you want to happen. (Of course these numbers depend on how many people already “Like” your church’s Facebook Page, but even if you have less than 200 “Likes” these numbers could be accurate)

No Excuses Though
Hear me out though, this doesn’t excuse you from crafting well-written, visually appealing posts, that create value for your community. Just because you can throw money at your Facebook Page, doesn’t mean you’re doing it right. You must first create valuable content for your community on a consistent basis. This is what is actually going to help you in the long run. Your church should be using social media as a relationship platform, not a broadcast platform, and no amount of money is going to make up for that. But after you’ve created value for your community, then you can think about creating budget.

So Go Do This

1. Create value for your community
2. Repurpose content
3. Create a relationship with your community
4. Repeat steps 1-3

Is it worth paying for Facebook ads for your church? Yes. But only after you’ve completed the three steps above. Otherwise, you’re just throwing away your money.

Do you agree or disagree with this?

Are you allocating money to social media for your church this year?

Need help completing steps 1-3 above? Click here to download my ebook about how I almost killed my church’s social media presence!

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• Pix

  So basically you are saying the churches are so strapped for cash they are now forced to whore themselves out to corporate advertising sponsorship, just like your corrupt poli-tics. Things must be getting desperate. Try practicing what Jesus preached, “sell everything you own and give the proceeds to the poor, if you want entry into heaven”.

  

  Jun 5, 2014, 7:03 am 0 Reply