Marketing is a vital tool in expanding your church's reach. This chapter will guide you through setting up and optimizing Facebook advertisements to effectively reach and resonate with the local community, inviting them to connect with your church and participate in prayer campaigns.
1. Understanding Essential Marketing Terms and Concepts
To effectively integrate marketing in digital evangelism, it's useful to understand key marketing terms.
CPC (Cost Per Click)CPC stands for cost per click, a method of paying for advertising. Under this model, costs are incurred only when an ad is clicked, regardless of how many times it's displayed. This can be effective for branding advertisements that may not receive many clicks, as it allows for exposure while minimizing costs. CPC aligns with the specific goals of digital prayer campaigns, allowing for targeted engagement, budget efficiency, measurable impact and a personalized user experience. This approach ensures resources are effectively utilized to meaningfully connect with the audience, reflecting the essence of digital evangelism.
CPM (Cost Per Mille)Another term for advertising is CPM, or cost per mille, meaning cost per 1,000 impressions. In this model, the advertiser pays for every 1,000 times the ad is displayed, regardless of whether it is clicked or not. This is particularly effective for event-based advertisements that are expected to generate a high number of clicks, as it can be cost-efficient. CPM is commonly used when the goal is to increase brand awareness and reach a larger audience. Banner advertisements on portal sites, apps and communities are often operated on a CPM basis.
CTR (Click-through Rate)CTR, a fundamental metric in digital marketing, measures the ratio of clicks to impressions on an advertisement. Represented as a percentage, CTR is calculated by dividing the number of clicks by the number of impressions. For instance, if an ad is displayed 1,000 times and receives 5 clicks, the CTR would be 0.5 percent. It is a direct indicator of how engaging and effective your marketing content is. In the context of digital evangelism, a high CTR indicates that the digital content is resonating well with the audience and effectively drawing them to engage more deeply, such as visiting a church website or learning more about faith-based initiatives.
CVR (Conversion Rate)The conversion rate, or CVR, is a critical performance metric in digital marketing, signifying the completion of a desired action by the audience. For example, in a digital prayer campaign, CVR might be defined as someone viewing the campaign, clicking on it and submitting a prayer request. Conversion rates are crucial across all digital marketing activities. They are a measure of how effectively your marketing channels and website pathways convert visits into desired actions, like participating in online services, joining a prayer group or engaging in church-related activities. The CVR is the percentage of website visitors who complete these desired actions, reflecting the success of your digital evangelism efforts.
KPI (Key Performance Indicator)KPIs, or key performance indicators, are vital metrics used to measure the success in achieving primary objectives. In marketing, KPIs serve as a compass to guide and assess the effectiveness of campaigns toward set goals. Identifying and monitoring the right KPIs is crucial for understanding what improvements are needed to achieve these goals. In the context of digital evangelism, such as in a "Click to Christ" campaign, KPIs might include metrics like the number of prayer requests received, the growth of online community engagement or the increase in church attendance. These KPIs provide clear indicators of how effectively the digital campaign is fostering relationships and guiding individuals toward the church community.GeofencingGeofencing is a location-based digital marketing tool that allows organizations to set up virtual boundaries around a specific geographical area. When potential audiences enter these geofenced areas, they are targeted with specific messages or advertisements on their mobile devices. This technology is effective for localizing digital prayer campaigns and outreach efforts, enabling churches to connect with communities in their immediate vicinity. For instance, a church can set up a geofence around its neighborhood to promote local prayer campaigns or seminars, ensuring the campaign is relevant and reaches people in the nearby community. This targeted approach enhances the effectiveness of digital evangelism by ensuring the message is tailored to and resonates with the local audience.
2. Creating an Ad Account for Your Church
Before you start advertising, you need to create an ad account. This section guides you through the process of setting up an account to manage and run your church's advertisements.
Click on "Ad Accounts" and then on "Add accounts" in the top right corner to create a new ad account. This will allow you to manage and run advertisements for your church effectively.
Enter the correct information in this section to create your ad account. This will enable you to start setting up and managing ads for your purposes.
Once the ad account is created, click on the ellipsis (three dots) in the top right corner and select "Open in Ads Manager." This will take you to the platform where you can manage and create your ads.
3. Setting Up Your Prayer Ads
Setting up your ad campaign involves several steps. This section explains how to start a campaign, select the right settings and target your audience effectively.
Click on "Campaigns," which is located under "Ads Manager" on the left side.
Click on the "+ Create" button located in the top left corner. This is where you will set up your advertisement.
Choose "Engagement" as your objective to focus on gathering prayer requests from locals.
Name your campaign and proceed with the default settings. Do not alter anything else; simply proceed to the next step.
In your ad set, under "Conversations" choose "Messaging apps." Set your church's Facebook page and select Facebook Messenger as the messaging app.
Adjust the budget and start date according to the church's situation. Then, in "Audience controls" change the location targeting to a 10-mile radius around the church. Use "Search locations" to select the church or a nearby area.
I recommend starting with a daily budget of $30 for your digital evangelism campaign, based on the insights from the Central California Conference project. This budget is expected to generate approximately four contacts per day. This may seem modest initially, but it accumulates to about 28 contacts over a week, providing a significant number of individuals for follow-up and deeper engagement.Importantly, this starting budget of $30 is not fixed and can be adjusted based on your needs and resources. The number of digital missionaries available for engagement plays a key role in this decision. If you have a larger team that can handle more contacts, consider increasing the budget to expand your outreach. On the other hand, with a smaller team you might find it more effective to maintain or even reduce the budget to ensure your outreach efforts are manageable and effective.
Regarding location targeting, I suggest setting it to a 10-mile radius around your church, a decision based on the average commute distance and effectiveness for local outreach. By concentrating on their geographical vicinity, local churches can reach potential members in their neighborhood, strengthening community bonds and ensuring a more tangible impact from the digital evangelism efforts. This radius is adjustable and can be tailored to better fit the specific location and reach of your church, using the "Search locations" feature in the campaign settings.
Under "Audience controls," click on "Show more" and set the languages to English (US) and English (UK). This ensures your ad reaches an audience that speaks these versions of English. However, feel free to adjust the language settings based on the specific needs of your church and the community you are aiming to reach.
Setting up an effective advertisement on Meta involves understanding its three main types of targeting. First, core targeting leverages Meta's basic user data such as age, gender, location, activities and interests. Second, custom targeting utilizes specific data from your own sources, including website traffic, customer databases and interactions on your Meta page. Third, lookalike targeting is designed to reach users whose behaviors are similar to those in your custom audience. It's important to prepare custom and lookalike targets in advance for seamless integration during the targeting setup process.
Moreover, a nuanced understanding of age, gender and language targeting is crucial. By reviewing your Meta account, you can glean insights from the data you've provided, including details like birthday, residence and language. Meta leverages this information for targeting, but the precision of such data may vary. Parameters like location, age and gender are indeed valuable, yet language targeting demands a strategic approach. It hinges on the language set in the user's account and the language used in their browser or app. This means that targeting a specific geographic area alongside a particular language effectively focuses your audience to the intersection of these two criteria.
This method is especially pertinent for churches aiming to reach specific language communities. For example, a church catering to Spanish-speaking individuals would benefit from setting their target language to Spanish, ensuring their message is accurately conveyed to the intended audience. Despite appearing restrictive, language targeting can be an incredibly efficient way to forge connections with distinct linguistic groups.
It's essential to consider that Meta's demographic targeting, encompassing categories like education, finance, life events, parenting, politics, relationship status and employment, is dependent on user-submitted profile data. The success of this targeting hinges on the accuracy and relevance of the data your target audience has provided.
Incorporate into your marketing strategy the understanding that more narrow targeting can lead to increased marketing costs. During our prayer advertisement campaign for the Central California Conference, we focused on targeting individuals over the age of 18 and utilized language and geo-targeting. This targeted approach ensured a balance between cost-effectiveness and the necessity to engage a relevant audience, thereby making the digital evangelism efforts both impactful and sustainable.
Set the name for your ad. Here, we will set up a total of seven advertisements. Six of these will be image ads and one will be a video ad. This variety will help in reaching a broader audience and engaging them in different ways.
Click on "Add media" and "Add image" to choose your ad images.
Upload your pre-designed images under "Add media."
In the "Crop" section, ensure that all sizes are set to "Original" to maintain the original aspect ratio of your advertisement.
In the "Optimize" section, first select "All optimizations" then turn off the music option. This will optimize your ad for the best performance while excluding music, which may not be necessary for your ad content.
Set the Primary Text to "We want to pray for you" and the Headline to "Submit your prayer request. 👉". This will make your ad appear to the local community as shown in the example. This approach makes the ad inviting and interactive, encouraging community members to engage with your church.
Next, edit the message template. Click on the "Edit" button. This allows you to customize the message that recipients see when they interact with your ad.
Modify the greeting text and customer actions as follows. Greeting text: "Thanks for trusting us with your prayer request. What specifically can we pray for?" Customer actions (in order): "Work," "Family," "Health," "Something else."
This customization will guide users to provide prayer requests related to different areas of their life, making it easier for your church to respond effectively.
Once the ad is complete, use the "Quickly duplicate" option to set up the other advertisement. Now let's proceed to set up the video ad.
Click on "Add media" and select "Video." Upload the video file. When creating a video ad, you need the same video file in three different sizes: 1:1, 16:9 and 9:16. This ensures your video ad displays correctly on various platforms and devices.
In the "Crop" section, replace the video with the appropriate format for each aspect ratio: 1:1, 16:9 and 9:16. This step ensures that your video ad displays correctly across different platforms and devices, such as phones, tablets and PCs.
Click on "All optimizations," then click "Done." Once everything is set up, publish all the advertisements. Your ad campaign is now ready to reach the local community and engage them effectively.
4. Managing Campaigns Cost-effectively: Monitoring and Analysis
After setting up your ad with a recommended daily budget of $30, it's important to monitor it regularly. Begin by advertising approximately seven distinct ads, incorporating a mix of images and videos. After one week, assess the performance of each advertisement. Keep the ones that are performing well and disable those that are costly but receiving few clicks. Every week, add a new image or video advertisement to replace the underperforming ones. This process of continuous monitoring and updating is crucial for maintaining the cost-effectiveness of your campaign. It ensures that you're always presenting fresh, engaging content while optimizing your budget.