The Worst Mistake I see Churches Make Using Facebook Adverts

Steve Fogg 27th Apr 2017 Communications, Digital

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You haven’t heard much from me about using Facebook adverts for churches (I’ve used them every week for the last 3 years). It was only last week when I realised that I’d never written about them.

Recently I’ve been a part of a few conversations on Facebook and it appears that more church communications people starting to use Facebook Ads. Much of the conversation has gone along the lines of “I’ve spent $X much and I’m not sure if it’s been a success.” or “No one has engaged with my ad”.

Those kinds of comments aren’t surprising to me. Facebook Adverts Manager is a very sophisticated advertising placement system. It is extraordinarily powerful. For both of those reasons, you can succeed or fail very quickly. Spending lots of precious dollars along the way.

Essentially you need to understand you are, or will be using the most powerful advertising and messaging platform in the world right now. But it doesn’t mean that you will succeed.

If you are going to use it you need to work through some advertising 101 basics.

1. What is your message? What do you want to say? What problem are you solving? What tone of voice do you want to use?

2. Who is the right audience for this message?

3. How do you want them to respond to your message?

Once you can answer those questions you ready to start using Facebook Ads.

In mainstream advertising (I used to work in the industry) every good brief starts with answering these questions (or more depending on the level of sophistication). Then the creative development is done. During that process, the agency would contact someone called a ‘media buyer’. Their job is to put your ad in the right channels for the budget that you have. They would create a plan and your ad would be placed in those channels.

Facebook Adverts Manager is essentially an online version of this. It is buying different kinds of ads and placing it front of people on Facebook (& Instagram). It can be fun using a powerful tool, but do your homework up-front before you pull the trigger and book a Facebook advert.

You can put the:

best ad in front of the right audience and get great results.
best ad in front of the wrong audience and get bad results.
worst ad in front of the right audience and get bad results.
worst ad in front of the wrong audience and get bad results.

There are just so many more ways to fail than to succeed.

Can’t afford Facebook Adverts?

Read my article on how to use Facebook Live for your church.

Your Turn

Have you ever used Facebook Ads for churches? Got questions about Facebook Ads? Over the next month or so I will do my best to answer any questions you many have. Comment below.

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9 Comments

Jean - April 27th, 2017 at 10:31 pm
I have used facebook ads in the past, but I do not see any results. I am halting the ads and to resume it when I realize that I have the funds and the right strategy to resume.

Thank you for the eye opening article
Steve Fogg - April 28th, 2017 at 10:56 pm
Hi Jean, you can get some good results at just $6 per day. It’s all in the testing of the ad, and the audience. Don’t be put off.
Lauren Hunter - April 27th, 2017 at 11:11 pm
Love your candor in sharing that some churches are not going at Facebook ads in the right direction. Do you have any examples or case studies of BAD ads you can show readers? It would be interesting to see some visuals so that church communicators could get their brains around what might do well and what might bomb. Thanks for your insight! Love your helpful church resources, Steve!
Steve Fogg - April 28th, 2017 at 10:55 pm
Hi Lauren, thanks for sharing the post! I’ve been chatting with a few people who have been frustrated at the lack of ‘results’. For obvious reasons, they don’t want their failures public. Who does?! 🙂

I had an ad last week which was a good ad, infront of an audience that I thought would like it. The one click I got cost me $9.00 Boom! Fail.

Having said that, the rest worked really well. 🙂
Roger Harris - April 28th, 2017 at 9:38 am
We just started small this Easter with a short 30 second video promo and limited geographic area and max $ spend. Facebook has statistics but it is difficult to separate out the true results as existing Church people may view the ad which then feeds the facebook results. We had a good group of visitors at the Services but then we also built up and encouraged people to invite. My conclusion is that the all efforts work in tandem together and build upon one another.
I like your breakdown on ad quality and audience target – getting both areas right is key.
Steve Fogg - April 28th, 2017 at 10:57 pm
So was your goal of the ad to get visitors in your church Roger?
Chad - April 29th, 2017 at 2:12 pm
In my experience, the main pitfall for churches using FB ads is that they are pursuing cheap proxy metrics like a low CPC, which naturally leads them towards targeting people with a high affinity for their service/ad/church, i.e other Christians. I think it’s important for churches to meditate on Luke 15 and how UN- cost effective it is to pursue people like we are called to in leaving the 99 sheep to go after the 1. In business, the cheaper the “results” the better, but for churches, I think there is a real danger in pursuing cheap results. The danger lies at the root of the epidemic of church swapping, and in churches all competing with each other to target the Christians in their community rather than pursuing the lost.
Jon - May 2nd, 2017 at 3:25 am
I think my main question is how do I determine if the ad is effective. I’ve only used it once, for Christmas last year, and I’m not sure how to determine if it was a genuinely effective strategy. I’d love to hear how we can determine effectiveness, particularly with regards to first time attenders.
Tom Khazoyan - May 13th, 2017 at 7:39 am
Hey Steve, I appreciate your tips for ministries.

The twist I’d put on it is that I’m starting with audience, rather than with my message. I believe that engagement in the new media world is more about helping people think about what’s already on their mind as opposed to sending a message about what’s on my mind.

We can get to the same place in the end, but it’s based on their choice to engage with something that they’re interested in, rather than us ‘preaching’ at them.

At least, that’s my take on it.