Speaker 0 00:00:00 Facebook ads are one of the biggest opportunities we have to reach people online, but in my experience, most churches set up their Facebook ads in exactly the wrong way. In this video, we'll teach you how to set up your Facebook ads the right way. We hope this conversation helps you reach more people and grow. You're listening to The Reach Right podcast, the show dedicated to helping pastors and church leaders reach people the right way. Hosted by me, Thomas Costello, and with me as always, is my co-host, Ian Hyatt. We're here to help your church see more visitors and grow.
Speaker 2 00:00:49 Ready to get ready to get.
Speaker 1 00:00:56 Hey
Speaker 0 00:00:56 Guys, welcome to the Reach Rite podcast, episode number 121. I am your host, Thomas Costello. And with me as always is my co-host,
Speaker 3 00:01:05 Ian Hyatt. Hey, Thomas.
Speaker 0 00:01:06 Hey, man, I'm excited to talk. Today we're talking about Facebook ads. I think that's something that every church, um, well every church probably should be trying out a little bit. I think for, uh, for certain things, it makes a lot of sense. I think there's a lot of opportunities that churches have to use Facebook ads. I think every church should be using face, uh, Facebook in general, but Facebook ads are, uh, something that I think a lot of churches haven't, uh, taken the step into. But it presents a pretty big opportunity, I think now, when we say Facebook ads, I want to be really clear. I also mean Instagram ads. It might be better set as meta ads that we're doing. That's the same company now. Um, ads on Facebook also appear on Instagram if you choose for them to, and they also, uh, they show up on some of their other channels and display networks.
Speaker 0 00:01:56 There's lots of options, but, uh, the main thing that you're paying for with Facebook ads is Facebook has data on millions, or I should say billions of people at this point. Uh, and you're paying for access to be able to show your ads to very specific kinds of people on there. And so this is very helpful for churches. It is one of the, uh, one of the best ways that has ever existed for us to be able to reach a very specific kind of audience because yeah, when we reach a specific audience, we could be more specific with our messaging and have something that's more like, they're more likely to respond to, uh, is the point with that. Yeah. So, um, I think it's a really good conversation for us to have here today.
Speaker 3 00:02:39 Absolutely agree. And we get this question more and more now for, from churches that come our way about, uh, how do we take advantage of Facebook ads? Can we need help with that? And so, uh, I think churches are catching on for sure. But before we dig into, you know, these five keys with Facebook ads, what about that church Thomas that is kind of of, and this might be rare now, but that, that church that's just getting started with Facebook in general?
Speaker 0 00:03:04 <laugh>? Yeah, no, I think, well, let's say you're a new church, right? So if you're a brand new church, right? Um, maybe that's the place that you're in. I think the first step obviously is setting up a Facebook page for your church. Um, I wanna be clear about this. You need to set up a Facebook page. You can also set up a Facebook group, but don't only set up a Facebook group, right? There was some confusion about this. I think this is mostly solved now. Yeah. Uh, but I think that Facebook groups are very valuable. I'm a member of many Facebook groups. I think that they are, are probably the best thing. Facebook marketplace and Facebook groups are the best thing that still exists about Facebook. Uh, so, um, you could certainly, uh, do a group, but I think we want to encourage you to do a page because this is your, your basically your profile.
Speaker 0 00:03:50 The main thing that people that are looking for your church, this is what they will encounter. So step one, get a page. Uh, step two, you want to get a business manager account for that page. So that's what gets you into, uh, the Facebook marketing world, the meta ads worlds. You can start getting your ads on there. So you need to set that up. There's some instructions online on how you can do that. Um, here's the, I guess the third thing and final thing I guess in getting your things set up on Facebook or Meta is you need to make sure you install the metal, The meta pixel. Yeah. Uh, the meta pixel is basically, it's this little piece of code that you put into your website and what it does is it tracks everybody that goes onto your website and it tries to match them with a Facebook profile.
Speaker 0 00:04:38 Uh, so if you get people that are showing up on your site, whether maybe they saw a sermon, uh, or maybe they just, uh, looked at an event or something like that, or they just browsed, Facebook can then on their end, tie that visitor with someone who has been onto your website and what they did. Yeah. On your website. So there's two primary reasons for this. Number one, you want to be able to see when you're doing Facebook ads, it is super important to track what's working and what isn't, right. And the way that you do that is by, you see the people that go from Facebook onto your church website, What are they doing? Are they doing the thing we want to do? So a common use case, let's say you have a plan your visit form on your, on your site. So, so one clicks on a plan your visit link, they wanna let you know that they're coming before they show up for the first time.
Speaker 0 00:05:29 Uh, if you're sending people from Facebook to your site, the Facebook or the Meta Pixel, it basically can tell Facebook, this person went onto the site and they filled out the form to let, to plan their visit for this Sunday. And so what it tells you is when you're doing your ads on Facebook later you could say, Oh, we paid $30 for this and seven people filled out this form for that $30. Let's keep doing more of that kind of stuff there. So getting that installed is really important. On the other end, here's one of the coolest things. It actually lets you build some things called cus of audiences. We'll talk more about that I guess in this next, uh, and when we give you some tips and things. But the Facebook pixel or the meta pixel, it is, it's, I say those two things cuz of the same thing nowadays. Meta, pixel and face, it's not two different things. Facebook and meta are the same thing. So the Facebook or megapixel is the same thing. Getting that on your website is really a key to having any measure of success when you're using Facebook ads.
Speaker 3 00:06:28 Yeah, that's good stuff. Good stuff. Nothing to add there. The good, good covering on that, kind of those first steps there. Um, yeah, why don't we dig in for the five factors. First one here, targeting your ideal audience for Facebook advertising. So who is the ideal audience for a church, Thomas?
Speaker 0 00:06:46 Yeah. It's different for every single church. Yeah. Uh, but this is where that, uh, that pixel really comes in. So this is what makes Facebook marketing or meta marketing. This is what they have that's so valuable. And, and you've heard this kind of language probably if you've watched and you've been keeping up with social media, uh, there's this, um, this realization that people came to that on Facebook. We, the users are actually the product, right? That this is what they are selling is our information so that advertisers can get their message in front of the right people. And so it's a great tool for us who are marketers or advertisers or churches in this case, to be able to make sure our message gets in front of the right people. Now some will say, Okay, but we're, we're, we're pastors. We're church leaders. We're supposed to be reaching everybody.
Speaker 0 00:07:35 I agree. We're supposed to be reaching everybody, but here's the thing. You are gonna be specially made and your church is specially made to reach a certain kind of person best at a basic level. Let's put it this way. Um, your church, if you are in the United States and you're an English speaking church, you will best be able to reach English speakers. Yeah. And you probably shouldn't spend a lot of your budget on people that only speak Spanish or only speak Russian or any other language than English. Now nobody feels like, well, okay, that makes sense. That's obvious. But there are lots of other ways that your church is gonna be uniquely wired to be able to reach certain kinds of people. So if you're pastoring a mainline church and you have no children and you haven't had any children showing up at your church in several years, you're trying to fix that.
Speaker 0 00:08:25 You know, maybe you want to target more people that have young, that are young families or you want to target, uh, mothers of preschoolers and you can get that specific with things. Or maybe you only want to target people that are empty nesters and you can do those kind of things. So you can really get specific in who you're trying to reach. That's not a statement of who God loves more or who's more valuable, Right? Right. But you're allowed to build these kinds of targets. So the kind of targets I would build are certainly around language that's really important. I think it lets you target by age demographic, so mm-hmm. <affirmative>, if you're trying to, if you're a church that's in an inner city college town and you have most mostly college students, yeah. You can target people that are between 18 and 25 and you can focus on just them.
Speaker 0 00:09:12 And you can target people that are tied to the university that you're next to or whatever you would be looking for. That's, that's the way you can actually set these kinds of things up. Alternatively, this is one of the best tools is there's something called a lookalike audience. And this is where that pixel part comes in. What Facebook can do is you can set it up so that you can make a lookalike audience. Maybe you base it on people that have been on your website. So you tell Facebook, Hey, look at my website and match everybody on our website who's been on there in the last 90 days with profiles that are on Facebook now. So find everybody's been on our site and match it with their profiles. And then I want you to find the people on Facebook in our town that are most like them and show our ads to those people. So, um, it'll take the people that have been on your site, it'll find the audience that's like maybe one or 2% closest to this. You can set anywhere from one to 10%. You'll find the one to the one to 10% that's most closely related to people that have been on your site and show your ads only to them. So, really important, this is the best thing about Facebook ads, is you can get very specific with your target and reach the exact people that you want to be reaching.
Speaker 3 00:10:28 Yeah, that's really good. So smart. Um, and, and I get covered it. We know everyone's important. Everyone needs to be reached, you know, by everyone should be welcome at a church, but you an ad just like when you see an ad for a health product or clothing or whatever, it has a specific target in mind. Absolutely. So it makes sense to think through those things. So, good. Next one's using a strong headline in your, uh, church Facebook ads. How important is that?
Speaker 0 00:10:55 Yeah, so Facebook, Instagram, doesn't matter which one having that headline nailed. The first words that people see, and this is not on the copy, this is usually kind of in that, uh, in that link on the bottom, it's the title of the link there. Really nailing those words. Um, that is really important. Here's a few things we found that work really well. Again, we spend, I don't know if I mentioned this in the episode here, we spend about $6,000 every month on Facebook or meta ads. So we have a lot of experience with this. And on top of that, we've coached churches hundreds of times on how to do this well. And so a few things we've learned that works well. Number one, random numbers. Uh, so anytime you can use a random number, um, whether it's, you know, 79 or 142 or something, just something very specific.
Speaker 0 00:11:44 If you do a number like 100 or 10, although, you know, we're doing five, which in this episode, which is kind of a random number or kind of a, a round number I guess you'd say. But yeah, choosing a an off or an odd number, I think it adds to some, um, some value or people believe it more cuz like why would they make up such a random number if they were gonna actually say something that isn't true? It makes you more believable. So getting those kinds of things into your, um, into your actual headline. And then using a power word like, so, um, really thinking about what ver what, what words are you using and your adjectives and your ad verbs, what are you using and how can you add more weight to make it stand out more? So instead of saying Join us for our great, uh, harvest party or our great vbs, you could say, uh, join us for our brilliant vbs and using big words that like, really grab your attention. Yeah. Um, a life-changing vacation Bible school. Yeah. Yeah. Those kinds of things. So really hitting that headline hard and crafting your, your messaging. Cuz in most cases that's what people are gonna see. They're not gonna look at the description or the body text unless you've engaged them with the main copy of it there. So that's some of our advice on that.
Speaker 3 00:13:03 Well, headlines have been important in newspapers for years, right? Yeah. So same, same thing here. They can and, and you want to catch people's attention, especially if you're investing in, in Facebook ads and spending money outta your church's budget. So, and this is a good segue to the next one, creating Facebook ads with eye catching visuals. Um, so not just an eye catching headline, but visuals, we know people are still visual and probably more visual now than ever, right? Mm-hmm.
Speaker 0 00:13:29 <affirmative>. Yep. Yeah. So there's a few things to keep in mind with this, but yeah, this is the, the, the image or images that you're actually seeing in the ad. Uh, one thing that we're doing a lot more of is we're not using just still images. Yeah. Uh, but we're using more carousel. So think of Instagram, how you scroll through. Yeah. The different, uh, images. Like it's a series of four or five different images mm-hmm <affirmative> that is really great for, uh, for Facebook or meta ads on Instagram as well. Um, using video. It doesn't have to be just images, but even using video on there, I think that really grabs people a 10 people's attention. Here's what we found with videos is that I have to pay more, get a little technical, I pay more for people to see my video ads. And I'm not sure exactly why that is, but in general, our video ads, you pay more per view, but you pay less per click.
Speaker 0 00:14:25 And that's really what it all comes down to. I don't care as long as people are getting onto our site and I pay less per what we call conversion or people that Yeah. Like maybe fill out your, uh, plan your visit for I pay less with video for that. So, um, as far as advice on eye catching visuals, whether they be uh, still images, carousel images or video are, that's kind of a dirty secret cuz we have a team of designers and things on staff here at Reach Reach Wite. Yeah. But we use Canva. We use Canva. It's something that really makes a lot of sense. Canva is a software that is, uh, there's a free version. There is a version that's $10 a month and you can do great graphics and they have amazing templates that are already built into Canva there. So it's funny, I was talking to my design team for a long time.
Speaker 0 00:15:12 They were insisting on using Illustrator and really doing our graphics exactly right for our ads, for our YouTube thumbnails, for our blog post graphics. And then I asked him the other day, he said, Well, we just, we just found Cava was much easier. It's kind of one of those, if you can't beat 'em, join them kind of things. They pride themselves in using all of the Adobe software. But yeah, Canva is what it is. So yeah, use Canva. I think it is one of the best tools you could be using on something like this. So, uh, check that out. Uh, we'll have a note in the show description here. You can take a look at that and a link over to Canva
Speaker 3 00:15:43 And PSR designers are still very creative, their own creative graphics. <laugh> Absolutely. In
Speaker 0 00:15:49 This case.
Speaker 3 00:15:49 Absolutely are. It really is good. So right. This next one's kind of a tongue twister, but it's very important I think, uh, writing clear, engaging and keyword rich. Copy. Yep. Boy break, break that down. Thomas <laugh>.
Speaker 0 00:16:02 Yeah. Uh, I think that you want to be writing copy, so when we say copy, that means the headline, but I'm referring more to like the body copy that you see in the ad. Um, we have been doing a lot of tests and for churches, I have seen that longer body copy. It tends to do very well if it's clear and well written and it's very concise. Uh, so if you're gonna just ramble on about, you know, here's what's great about our church and those things, that's not what I'm talking about. Yeah. You need to be having a very clear list. Usually things like bullet points and even using emojis in there at times we found those in our tests that it does very well. Uh, but I wanna recommend a tool, it's called the Hemingway app. Um, I think it's hemingway.app is where the actual, I might be hemingway app.com.
Speaker 0 00:16:50 We'll have it in the description here. But the Hemingway app, this is one of the best tools out there. It basically uses AI to help you change your writing to be more clear, more concise and ba the the idea is write more like Ernest Hemingway, you know, very to the point direct. I use it all the time for writing copy like this. Yeah, it's not great for writing, you know, longer form blog posts and those things. But if you're writing, let's say a hundred words for your Instagram ad copy, this is really fantastic. Write something, plug it into Hemingway, it'll tell you that sentence is too long. You can use, you can be more. One of the things that always tells me is be more bold. Like, so I'd, I have this habit of saying things like kind of, or most or lots of, instead of just saying, instead of saying churches need to do this, I might say something like, Lots of churches do this and Hemingway apples say, don't say that. Be bold. Make a bold statement and in your copy, that really is important stuff. So especially for churches, be bold in what you're saying to people in your meta, your Facebook, your Instagram ad copy. I think that goes a long way.
Speaker 3 00:18:02 Well, I'm being bold and direct too. It's just gonna make it clear. I mean, again, people aren't spending forever here. You want to make the point very clear and call them to action and uh, get it done. So, um, it totally makes sense. So last but not least, testing and revising the Facebook ad based on results. I mean, this seems like a no brainer. I mean, you, you definitely wanna see what's working and what's not and make tweaks, right?
Speaker 0 00:18:26 Absolutely. You do. Yeah, that's, that is the, the thing of digital marketing in general, this is what we do. We eat, breathing, sleep, digital marketing here at Reach Rite. And really, uh, I tell this to our team all the time. Our philosophy is throw it to the wall, see if it sticks. If it does, we're gonna keep doing that. And if it doesn't, yeah, we're just gonna try something else. And that's really what digital marketing comes down to. So yeah, my advice, if you're ever doing ads or when you're doing ads on meta, whether Facebook or Instagram always do a minimum of two, uh, I, I actually recommend two is better than doing three in most cases because it's hard to compare the results of three things. You always wanna have if you have two ads. Um, and on those two ads, you just change one thing.
Speaker 0 00:19:11 One difference between the two. So an example would be, I'm gonna run two ads for our vacation Bible school, uh, and one is gonna use this picture and the other one is gonna use this, uh, indoor picture. One's an outside picture and we have these two different photos. And then you can take a look at Facebook ads and you'll see, well we pay uh, $4 for every click on this one, but this one only costs us 75 cents per click. Ah. So we want to be doing more of the outside picture one cuz it gets better results. And so you eliminate the inside picture one and then you maybe play with the headline and say, we're gonna use this power word here and we'll use another power word here and we'll see which one gets better results. And then after a week we'll make that change.
Speaker 0 00:19:55 And then what happens is your ads get increasingly better and you are learning, you're learning to be better at doing this stuff. We know that this key word works for us. Well we know that pictures that happen in this part of our church, they tend to perform better on these kinds of ads. So I think that really is the, the key is testing these kinds of things. So the other thing I will say is it's okay to test different kinds of calls to action, but I would say in our experience that uh, Facebook ads in general are better for short term calls to action. So things like events, events are fantastic for Facebook ads. I think they are such an opportunity for things like if you're doing a harvest party, uh, in a couple of weeks here or Halloween event of some, some Halloween alternative, whatever it would be for your church.
Speaker 0 00:20:45 Um, run a Facebook ad for that because I have seen, we did this one year at our church, uh, and we spent like $30 and got 150 people to come out to it for $30. And our results may vary from yours and I'm not promising something like that, but this is a huge opportunity to do. Yeah. Uh, like for events and then also having very clear calls to action for it. So if you're gonna do something that's more of an evergreen kind of an ad like come to church this Sunday, make sure you have a clear response. What do they do? It's can't just be, I hope they get on the ad and I hope they show up on a Sunday, right? Oh yeah. I think what's better is if it's fill out that, uh, plan your visit type of form. Yeah. So all I to say, your events are your biggest opportunity when it comes to Facebook ads. Evergreen ads are a little bit tougher, but I think if you're using them with really clear calls to action, that's great. But always be ab testing, always test which one works better, Do two tests with every ad and then always make incremental improvements. That's the moral there.
Speaker 3 00:21:46 And we always pretty much end with calls to action. That's our, our thing, right? And so, uh, and and you want to have that, especially with your, with your marketing, you want them to do something with it. So it's good stuff.
Speaker 0 00:21:59 That's absolutely. Hey, I got a call action for everybody. Let me, let me share a call to action, rate review, subscribe, comment, do all that kind of stuff on this. That'd be, that means a lot to us. It helps us to kind of get the word out there and help more churches with this stuff here. So, uh, if you could do that, um, commenting is one of the best things you can do. The algorithms really seem to like, Yeah, comments and conversation and interactivity. So we want to foster more of that. We'd love to hear, if you have any tips that have worked for you with your Facebook ads, let us know in the comments. We'll kind of yeah. Go back and forth on that. If you're upset with us because we said that you, your church should be targeting somebody complain about us, that's fine.
Speaker 0 00:22:35 Yeah, sure. Write it. Tell us how much you dislike us. We're thinking actually, uh, Ian and I have been talking about maybe doing like a mean comments episode where we take all those insults and things that people have told and levied toward us and we kind of read 'em at each other and try to make each other cry, uh, with them. I think we might try that in the near future here. So anyway, bring your mean comments. That's uh, that's fun too. So anyway guys, thanks so much for being a part of our reach right family. Uh, it means a lot to us and we hope to catch you next week.
Speaker 3 00:23:03 See ya.
Speaker 0 00:23:06 Thanks for listening to the Reach right podcast. We hope this episode will help you reach people the right way. Looking for more resources for your church, check us out
[email protected]. If this episode has been helpful to you, it would mean the world to us if you would rate, review and subscribe on iTunes or wherever you get your podcasts. Thanks again for listening and we'll see you next week.
Speaker 1 00:23:41 You.
