Church Web Advertising

This series is called “Improving Your Church Website,” but I thought I’d take a short detour and talk about advertising.

You may have noticed a shift in ads on websites over the last couple of years. At that time Google started their Adwords program, which deploys text-only ads on both its search results pages and on other websites that request the ads. First, they look much nicer than those obnoxious, animated ads. And, second, they are very effective. Many companies (online and off) generate a good part of their business from these ads.

So why shouldn’t churches use them as well? I’m glad you asked.

On the website Search Engine Guide, Jennifer Laycock wrote a great article on this topic, called “The God of Search (and I Don’t Mean Google).” She stated, “While most churches are notoriously slow to adopt technology due to budget and staff constraints, many are starting to embrace proven online marketing techniques in order to expand their reach for both new members and to individuals that could benefit from the church’s outreach programs.”

This is exciting! As I’ve stated in past columns, people today use the Internet to improve their lives — searching for products, programs, and services. That goes for church searching as well. I just spoke to the husband of a new family attending our church. He told me about extensive searches he conducted on the Internet for churches in the area he was moving to.

So, while you can’t fully control where your church’s website ranks in search results, you can more fully control your exposure on Google with their Adwords program.

Apart from the provocative name, the website ChurchMarketingSucks.com provides exceptional help for those in church communications. They recently featured the results of an Adwords campaign by a Denver church averaging just over 100 in attendance:

“Ryan Dickinson, the church’s outreach coordinator, shared that in less than a month they increased visits to their web site from 5 per day to 45 per day. They’ve had little competition for the keywords, so they pay around 10 cents per click. Last month they spent a whopping $32.42 on keyword marketing, drawing 291 ‘click thrus.’ They’ve averaged 28 visitors per month, or about two new families every week. They haven’t had a Sunday yet without at least one visitor who came to the church thanks to their web site. So far this summer their attendance has hit a high of 147, compared to 115 last summer.” (emphasis mine)

That’s right, it can be that cheap! This is definitely worth at least testing. Here are some suggestions from Church Marketing Sucks:

• Make sure your web site is geared for visitors, including directions, basic info and frequent updates. The goal isn’t just to get web surfers to visit your site-it’s to get them to visit your church. That requires an effective web site.

• Take the time to research and understand what people are searching for. Both Yahoo and Google make this easy.

• Write effective ads. Both Yahoo and Google will bold the search terms in your ad, so be sure to include those words in your copy (in the above screen shot of their ad, I had searched for “Denver Church”-notice that both words are in bold text in the ad copy).

• You don’t have to bid for the top spot on every keyword. The Rock at Church Ranch averages 3.2 in the ranking of ads. It’s not the top spot, but it still works.

• A bonus of keyword marketing that Dickinson didn’t mention is the ability to put a cap on your spending. You can bid on keywords up to whatever dollar amount you specify, which makes it easy to stay on budget.

And, let me state the obvious, if your church’s website stinks, then I do not suggest this advertising approach. Fix it first. Then start pushing traffic to it.

Sidenote: As is stated above, both Google and Yahoo have similar advertising programs. Spend some time checking them out and just how easy it is to do this!

One other thing: Google now has a free, local directory of businesses as part of their search offerings. So if someone enters “hardware store in Carlsbad,” they get an additional listing at the top of the results page that takes them to a store’s vital information.

This can also be used for churches. For example, if someone enters “churches in el cajon,” they get some churches that are in the Google database. So check out that search for your city to see if your church is listed. If you’re not, find the “Information for Business Owners” link at the bottom of the page to submit your church’s info. If you are listed, find the “Edit the Listing” link at the bottom of the page and you can add email address, description (make sure to put your service times in there), and more. Then they mail you a verification letter to ensure your submission is valid.

And if you submit your church to Google Local, they include in the verification letter a $25 credit to their Adworks program! You can get a lot of ad views with that money. Try it out!

o

This is part of the series, Improving Your Church Website. Visit Mike’s company, www.uneekNet.com for more help in making your organization successful on the web.