Advertising online for churches is not something I want to sell you on right now, so this entire article assumes that you are onboard with the concept. Instead, I would rather have the conversation of which area of advertising online is better for churches, Facebook or Google? Yes, there are others but these two are the big impacters who are getting it right the most. In some ways, it is comparing apples to oranges, but in the more generalized sense of online advertisers, we can define which is better.
My tl;dr summation is Facebook Ads are still too early to this game and I would rather invest in Google’s infrastructure.
- While Facebook has more pageviews at 1 trillion per month, Google has more of an impact with performance.
- The biggest stat below is the performance with only .051% of advertisements being clicked whereas Google has .4% (which is still low as I would rarely drop below 3% with my customers)
- The second part where Google is not doing as well is the targeting ability with ads. Google is hoping to hit the whole internet whereas Facebook is hitting people you may already know. That being said, Facebook users are not necessarily looking to click outside Facebook whereas Google users are on their search engine to find something and your ad may be what they want.
Have you thought about using advertisements for your church or have you pulled the trigger?
We’d love to hear about it in the comments.
[via WordStream.com]
Terry says
Last Easter we spent $100 for a FB promotion using their “local” ads. We found that most of the views were from half way across the country and the rest half way around the world. The closer we looked at the origins of the views and likes, it appeared to be click farms in India and Parkistan. No tangiblge results from the experience.
Michael says
Hi Terry,
Are you certain you used the targeting option well? Because I use this daily and it gives me result, people in a specified location, age, sex or whatnot are the ones who get to see the ads.
Jeremy Smith says
There are two different concerns here. The first is that as Michael had stated, may you did not do it right.
The other, more concerning issue is the problem Facebook has with fake accounts. For many people, they create advertisements which sees HIGH growth but less engagement. Thus, if this is the case and you saw little return on your advertising, you may have too many fake accounts attached to your fan page. At this time, it would need to be addressed to avoid Facebook reach penalties that come from people that like your page but never interact.
Terry says
I will check both of factors mentioned. The next time we advertise with FB , which I think will be Easter, we will be careful to record the details of how we implement the advertising. Thanks for your input guys.
Terry