Laura Catalano of St. Timothy’s Episcopal Church in Creve Coeur, Missouri has been been experimenting with using Facebook ads to promote the Sunday morning worship at her church. In this blog post she reflects on what she has learned. Here’s an excerpt:
I created the graphic I using the Photolettering iPhone app. I used bright colors and large text because the graphic was reduced to a thumbnail image as a Facebook sidebar ad. The full-size image above, is what people saw if they clicked on the small thumbnail image in their Facebook sidebar. The ad ran for the week prior to the service. It was targeted at local Facebook users with interests in children’s activities who lived within a 10 radius of St. Tim’s. The total budget for the ad was $20 and it was seen by nearly 3,000 people.
Here are some things I will do differently in the future:
*send a brief direct Facebook message using my personal Facebook account to anyone who “likes” the ad to greet them and ask if they have any more questions
*add a contact email address and phone number to the service information, so people can ask more questions
*add a reminder to “like” St. Timothy’s page, so we can stay connected long term
make sure all greeters at St. Tim’s are in the habit of asking newcomers at worship services how they found us
*be prepared to deal with internet “trolls” more gracefully (troll activity seems to increase when we run ads)
Have you used Facebook or Twitter to promote Sunday worship? What kind of experiences have you had?