These days of “online church” have taught us that the world is online. Over 4 billion people are on the internet averaging 5-6 hours per day (see We Are Social for more information). Facebook reports 1.6 billion users alone. The opportunities for you and your church to evangelize in this digital space are endless. 

But first you need to understand that the paid advertisement world of social media is becoming a necessity. Social media algorithms will only allow 30% - 40% of the content coming from your church to reach its’ intended audience. If you want to reach more people, you’ll need to pay. 

The price for advertising on social media is way lower than conventional advertising. For the price of a Starbucks coffee, your invitation to join church online could reach up to 5,000 people. You can also target ads and access instant metrics to inform you who it reached; something conventional advertising like mailers could never do. 

To be effective in Facebook Advertising, you need to understand your audience. First you start with strangers; people who don’t know you. The content you create for them will be different. Here is where we want people to simply get to know us. You’re not going to be inviting them to join you online at this stage.  You will be posting an encouragement from scripture or a video explaining how to discover your purpose.  From there, you can create a target audience from those who engaged in that post and now you invite them to join you online or for a online course. These people are now your “friends”; people who have watched 25% of the video you posted or liked / commented on the post you promoted. This concept of “strangers to friends” helps you understand what to post and who to send these posts to on Facebook ads. 

Two Types of videos you should create and promote are very simple to do. The first one is an inviter video – simply take video of yourself inviting people to church. Let them know when and where it is happening and what to expect. Throw some b-roll over top so people can get a sense of what will be happening. The second video is similar in style (you talking to the camera) but this time you’re answering real life questions about what is going on in the world and pointing people to Jesus as the answer. This is an evangelistic video. You can create three or four of those videos.  

Using the formula above, you pay about $50 to promote the evangelistic videos to your entire area and then four weeks later, you pay another $50 to promote the inviter video to those who watched 25% of the evangelistic video. In doing so, you will be engaging a large part of your community with 

To learn more about facebook advertising watch these great videos by smarter people than me.  

How are you using Facebook ads for outreach? 

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