AdWords for Churches
I came across an interesting article on Christianity Today called Church Growth by Google. I have to say, when I see mainstream Christian media reporting positively on the integration of technology and marketing into church ministry it makes me very happy.
The article reports the positive experiences several churches have had buying Google AdWords as a means of advertising their churches. Google AdWords are the “ads” that you would find in the right margin when you do a search in Google. This is a very new marketing strategy for churches. Businesses have been doing it more consistently for the past few years and clearly Google is making a fortune selling this type of advertising. I think there are situations where this would be a good course of action for a church but there are a couple pre-requisites that a church needs to implement before it engages in this marketing strategy:
Your Web Site Needs to Shine
If you are going to advertise online, your church web site had better be stellar! It is a complete waste of time to pay to draw searchers to you site if the site does not represent your church with excellence visually, if it is not easy to navigate, and if you are not keeping the information current and engaging. Your church web site needs to captivate people so they want to come and check you out.
Implement Effective SEO
Churches typically do not do Search Engine Optimization (SEO) effectively. For that matter, many don’t even know what SEO is. Before spending money on “paid search” I would encourage a church to go through a year of implementing proven SEO strategies. It is far too complex to go into the details on what that means in this post, but I’ll write more on SEO for churches in the coming weeks. Before you pay, implement good SEO principles and you may very likely come up at the top of the most popular “organic” search strings without having to pay. Clearly this is harder to do in larger cities or if other churches in your area are implementing strong SEO practices themselves.
If the above have been taken care of, paying for Google AdWords can be a viable strategy. The real advantage that the article points to is that it is considerably cheaper than many other types of paid advertising. What I also agree with is that today there are far more people who go “searching” for churches in their community online than are looking in Yellow Pages, newspapers, or any other traditional media. I have seen this to be true for the church I attend.
I would really love to hear from you – have you experimented with Google AdWords as a marketing strategy for your church? If you have, what has been your experience? If you have not, what are your thoughts on it as a marketing initiative for churches? Please share in the comments below.
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