Free Christmas Advertising

At Christmas and Easter churches advertise their events. The traditional way has been to pay the local rag to bury a 2-inch ad at the bottom of page 67 (if we're lucky). If we're unlucky, it doesn't even get published.


It's perplexed me for some time why this seems to be the preferred method of advertising. Especially now that facebook ads are so usable. Some advantages include:

Cost per click
This is exactly what it sounds like. If people aren't interested in your ad, you don't pay for it. You pay only for the number of times your ad is clicked on.

Knowing people see it
Do we even know if anyone reads page 67 of the local paper? Online, you know whether people are seeing it.

More information can be communicated
The ad can link to a page of your church's website, where you can place as much info as you like. (Not limited to the little space in the paper ad).

Reaching more people
Facebook makes up 21% of all page views on the whole internet. Daily users average 56 minutes per day on facebook. Defintely beats the local paper!

Reach your target audience
Ad can be specified to show to people in your local area, to save your budget for local people, who can actually attend your church.

Surely the only thing stopping us is a lack of experience and know-how. But even this is taken care of.

The good people at CMS have done a simple tutorial on this, which includes a coupon code for $50 of free advertising on facebook. The coupon expires Dec 31, 2010. Just in time for Christmas ;)
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ps. also see CJ's FB ad experiments ... Part 1 + Part 2