What is the Best Way to Spend Our Church Advertising Dollars?

I got a great question from Pastor Greg with the soon to be launched Living Water Church in Pueblo:

We are starting a new church this fall. I am wondering what is the best way to spend our advertising dollars. I want to drive people to our website. Any suggestions?

I love this question! There are no shortage of ways to part with your marketing budget whether you are a new church or a new business.  People will promise you everything under the sun, so you have to be very wise about your ad spend.

Well, here are my recommendations for you, Greg:

1. Sandwich Boards

Without a doubt, the very first thing I would invest in are sandwich boards.  A well placed army of church signboards will bring you thousands of eyeballs every weekend. I just published a post with a more detailed plan how to do church sandwich boards.

So how does this get people to your website?  We live in a world of mobile search.  Splash your name out there and the church shoppers will type in your name on their phone to learn more about you.

2. Google Adwords

This is the only other paid recommendation I'll give you.  If you set up Google Adwords properly, it's hard to find a more targeted way to advertise.  Your ads will appear on Google anytime somebody in a geography that you specify (only show my ad to people in City A, City B, and City C) types in a matching search term ("church in City A").

This is a big enough topic that it got it's own blog post.  Learn how to do Google AdWords for church marketing.

3. Craigslist Event Ads

This is the quickest way to cheat your way to the page one search results. By listing your church service as a weekly event on Craigslist, odds are good you'll sneak right in to the local Google search results.  

Learn how to do a Craigslist Event ad.

4. Blogging

The long term strategy you need to apply is blogging.  Building out pages and pages of content that continuously remind Google that you are a "Church in Pueblo" are a necessity.

The most natural way that we've found to do that is by writing a blog re-cap of our sermon every week.  It takes some time to build SEO momentum, but eventually your church has loads of pages that make it crystal clear to Google what you do, where you are, and that your website is active and alive!

Here is a plan to recycle your weekly sermon for SEO power.

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So there you have it, Greg. These are my top four suggestions on where to focus your time and efforts.  I hope you guys rock it down in Pueblo!  

Feel free to reply to this post with any questions or just use the form on the right side of this page.