CSL 023 – How Can Churches Use Google Ads to Reach Your Community?

Isabelle Faletti (00:00):

Hello there, and welcome at ChurchSpring Live, episode 23. We are so excited to be hopping on live stream here today to be talking about a very fun topic, I think, Google Ads. While we are waiting for some people to jump into the live event, go ahead and introduce yourself. Add your name, your church name, where you’re from in the comments below, so that we can say a personal hello to all of our live attendees. While you are doing that, I do want to welcome a few new members that we have to the Church Spring Family. Welcome St. Peter Baptist Church from Glen Allen, Virginia. We have First Baptist Church from Missouri and Peace Lutheran Preschool from Grand Island, Nebraska. Yes, we have some non-church, non-profits and organizations with us here at ChurchSpring.

Isabelle Faletti (01:01):

I’ll be honest, I chose the Grand Island one, specifically because my sister is from Nebraska, and I always think of her, and I think of anything of Nebraska. I’ve heard good things about Grand Island. Welcome everybody. If you are new to ChurchSpring and you somehow stumbled across this live stream episode of our two matching outfits here with Peder and I, our Missionary ChurchSpring is very simple. We help churches build intuitive, affordable, and frustration-free websites, and that was our mission and our goal here at ChurchSpring. My name is Isabelle, and joining me today is Peder Aadahl. He is our special guest and digital marketing guru.

Peder Aadahl (01:53):

Yes. Thank you.

Isabelle Faletti (01:54):

Yep. I see we have a couple other people hopping in here for the live event. If you are just now joining, go ahead and introduce yourself. Post a comment with your name, your church name, where you’re from so that we can say hello. Don’t be shy in this livestream. Peder and I love to have interaction with all of our live attendees. That’s what makes it exciting. That’s what makes it fun. That’s what gives us the livestream aspect of it. If you have questions throughout our livestream, post a comment, ask the question, I see all the questions and comments come through. We want to answer them. Definitely, just be your friend, be your friend on these ChurchSpring Lives. If you know someone who could really benefit from Google Ads or someone who manages your website, maybe you are not directly managing your website.

Isabelle Faletti (02:54):

Maybe you have a team of volunteers who could benefit from learning how Google Ads can help drive traffic to your website. Go ahead and just tag them right now in the comments of this live stream, or just share this live stream video on your Facebook page. Get the word out, whether it’s with your church or just within your community, and you know of any other pastors who could really learn from this church bring live event. We want to make sure that we’re able to help, not just our circle of influence, but also your circles of influence. We will be having a replay with show notes available, so no need to take lots of notes.

Isabelle Faletti (03:36):

I always still have my notes just to jot down key ideas of when Peder’s dropping a truth bomb, I scribble a note to say, wow, I need to think about that later? But you don’t need to be taking a ton of notes. We’ll be talking a lot today about Google Ads and just sharing a ton of helpful information. You can always watch the replay and any show notes, helpful information, tips and tools that we’ll be giving out at churchspring.com/csl023. I just popped that on the screen here, churchspring.com/csl023. Be sure to check that out after the show notes. Awesome. Looks like we have some live attendees saying hello. I’ll just pop those on the screen.

Isabelle Faletti (04:29):

Lighthouse Fellowship Baptist Church, welcome. We have Sheila from Hillcrest Baptist Church. I love seeing regulars. Oh, and Lighthouse, you’re from Texas. Awesome. Great to have you here. Tom, great to see you, Tom, from Pillars of Faith Tabernacle. Oh, we have a lot of regulars today. I love that. Carla Greene from Ohio and Brice Rogers from Sunset Presbyterian Church. Awesome. Well, welcome everybody. Continue to introduce yourself in the comments, chat amongst each other. If you see someone from your area, say hello, give a shout out to them. Always fun to meet new people in these livestream spaces that we have on the internet. Peder, are you excited to be talking about Google Ads today?

Peder Aadahl (05:25):

I am. I’m very excited to be talking about Google Ads today. Actually, just even from our previous conversations that we’ve had about Facebook ads and Google Analytics, this is a natural movement forward of like, okay, since we understand more about those things, what about Google Ads? Actually, just even yesterday, I was talking with a church about Google Ads for promoting when they have their new update to an app or a church, a church website, something of that nature. Anyways, I’m excited to be talking about that.

Isabelle Faletti (06:02):

Yeah. Last week, for those who may have missed last week, we talked about Facebook ads, well, the last two weeks actually, we talked about Facebook ads. Now we’re transitioning into Google Ads because that’s such an important method that churches can be using to reach their specific neighborhood, their city in ways that they may not even have realized before. I would love to know, for all of our live audience, how are you feeling about Google Ads? I want to know actually the answer to that. Drop a comment in the comments and tell me, how are you feeling when you think about using Google Ads for your church? Are you confused about it? Maybe you feel a little overwhelmed of the idea of Google Ads. You’ve heard about it, but where do you even start?

Isabelle Faletti (06:57):

It’s a big, scary topic, or maybe you feel really confident in Google Ads, and you’re just ready to move forward. Drop a comment. Tell me how you’re feeling about Google Ads so that Peder and I can address how you’re feeling specifically and help tailor our tips and key methods that you need to do, specifically to how you are doing. Tell me how you’re feeling about Google Ads in the comments. Because Google Ads, like I said, it can be scary and Pastor Gooding, you said, “Yes, you have no idea about Google Ads.” Carla Greene, you just shared and you said you’ve never used them. Sheila, “Curious about how successful they would be, need more information. Yes. So excited to hear what Peder has to say.”

Peder Aadahl (07:51):

Yes.

Isabelle Faletti (07:53):

Right. I feel like Google Ads, it’s like a buzzword. You hear about it, but what does it actually mean? It can feel like you’re missing out, you’re missing that key piece of the puzzle of how you can be reaching your community, how you’ve been growing your church in this digital world that we are currently in. With the pandemic, people are going online even more so. I’m excited because Peder and I are going to share very specific key tactics that every church should be taking to reach your community and ultimately drive traffic to your website with Google Ads. We’re going to actually break our Google Ads conversation into two parts. In today’s episode, part one episode 023, we’re going to be creating the foundation for what you need to know to create a Google Ad for your church. It sounds like we have a lot of beginners of Google Ads, and that’s exactly why we’re breaking it into a two-part series.

Isabelle Faletti (09:02):

Today, we’ll be helping you create the foundation of what you need to be creating before you launch a Google ad. What do you need to know about Google Ads? What is it? Yeah, all fun ingredients for that. Then the next week, we’ll take what we’ve learned and we’ll put that into action, and Peder will walk us through how to actually go into a Google AdWords and literally create an ad. This is a super important episode to be attending, to be attending live so that you can ask questions, you can engage with Peder, because like I said, he’s a digital marketing guru. He knows this stuff. So, use him. I say that every single episode when we have Peder on, but he’s a master at this.

Isabelle Faletti (09:50):

Be sure to just ask any questions that you have as they come up as it sounds like we may be introducing some new concepts to some of our audience. Peder, why don’t you just kick us off and explain exactly what is a Google Ad. It sounds like that would be a great place for us to start so that we can all be on the same page.

Peder Aadahl (10:14):

Absolutely. When it comes to Google Ads, we are going to focus on one type of Google Ad moving forward in this session and even next session, we walk through actually creating it. But Google Ads, not surprisingly, are going to be associated with the platform of Google. Google is where you’re going to be setting them up. Last week’s we’ve set the ads up for Facebook, but of course, Facebook owns Instagram. That’s also where we showcase how we could add Instagram ads as well. That’s all that, but when it comes to Google, we’re going to be talking about something called Google search ads. Now, before we dive into that, I just want to give a brief overview of just Google Ads as a whole. Thanks, Pastor Gooding.

Isabelle Faletti (11:02):

Pastor Gooding said, “You the man, Peder.” We agree.

Peder Aadahl (11:04):

I had a good conversation with Pastor Gooding yesterday, so I know … I’m going to try to help answer some of these questions in this too. I know all of you would have. When it comes to Google Ads, you can think of it different ways. There’s something called search ads. Now, search ads, we will focus the most of our time on this. This is when people are typing into Google, and everyone does this, if you have a question about something, if you’re trying to look up something, especially something local, you’re going to type, pizza near me, whatever maybes, things of that nature. Then Google is going to give you a bunch of results.

Peder Aadahl (11:43):

Those results are organic, and we’ll talk about the definition of that in a second, then there’s the paid ad side of that. Then there’s even something that is kind of a combination of the two that involves organic and potentially paid that is involved in the Google map that pops up on the screen. We’ll talk a little more of that, but there’s also something called Google display ads. This is not meant to take away from them at all, because these are very valuable. The primary Google Ads that are out there are search ads and display ads. Display ads are those little square blocks, sometimes rectangles that you’ll see on a website that are flashing something that maybe you already went to previously before. Maybe you added something to a cart on another website, maybe like Amazon, and wouldn’t you know it, you’re on some new site and oh, there’s those shoes I added to my cart.

Peder Aadahl (12:36):

That’s a good example of utilizing something like Google display ads in that capacity. Now, for the church, Google display ads would be great if you’re wanting to show … it’s like a digital billboard, if you will, across the internet, and you can do that for your area. You could just say, let’s say Colorado Springs, I’m just wanting to put a display out to the Colorado Springs and highlight our upcoming Christmas Eve service, something of that nature. It’s just a nice image you have of, hey, come join us for a Christmas Eve service. When they click on that, it would take them to your website. I just want to highlight that that exists, that that is a valuable piece, but majority of the time we’re going to focus here more on the search ads, because this is something that I think everybody …

Peder Aadahl (13:21):

You don’t have to be a designer to utilize these. You can just work through what do you want to make sure people are aware of when they search for things in your community? Because when people do Google Searches, there’s user intent behind it. I don’t know if you mind, I’ll show showcase something here on the screen here. This is a good example, let me blow this up a little bit more here so everybody can see this. This is we’re focusing on Colorado Springs again.

Isabelle Faletti (13:51):

Woo-hoo.

Peder Aadahl (13:51):

Woo-hoo. Yes, indeed. Colorado Springs, Colorado churches, this is actually something that gets searched in your area. Even if you’re a rural church or something of that nature, there’s still a good chance that there are people in your area searching for churches that you would fall into that bucket in some capacity. What happens when somebody searches for Colorado churches? In this capacity is the map comes up because it is very geo-centric. Google understands that we’re looking at Colorado Springs, Colorado, so it knows on the map what to pull up. Then from there, there’s these Google my business listings, which is another thing we can talk about at some point in time. But these are organic results. Your church, if it doesn’t have already, is something you have to look up on your own as of right now.

Peder Aadahl (14:47):

But if you don’t have a Google my business listing, I highly recommend you look into that, but down here, this is the thing that everybody has commonly associated with Google. These are organic results. In other words, this is something that these pages have been indexed by Google to be highly ranked for the search, Colorado Springs, Colorado Churches. Now, not surprising, these are very high linked to sites. Yelp, Church Finder. Then finally, by the third result, we finally get to maybe something that is actually a church in the actual area. Now, the reason why … yes,

Isabelle Faletti (15:33):

It’s a wonderful church. I’ve been multiple times.

Peder Aadahl (15:38):

Oh you’ve been multiple times, so shout out to Mountain Springs. The reason why I want to highlight that is because as you can see, unless you’re one of these churches, unless maybe you’re here or on the first page, I know that in Colorado Springs, Colorado, there are more than seven churches here in the homepage, right?

Isabelle Faletti (16:05):

Yeah. My church, my home church. It’s not appearing. There’s your case right there.

Peder Aadahl (16:11):

There we go. It’s not showing. Well, the thing that we want to highlight here is sometimes, and this is what can be sometimes frustrating and we all understand that, but sometimes in order for your church to show up, you’re going to have to pay something. There’s no guarantee that even if your church ranked here on the first page of Google, or maybe it showed up as one of the … sometimes the primary churches that showed up on the map here, there’s no guarantee that that is always going to be there every time somebody searches for that. That’s one of the reasons why we want to highlight Google search ads, is because that is something that allows you to say, hey, when somebody searches for this, insert your area, we have the ability for our church, or as we’ll showcase here in a second as well.

Peder Aadahl (17:04):

Your ministry to show up based on potential –how things are, because this isn’t just meant for churches, but this is meant for the ministries that you have inside of your church. A lot of you have ongoing ministries that the public, if they were searching for, could be able to take advantage of. One that I have here is a preschool that one of the churches helps put together, Compassion Preschool in my area. This is an ad that we ran a little bit here to promote it at one point in time. That has ended at this point in time, but to give you an idea, when somebody searches for a preschool in Maple Grove, which is another city actually out in Minnesota somewhere, as you can see here, these ads, these are massive.

Peder Aadahl (17:51):

These take up the massive portion of the screen, and then they also make sure that when somebody searches for that, they show up first.

Isabelle Faletti (18:03):

Wow. Those are the two things that you see before you even get to the map on your example of the preschool Maple Grove. Yeah. You can tell that they are ads by, if you’ll look in the top left, yep, it does say ad. That’s how, when you’re searching, if you haven’t already, you can be aware of what is an ad and what isn’t an ad. For our attendees here, just this week, when you’re using Google to search restaurants near me, churches near me, whatever your normal search terms that you Google, just take a look at what ads pop up, and you will realize you probably click on those ads a lot more than you’ve even realized before, because they’re at the top and they are specifically targeted to what you searched for, and they’re helping answer a question that you went to Google to ask.

Peder Aadahl (19:02):

Absolutely. Yep. Absolutely. Yes. Anyways, just to showcase some of the initial things of why Google search ads are important. Number one, you can ensure the fact that when somebody searches for your church, you’re going to have a chance of showing up for sure. If nobody else is doing it, you’re probably going to show up every single time, ironically, that’s one of the benefits of doing that. Then the other thing with some of these search ads is there’s others little things in there that allow you to do other interesting things that we’ll get to here in a second.

Isabelle Faletti (19:42):

Yeah. Really, just to recap what you said, because that was a lot of helpful information, when you’re dealing with search engines with Google, you have organic results and paid results. The organic, that is what Peder displayed right here. You have churches that are appearing on the first page. There’s no ad that is appearing so you know that this is an organic. Again, no one’s paying for that. This is a whole another conversation actually that we’ll have for ChurchSpring Live. How do you appear higher in the organic search results? That’s based on a lot of things, so we’re not going to dig into that. However, one of the key factors is your website, your church website. You need to have a church website either way to appear in search results whether paid versus organic.

Isabelle Faletti (20:40):

For today, we’re talking about the paid results, which are Google Ads. Those are some of the key terms that we all kind of need to be on the same page to understand going forward. If anybody has any other questions or any clarifying questions you have about Google Ads, organic versus paid or search, go ahead and just post it in the comments below. Peder and I will move forward, but ask that question now, and then we can make sure to answer that specifically so that we can get rid of any confusion that you may be experiencing here. Peder, how can churches specifically be using Google Ads to actually target their neighborhood, their city, their local community?

Peder Aadahl (21:32):

Yeah. When you think about your church’s location, and maybe the ministries inside of it, one of the things that we’ve talked about even on the Facebook ad side of things is to think through the targeting. Now, in this case, when it comes to search ads, it’s going to be very specific. You can actually state, hey, if you’re searching for churches in my area or churches near me, these are two common phrases that are used quite a bit that I guarantee you are being used in your area in some capacity. Then you can put up a Google ad in front of those to help highlight that, highlight your church. Then, also as well, just to give some other examples, some of you might be familiar with Dawson McAllister, things of that nature.

Peder Aadahl (22:20):

Back in the day, we did a little campaign for them to help reach some areas that they were no longer able to be in, but this was a way that you could actually highlight ministries that you have within your church and target people who actually would fit the need for those ministries. It was one of those moments in my life where I’m like, wow, I never really thought of it like this before, but it really came into being. With Dawson McAllister, these are people who were struggling with, sometimes suicidal thoughts, sometimes things of that nature. They’re going through a rough time and they’re calling into him to look for help, and that gets them to the help line to get them connected with some good guidance.

Peder Aadahl (23:01):

In that regard, we actually targeted phrases in those areas that were things like, I need help. Believe it or not, when people are at some of their lower points in life, it sounds crazy, but you’d be shocked to see how many people will actually type things like that into Google, looking for help. It might not fit your ministry, that might not fit your ministry, but it should give an example, at least of, when you think about the things that you offer as a church and what you can offer to your community, these are things that you can actually do. You can actually reach people in your community searching those things.

Peder Aadahl (23:40):

Going back to that targeting thing, this doesn’t mean you have to be targeting the whole country or something, right? This is just your city, a little radius, maybe around your church, something of that nature, maybe your county. Whatever it is, it’s not a very big spot, but yet, you can actually reach those people who are searching those specific things.

Isabelle Faletti (24:02):

Yep. Okay. I love that example. Really, I’m hearing you say that when a church is looking at Google Ads or looking to use Google Ads, similar to Facebook, I’m seeing a theme here for Facebook ads, in your Google Ads, look at what you’re already offering. Look at your community outreach. What are you doing to reach your community? If you have a counseling branch of your church, if you have a preschool, if you have an upcoming food drive, even, you can use that specific ministry outreach as your ad to be reaching the people that would be a prime recipient of that.

Isabelle Faletti (24:56):

It’s almost another form of going around to your local neighborhood and apartments and dropping off a flyer. It’s the digital version of doing that, except even more hyper-targeted, because like you said, Peder, people are specifically typing in, I need help, or preschools near me, affordable probably, affordable preschools near me. So, they have that intent and they’re looking for an answer. That’s even better than going around the apartments and dropping off a flyer. Not saying that we don’t need to be doing that. That is still a piece of your community outreach. But Google Ads is a way that you can add another layer on to reaching your neighborhood because these are the tools that people are using.

Isabelle Faletti (25:47):

They’re there on your phone. They’re on mobile. The times I Google something, every day is probably embarrassing. I’m always Googling, where is this? Or yeah, a restaurant near me, or if I’m visiting a new church with a friend, then yes, I am Googling things near them. Yeah, I love the idea of just thinking through what are people searching for and how can your church be meeting their need that they have right here?

Peder Aadahl (26:24):

Right. Yep. I’ll even give one other context because I know pastor … I was talking to Pastor Gooding yesterday and he was working on [inaudible 00:26:34] conference. But think of it this way. Once again, going back to that idea of what people are searching for that they need, I need marriage counseling, whatever that may be. Honestly, a good example that I think a lot of churches … could be a great way to actually really test this out, is I need prayer. Then that takes them to a page on the website where they actually can submit essentially a prayer request, and someone can follow up with them and pray for them in person, virtually or however.

Peder Aadahl (27:12):

But that allows you to actually target people who are searching that in your area, things of that nature. You can get creative with it. Once again, Isabelle and I are working here just to kind of give you ideas on how you can do things for the ministries that you have. I should say, at a minimum, though, if we go back to some of the things we initially stated, people searching for churches in your area, this is a way that you can actually make sure that you stay front and center and top of mind.

Isabelle Faletti (27:40):

Yep. You don’t have to just choose one phrase. Correct?

Peder Aadahl (27:48):

No. That’s true.

Isabelle Faletti (27:49):

A church doesn’t just have to say, oh man, I can think of 10 different search terms that people would be typing in the Google search bar, and I want to be appearing for all of those. How do I pick one? Can you unpack that just a little bit? I know we’ll go into more detail next week on the actual flow, but I feel like that could be a kind of a confusion, because we’re talking a lot about search terms and search phrases. But yeah, if you could just unpack that just a little bit.

Peder Aadahl (28:16):

A little bit. Yeah. That’s the thing where you don’t have to choose one phrase for what somebody might be searching. As a matter of fact, what will happen, and probably we won’t be able to showcase this as much next week. This would happen as you would run an ad. Let’s say, if you started with your city churches, and you’re just saying, hey, I want to target people that are searching for churches in Colorado Springs, and you actually say target this phrase, churches in Colorado Springs, and that’s what you leave it as. Well, the reality is, is that there’s people who are searching for that same thing, but not in that specific set up, right? They say Colorado Springs or churches near me, and that’s it. Or they say yeah, Colorado Springs, Colorado churches. It’s variations of that initial phrase, but they are different.

Peder Aadahl (29:18):

Therefore, what you can do then is you can add multiple phrases and multiple keywords that you can target. Over time, as you begin to get data on what people are searching, because Google will show you what people are searching for. They will show you what your ad is showing up in front of, you may realize, that isn’t relevant to me or something of that nature. So, you can actually add what they call negative keywords. In this context, I’m actually kind of struggling to figure out what that would be, but you need to have a situation, actually, ironically, with like the Dawson McAllister’s scenario, where we had one that was, I need help with my homework, or something like that. That was the phrase where like, okay, anybody searching for any help with my homework, our ad does not need to show up in front of those types of people.

Isabelle Faletti (30:08):

Yeah.

Peder Aadahl (30:08):

Yeah.

Isabelle Faletti (30:11):

Yeah. So, you could tell Google when someone types this in, we don’t want our ad to be-

Peder Aadahl (30:15):

We don’t want to [crosstalk 00:30:16].

Isabelle Faletti (30:17):

Yeah. Because that is not how you’re helping the audience, your community, your neighborhood.

Peder Aadahl (30:23):

Yeah. Exactly.

Isabelle Faletti (30:25):

That’s great. Yeah, Dawson McAllister helps a lot, but I don’t know about the homework aspect of that. He probably does though, him and his team. Peder, when a church is ready to launch a Google ad, and I know we have a lot of listeners and audience who they are new, they’re beginnings to Google Ads. It can feel overwhelming, so what is the number one piece of advice that you would just encourage them with?

Peder Aadahl (30:58):

The number one piece of advice I would say is, remember what your goal is here in mind. Keep that in mind at all times. Obviously, it depends on what the ads for, if it’s to make sure there’s awareness for your church and drive people to come to your church to check it out online, which is something that is a big thing right now, obviously in 2020, and probably in 2021 as well. You want to keep that in mind and, and so you’re trying to figure out, what does success look like for your church in that capacity when it comes to your ministries, what is happening when you target certain phrases and people come to the website? Are they filling out the form? Obviously there’s things that maybe the page that you’re directing people needs to be adjusted. There’s obviously things of that nature too, but I’m trying to gauge what happens in that regard.

Peder Aadahl (32:00):

I should point out something here as well that, and maybe if you want to just share the screen again, I’d like to showcases. This ad, just to showcase something, if you keep your goal in mind, if it’s to try to have people contact you or reach out to you in some capacity, whether that’s for the ministry or for the church specifically, one thing that I want to highlight here that is very important to note, I think in this session specifically is the call capability. Even in that scenario where I said I need prayer, you can actually have the text here that says, give us a call or something of that nature. If they’re on a mobile phone, and by the way, the majority of searches right now are on mobile phones.

Peder Aadahl (32:45):

This is what it’s going to look like. You’ve all done this probably in some capacity on your mobile device. You’ve seen a number on a web page or something of that nature, and you’ve tapped it and you’ve initiated a call from that, or a call from a Google search from a listing somewhere. These ads have a call capability on them, as you can see right here. When people tap that, they call you directly, they even skip the website completely. They just give you a call right away. That can be something that can be very valuable for potentially, yeah, reaching out to your community for ministry, but also just being able to have it so that when people are maybe searching for churches, they can call you guys right away to some capacity.

Peder Aadahl (33:32):

Once again, it depends on what the goal is that you’re trying to think about. But I know for a lot of people here, it’s probably going to be helping to drive people to their website to some capacity. That’s something you’re going to want to review. The nice part is, is that we’ll see, as we look into next week, the data that you can review, you can see how many impressions did I get? So, how many times did my ad up show up for people searching for different things and how many clicks came through. Then you can begin to see is this ad performing well, things of that nature for what I’m looking to accomplish. Hopefully, everything makes some sense.

Isabelle Faletti (34:15):

Yeah, I love that you talked about having a phone number because I feel like that is an option that you may not think of initially because people are Googling, they’re searching. But like you said, people are on their phone, and I’m Googling on my phone pretty frequently, as I’ve already mentioned, more than my desktop though. So, it’s an easy call to action and it makes it easy for the user, your person searching, to just click call. I think you also said something super key, Peder, that you can also be linking back to your website. If you are having let’s just say a Christmas Eve service, it’s October, yeah, it is October. Wow, it’s almost November. Last week of October right now when we’re recording this episode, so Christmas is coming up. Surprise, it is coming up very soon, everybody.

Isabelle Faletti (35:16):

If you have an ad, let’s say it’s for, I’m not the Google Ads guru, so this is just me, so feel free to adjust, Peder, but we have an ad that’s targeting the keyword Christmas Eve services near me. I know when I moved into a new city, I literally searched those terms. You’re targeting that specific keyword for, let’s say your neighborhood, let’s say 10 miles around your church. You will want to be linking that ad to your website. When people click the ad because they want to learn more, great, there’s a church right near me, five minutes away for Christmas Eve, I want to learn more, they click to your website, you do need to be aware of what does your website say about you and what page are you linking people to.

Isabelle Faletti (36:12):

When they click on the ad, where are they going on your website? I would recommend that you create a specific page for that ad. It’s called a landing page. We’ve talked before about how to create a Christmas landing page. I’ll add that in the show notes so that everybody can see what a landing page looks like. But basically, it is focused on the one goal that Peder mentioned, and that is to have your visitors on your website take action. So, register for the Christmas Eve service, sign up for more information. If it’s preschool, maybe schedule a call, schedule a tour. You have the front end, that’s the Google ad, and then you also have the backend, and that’s your website. Both are super important components of having success with Google Ads.

Peder Aadahl (37:09):

Yes. No, absolutely. Absolutely. I should also point out that sometimes Google search ads do serve the purpose of sometimes just making sure that people are aware that your church even exists. Actually, you brought up that good point about the Christmas Eve service. That’s an ad that is going to be extremely seasonal. It’s only going to be for a certain point of time. Then it’s ad this can be very short-lived, and you’re probably going to maybe direct them to the page where you have your information about your Christmas Eve service. Maybe this year, you might have it where you say, come back and watch it live, or something of that nature potentially on this page. Whatever it may be, that’s one where they might call, or there might be a place that you might want to … if you say one, if it gets more information, let us know. But at the same time, that is primarily just making sure that people are aware of your community, that they can come out and attend. Yep. Good.

Isabelle Faletti (38:13):

Yeah. It’s building awareness. We had a church that recently opened in my neighborhood, actually in my neighborhood, and the people in my neighborhood, they had yard signs for Radiant Church actually, and it was on your search results, ironically. Because of that, I had never heard of Radiant Church, but as I’m driving to get to my places in my neighborhood, in my little community here, I now am very familiar with Radiant Church because of those yard signs. What you just said for Google Ads, it is a part of building that awareness. People need to know about you before they can build that trust, before they’ll take that next step towards taking action to engage with you.

Peder Aadahl (39:05):

Yep.

Isabelle Faletti (39:08):

We have a couple of questions I want us to address. For anybody who hasn’t asked a question yet, ask away. Peder, again, he knows a lot about Google Ads, you guys. I’ll just say that, throughout this entire episode and next week, man, Peder is your go-to guy for all Google Ads. So, just ask a question. If you need something to be clarified for you, we can go over something. We have a couple of questions, Peder, about budget, which is always an exciting thing to talk about because let’s be real, that’s what we’re all wondering, how much does this cost? Tom, he asked, are there different rates of Google Ads to promote the ad? Really, what is the budget? What are we looking at here?

Peder Aadahl (39:54):

Yeah. No, this is a great question, and here’s the difference between Facebook and Google. We talked about Facebook in the past. Facebook, for the most part is, by most part, I mean probably 95%, is going to be based on what they call impression reach. In other words, we’re going to charge you for the amount of impressions that we put out towards people. Now, that fluctuates every day. That’s why when you say $5 a day, I’m not worried … for what it’s worth, Facebook will spend pretty much whatever budget you give them eventually. It’s a little different setup though with Google. With Google you pay, when it comes to these types of ads, you’re paying for the click. In other words, you don’t pay a dime, a penny, unless somebody clicks on your ad.

Peder Aadahl (40:52):

Now, that does then bring up the question, well, how much does that cost? That is something that fluctuates consistently. Now, this is what I always recommend when it comes to Google Ads, when it comes to budgeting. You’re going to need to give this some time, well, you need to give any ads time anyways, to adjust and to tweak and make better, for sure. But when it comes to the budget for Google Ads, even if you just said, hey, we’re going to take … I think if you really want to start with a minimum, you could $5 a day. Maybe for these types of searches, it would be very curious to see what happens with $5 a day. Google will tell you, hey, you’re missing out on some searches. You could increase your budget, things of that nature.

Peder Aadahl (41:36):

They will let you know if there’s more searches than what you were budgeting for. The point here this is, when it comes to Google search ads, Tom, and hopefully this helps, once again, you’re only paying for when somebody clicks on the ad. There’s a lot of different things to factor in every single day. In a situation, let’s say like Isabelle scenario, where it’s around Christmas time, everybody’s like searching for a church to go to, ironically, not ironically, not surprisingly, there’s a lot more competition maybe of people running ads and therefore cost per click, even though the search volume is very high, might be more because there’s just more people running ads around that time.

Isabelle Faletti (42:27):

There’s more competition to be seen.

Peder Aadahl (42:29):

Yeah. There’s some various factors that go with that, but I do recommend, when you’re starting out, honestly, you can start small, for sure. Start small, start running ads. Once again, you’re only going to get charged if somebody actually clicks on the ad to either call you or to come to your website. That’s one of those things that’s really nice about Google Ads. You only pay for the click.

Isabelle Faletti (42:58):

Yeah. Well, I feel like that answers Pastor Gooding’s question here. He says, “Peder, I got an ad email from Google that said, if I spend $150, they would give you $150. They also said that you only pay per click. Have you heard about this?”

Peder Aadahl (43:16):

Yes, that’s exactly right. Yeah, in many cases, when you set up a Google Ads account, in some capacity, you might get some emails from Google, special promotions. They want you to try this. It’s in their interest to have you take time to invest in their model or their business essentially to help promote yours. Yeah, that is a common thing, Pastor Gooding. For all of you out there, do not be surprised if you see some of these. Now that you heard about Google Ads, you see some awareness of, Oh, hey, there’s a promotion here that came into my inbox or whatever it may be, $150, I spend 150, I get 150 dollars free.

Isabelle Faletti (44:03):

Would you say, Peder, that churches should take advantage of that?

Peder Aadahl (44:10):

I do. I do think, if you’re going to run Google Ads, this is a great way to really test the market well, and really give it a shot. Yeah.

Isabelle Faletti (44:21):

Yeah. When you get those emails from Google Ads, well, I shouldn’t say is not a spam because then the one time that someone will get a spam email, something like this, then I’ll be eating my words. But that is a legitimate offer that Google does frequently offer. I actually just got an email in from Google Ads today for ChurchSpring of, I don’t know, I think it was a $50 ad credit or something. So, they do send those emails pretty frequently, especially if you’re just starting out, they want to help you start. They want to help you start running ads. So often, they will give this type of, if you spend X amount, we will give you an X amount. Yeah, so go ahead and start … yeah, use it. I want to say start running ads, but if you don’t know how to, that’s okay, because that’ll be next week, so don’t worry if you don’t yet know how to run an ad.

Isabelle Faletti (45:21):

Peder, if we have some listeners who, they are ready to launch an ad, to launch a Google ad, but they may feel just a little overwhelmed at the next steps that they need to be taking, or they just may think, ooh, this is a lot, I see the importance, but I don’t have time or capacity to do this. I need some help for that, what can they do to have you help them with their church communications outreach?

Peder Aadahl (45:48):

Yeah, absolutely. Honestly, if you’re looking to make sure that your ad or your church shows up, especially for local searches and set aside some budget to really try to help promote that or the ministry that you have, yeah, by all means, I would highly recommend you take advantage of reaching out and scheduling a call. You can go to digitaloutreach.church/cs and just find a time that works for you, and we’ll hop on a call and we’ll work to try and figure out how we can help you achieve your goals. Yeah.

Isabelle Faletti (46:24):

Yeah. I know. I believe it was Pastor Gooding, he’s reached out to you. I know that you guys have had a conversation already. For all of our listeners, Peder, typically charges for these consultation calls at this level that he is offering us, so this is an incredibly generous offer that he is giving ChurchSpring members, church being friends. Definitely take Peder up on his free 30 minute digital outreach consult. We are talking about Google Ads today. But if you have questions about Facebook ads or just how your church can grow using digital marketing techniques, Peder is your guy. He works with churches all over the nation. So, he puts what he’s preaching into practice here. I would encourage everybody today, go to digitaloutreach.church/cs, set up that free 30 minute digital outreach consult and pick Peder’s brain.

Isabelle Faletti (47:33):

Peder will give you some super helpful next steps. So, it won’t be one of those calls that you just leave and you think, what was the point of that? Because I don’t know about you, but I’ve been on those calls and they’re frustrating. Peder is not that. He’ll give you some various specific action steps, whether that would be to work with him specifically, depending on your goals, or actions that you can take yourself to help ultimately just grow your church and grow the kingdom of God. So, thank you Peder for offering that to our members here. We really appreciate that.

Peder Aadahl (48:11):

Actually, Pastor Gooding here asked a good … pointed up a good question here. He and I talked yesterday, and he called into Google and they had said something around the nature of like, it sounds like Google doesn’t run ads for churches. I will give an update on this. Everybody can be rest assured on, they do. They do. Actually, I’ll showcase this here for you. If you want to share the screen again here, Isabelle. This is in Dallas-Fort Worth. I’ll show you right at the bat. As you can see right here, Life Church in Keller, Texas, there you go.

Isabelle Faletti (48:47):

That’s an ad.

Peder Aadahl (48:48):

That’s an ad right there. So yes, Google does run ads, or you can use ads for your church or your ministry. That’s the other side about this is that, sometimes, maybe there might be situation where, when you’re setting up an ad, and this is a great reason why, if you want to have a consult, a call, maybe we can work through some of those things, that you want to make sure that everything looks appropriate in Google’s eyes and things of that nature. We work through that.

Isabelle Faletti (49:20):

Yeah. That’s good. I’m glad Pastor Gooding, glad that you asked that question so that Peder could unpack that because yeah, you can run an ad, a Google ad for your church, so be rest assured non-profit Google ad. Yep, you’re golden. I know that we also talked a lot about your website, how you need to have a good website if you’re running your Google ad. So, if you are interested in learning more about ChurchSpring, about our website platform, I would encourage you to just sign up for a demo webinar that we offer. Our co-founders Mike and Rohn they’ve put together about a 60 minute webinar that really just walks through a behind the scenes of church spring. Our entire platform is mobile optimized. That means when someone’s Googling your church, churches near me and they go to your website, your website will look stunning and be easy for your members, or for your guests to navigate.

Isabelle Faletti (50:24):

Take a look at churchspring.com/demo, or if you guys kind of want to dig in and check out the platform yourself, we also offer a free seven day trial at churchspring.com/trial. You can go there, sign up, try us out for seven days, cancel anytime if it’s just not a right fit. Yeah, churchspring.com/trial. Check that out. Reach out to our team with any questions that you may have. We’re here to help. We’re here to help, whether it’s with your ChurchSpring websites, with your non-ChurchSpring website with Google Ads. Our mission is to help support the church. So, don’t be shy. If anybody else does have any other questions about Google Ads, you can still reach out to Peder at that … I’ll pop up that banner again, digitaloutreach.church/cs. Or you can just add your question in the comments below, and I’ll make sure that we pass it off to Peder, and then we can answer you on Facebook.

Isabelle Faletti (51:24):

Before we wrap up, I do have a question for everybody who is attending live, or if you are watching this on the replay, this question is still for you. We are starting to plan 2021 for ChurchSpring Lives, and we really want to focus on topics that you have questions about, or questions that you have or topics that you want to learn more about for your church, for your website, for marketing. If you could do us a huge favor and just drop a comment below with a topic or subject that you would love for us to introduce, to bring us a special guest like Peder on, to discuss here on ChurchSpring Live. If you could just take a couple seconds, drop a comment in the Facebook or YouTube livestream here, what are other topics that you would like to learn more about? Maybe that is organic search. We talked about that a little bit. How can you get your website to appear on that first page of Google?

Isabelle Faletti (52:36):

Social media, maybe more about Peder, a day in the life of Peder Aadahl. How Isabelle and Peder are always matching every time in ChurchSpring Live. Anything like that? Drop a comment, let us know. We would love to hear more. You can also email us. I’ll add that on the banner here at support@churchspring.com. You can email us there with any ChurchSpring live topics you would love for us to talk about. Yeah, we’d love your feedback for that. While we do have some members dropping that comment here, I do want to invite everybody to next week’s ChurchSpring Live. Today, we talked about what you need to be knowing about Google Ads to reach your community. Next week, we’re going to put all of that into action, and we are actually going to create a Google ad.

Isabelle Faletti (53:36):

We will walk you through the exact steps that you need to launch a Google ad. Google, it’s a big machine, so it can get easy to just get lost in all of the ins and outs of Google. Peder is going to just take us through a step-by-step guide to launching that Google Ads. He will share his screen like he did today, and show you how you can reach your neighborhood, you can grow your church. Then it will also be Peder’s last ChurchSpring Live appearance here for this year. I’m sure we’ll have him back next year for 2021. So, we will create some special time at the end that our live audience can ask Peder any questions, specifically about Google Ads. But if you have any questions still about Facebook ads or Google analytics, this is your time to get some free, helpful advice from the marketing guru himself, Peder Aadahl.

Isabelle Faletti (54:37):

Be sure to put that on your calendar next week, that is Thursday. What is next week? Thursday, November 5th, at 10:00 AM Central Time, episode 24. So, mark it on your calendars, Thursday, November 5th at 10:00 AM Central. We’ll be talking about a step-by-step guide to launching your Google ad for your church. So, don’t miss that. I do see we have a few feedback comments about ChurchSpring live topics, talking about other platforms such as Twitter and Instagram. Love that time. Thank you. I’ll definitely add that to our list. I love Instagram, I’m a millennial, so you’re probably thinking, that’s not a surprise, but I do. I love Instagram. I use Instagram a lot. Yeah, I definitely would love to have a ChurchSpring Live, where talking about how churches can use the power of Instagram. So, if you haven’t yet placed a comment below of what you would love us to be talking about more in ChurchSpring live, make sure to add that in the comment or shoot us an email.

Isabelle Faletti (55:42):

We also, again, we’ll have the replay of this up at churchspring.com/csl023. I know we mentioned a couple of things today about creating a landing page, so I will make sure to add all that in the show notes. We also talked about … well, yeah, we talked about a lot of fun facts, so I’ll put all that in the show notes, churchspring.com/csl023. If you have any questions, be sure to reach out to Peder and reach out to us. We are here to help you. We are here to support you. Thank you, for everybody, I’m psyched about next week. I cannot wait to be talking about the nitty-gritty of launching that Google Ad, so you will not want to miss it. Thank you again, Peder, for coming on. We really appreciate it. Both Peder and I will see you all next week. Have a great day.

Peder Aadahl (56:40):

Cheers everyone.