CSL 024 – How to Create a Google Ad for Your Church: The Ultimate Guide

Isabelle Faletti (00:00:00):

Hello and welcome to ChurchSpring Live Episode 024. We are so excited for everybody tuning in. So, while we wait for some people to jump into the livestream, I do want to go ahead and introduce some new members that we have to the ChurchSpring family.

Isabelle Faletti (00:00:17):

So, welcome Christ Culture Church from North Carolina, New Life Christian Church from Indiana, and the City of the Living God from Houston, Texas. We just love whenever we get a new signup because it’s just another way that we are able to truly help a church just reach their community in a very tangible way. If you’re new to ChurchSpring, we help churches build intuitive, affordable and frustration-free websites.

Isabelle Faletti (00:00:50):

So, welcome to ChurchSpring. My name is Isabelle and joining me today is Peder. He is our special guest and digital marketing guru that we’ve had on for the past couple of weeks.

Peder Aahdal (00:01:06):

Yes. Everyone, this is exciting for me because this is, what, one of those piece, six episode we’ve done now together, I think?

Isabelle Faletti (00:01:14):

I think so.

Peder Aahdal (00:01:15):

Six episodes.

Isabelle Faletti (00:01:16):

Wow.

Peder Aahdal (00:01:18):

I feel like this should be something special of note because I know Isabelle will never say this. But if you’re watching this, you might want to wish Isabelle a happy early birthday. Her birthday is coming up before the next episode.

Isabelle Faletti (00:01:32):

Yup, it is. Thank you. Oh, hey, I can use these now. I’ll have “happy birthday” to myself.

Peder Aahdal (00:01:37):

There we go.

Isabelle Faletti (00:01:41):

Oh, man, I love ChurchSpring Live. It’s so fun. Don’t be shy in this livestream whether you’re tuning in live now or even if you’re watching a replay. If you have questions about Google Ads, we’ll be walking through the exact setup of how to set up a Google Ad. We want to hear from you. If you have questions, pop it in the comments. That’s what these ChurchSpring Lives are for, so that we can interact with you.

Isabelle Faletti (00:02:11):

It is better if you’re watching it live so that we can interact in real time. But again, if you’re watching the replay, shoot us an email. If you’re a ChurchSpring customer, send us a support ticket, so that we can make sure that we’re able to answer any questions that you may have. The replay is always available. We’ll be talking about a lot of helpful topics. You can always catch the replay. That’s at churchspring.com/csl024. Make sure to tune in to that.

Isabelle Faletti (00:02:44):

And if you like what we’re saying, if you think that we’re funny, a little thumbs up, a heart. So, like, go ahead and share this with any of your friends, any of your fellow pastors that may benefit from the ChurchSpring Live.

Isabelle Faletti (00:03:04):

So, again, if you’re just not tuning in, pop who you are in the comments below, introduce yourself, type your name and your church name so that we can say a special hello. All right, Peder, I am very excited, as always, to be talking about today’s topic-

Peder Aahdal (00:03:23):

Yes.

Isabelle Faletti (00:03:23):

… Google Ads. We talked last week, that was actually part one. This is a two-part series of Google Ads, and we talked last week about how Google Ads, how it’s just such an incredible tool that churches can be using to really reach their community in a very unique way.

Isabelle Faletti (00:03:46):

For people searching churches near me, your church can appear in those results, and you can pretty much almost guarantee that your church will appear in those results. I don’t want to say promise or guarantee because there’s always some caveat with everything in life.

Peder Aahdal (00:04:04):

Indeed, indeed.

Isabelle Faletti (00:04:07):

Google Ads, I feel like it’s kind of almost a secret that churches didn’t know about. Last week, again, that was part one. We talked about, what does it actually look like for churches to be using Google Ads. And then, this is part two of our Google Ads series.

Isabelle Faletti (00:04:27):

It can be easy to feel a little lost of how do you actually create a Google Ad because I feel like the world of Google is a little overwhelming and there’s just a lot of like flashing signs, start here, no, go here and email about this Google Ad. That’s why I’m excited, Peder, for us to actually walk through the exact steps that churches can take to create a Google Ad.

Isabelle Faletti (00:04:56):

Yeah. So, for everybody who’s listening, I will be super curious, what is your experience with Google Ads. Put in the comments below if you’ve launched an ad for your church. Type yes or type no, if you have launched a Google Ad for your church. I would love to know where you guys are at with that. What’s your comfort level? Either way, I know that you’ll benefit a lot from this episode.

Isabelle Faletti (00:05:26):

I do want to say a quick welcome to a few of our live attendees that we have. Tom, always awesome to have you here, welcome. Pastor Brice from Fort Lauderdale, Florida, welcome.

Peder Aahdal (00:05:42):

Welcome.

Isabelle Faletti (00:05:43):

Reverend Christina, awesome, always glad to have you also. Also, Reverend Christina, it looks like, no, you haven’t launched a Google Ad. That’s totally okay. You’re in the right place for this. Because Peder is the digital marketing guru. So, he is going to share a lot of helpful information. Tom, no. Brice, no.

Isabelle Faletti (00:06:07):

So, yeah, it looks like we have a handful of listeners who haven’t launched an ad yet. Peder, let’s just dive right in, and we’ll share your screen. You can walk through the process of what it looks like for a church to set up a Google Ad.

Peder Aahdal (00:06:19):

Yes, absolutely. All right. So, I also want to just make a quick note here as well as you start this process. If you’re looking at this and you’re saying, “This is a little bit nerve-racking,” or you’re like, “Oh, boy.” Trust me, that is the case, that can be the case. Just like we’ve talked about with a lot of things when it comes to Facebook Ads analytics, it’s one of those things that you will begin to understand and learn more over time.

Isabelle Faletti (00:06:50):

Yeah.

Peder Aahdal (00:06:50):

Today, we’re going to be going through a way that we can work to try to make sure that you are set up for success from the get go in a simple capacity, utilizing a search ad. But I just want to be very clear that when you log in to Google Ads, it’s going to look a little different.

Peder Aahdal (00:07:06):

Now, they do work to try to help things make this a little bit easier for everyone. I’ll showcase kind of the … Obviously, we’ll walk through that just a second here. But just a reminder, where you want to go when it comes to setting up Google Ads, you just go to ads.google.com. This goes back to the idea that you are going to need a Gmail account or a Google Apps account in some capacity to start that process.

Peder Aahdal (00:07:32):

So, if you don’t have one of those, a Gmail account is free. Trust me, Google would love to have you do Google Ads. So, they’re going to make it easy as possible to get set up with a Google account. So, either way, if you have that already, that’s one thing to think through. I will also note that this goes back to some of the things we did talk about earlier, in some of the previous episodes about if you do use a Gmail account, or whatever Google account you use, that idea of is this going to be something that only you are going to have control to or is this something that you can have other people maybe in the church have control or access to.

Peder Aahdal (00:08:12):

The nice thing about a Google Ads account is that you can share access to other Google users, or Gmail accounts, or Google Apps accounts. It can be something where multiple people can be looking at the same thing and modifying in some capacity. So, I just want to make that clear because that is always one thing that maybe in the past, somebody was like, “We had one, I don’t know what happened to it.”

Isabelle Faletti (00:08:36):

Right.

Peder Aahdal (00:08:36):

Well.

Isabelle Faletti (00:08:37):

Gone, had vanished.

Peder Aahdal (00:08:38):

Exactly. This is that idea. You can go in here and actually share access to other people as well.

Isabelle Faletti (00:08:44):

Yeah. That’s huge.

Peder Aahdal (00:08:47):

All right. I should make one note. When you do log in for the first time in, it will ask you to create an account. While we’re not going to walk through that is because it may look different for everybody in some capacity, but it should be fairly simple. It’s going to ask you what do you want to label your Google Ads account. In my case, I said church account, just label them, very generic. It’ll ask you for a payment method in some capacity, if you’re going to run it via ads. I will talk about more about that budget maybe later on.

Peder Aahdal (00:09:20):

But anyways, this can be very simplistic, and you’re going to come to a screen that says, create your first campaign. After that, you’re going to see it looks exactly just like what we’re going to go through right here. I will say if you’re looking at this and you think to yourself, “This looks maybe a little bit different than what I see,” there is a good chance. If you don’t mind, Isabelle, I’m just going to minimize it for a second. You’re going to see this bar on the left hand side, it’s one of those things that you can toggle back and forth.

Peder Aahdal (00:09:49):

In other words, don’t be alarmed. What you see here is different than what you see. I just have it minimized, so we can view more of the main content here, creating the app.

Isabelle Faletti (00:10:01):

Perfect.

Peder Aahdal (00:10:03):

All right. Are we ready? Are we ready to start?

Isabelle Faletti (00:10:07):

Let’s do it. We have a lot of people who haven’t heard of Google Ad before. This is going to be incredibly helpful because we’ll just actually walk through each step that we can take an ad.

Isabelle Faletti (00:10:15):

So, again, for anybody who is a bit lost, you can go to ads.google.com and that’s where Peder is at right now to create his Google Ad, so that will be your first step. When you are creating your ad, go to ads.google.com, and then follow along with the next steps that Peder will be doing.

Peder Aahdal (00:10:37):

Yes. All right. Here we go. We’re going to click this plus here. It’s going to ask for a new campaign. You’ll see this load campaign settings. This just means if you had an existing campaign you already created. You could load in the settings that were set up for there. That’s things like targeting, things of that nature if you locate in there. Don’t worry about that. More than anything, you’re just going to be focused on this, creating a new campaign.

Peder Aahdal (00:11:01):

From there, Google is going to ask you what is the goal of what you’d like to do. Now, for most of you that are going to be looking at this, probably the main thing that you’re going to be wanting to look to do is this. It is the website traffic version of it. There’s other things and maybe a little more advanced level for things that are more focused on leads. This can be used in a different way. But for the most part, you’re going to want to go with a website traffic. I just realized, I think my mouse just quit on me.

Isabelle Faletti (00:11:35):

Oh, no. Livestream problem.

Peder Aahdal (00:11:39):

Livestream problems. Can I toggle?

Isabelle Faletti (00:11:45):

Yup, that’s working still.

Peder Aahdal (00:11:47):

I’m tapping with my keyboard.

Isabelle Faletti (00:11:49):

Oh, no.

Peder Aahdal (00:11:51):

Give me one sec. All right. Livestream problems.

Isabelle Faletti (00:11:55):

That’s okay.

Peder Aahdal (00:11:56):

Do you want to mute for a second? I can’t even do that.

Isabelle Faletti (00:12:02):

Yup. These are the joys of livestream. Mouses go out sometimes. While Peder is figuring out kind of his tech, I do want to let you guys know that this is Peder’s last ChurchSpring Live with us for this year. He’s not going anywhere. We’ll probably, I’m sure, have him back in 2021. But this is his last time in 2020. And he is such an expert on all things digital marketing and how churches can use digital marketing specifically for their church.

Isabelle Faletti (00:12:36):

So, at the end of this episode, we’ll have some Q&A time, where you can ask Peder any questions that you possibly have about Facebook Ads, Google Analytics, or Google Ads. These are all topics that we’ve talked about before with Peder in the last couple of weeks. So, kind of be thinking, “Man, what is the question that I have that I really want to know how the church can be helping, or can be using these tactics?” Peder is your guy for that.

Isabelle Faletti (00:13:09):

He’s been very generous helping us out. He actually has a business that specifically helps churches with their digital marketing. So, he is offering a free digital marketing consult, a free 30-minute digital marketing consult for any churches, any friends of ChurchSpring Live. Again, he normally charges for this and he’s been extremely generous and offering that free consult.

Isabelle Faletti (00:13:41):

I’ll put this in the show notes, but I just wanted to drop that here. So, you can go to digitaloutreach.church/cs to schedule your time, one-on-one with Peder and talk about how can my church be getting in front of my neighborhood, in front of people with Facebook with ads? If you have questions about how to understand your Google Analytics, because I know we’ve talked about that, it can be a black hole. Peder is your guy who can really kind of unpack that. So, make sure to go to digitaloutreach.church/cs. Set up that free 30-minute consult and you’ll be ready for the holidays after that phone call with him.

Peder Aahdal (00:14:20):

All right.

Isabelle Faletti (00:14:21):

How’s the tech?

Peder Aahdal (00:14:22):

How’s the tech? We are using a trackpad instead of a mouse right now.

Isabelle Faletti (00:14:26):

What?

Peder Aahdal (00:14:27):

It will still work. It will still work.

Isabelle Faletti (00:14:30):

Perfect. I’ll go back and I’ll share your screen here then. Thanks everybody for that.

Peder Aahdal (00:14:36):

Yes.

Isabelle Faletti (00:14:36):

Again, yeah, Peder is your guy. So, as we go through this, ask any questions and we’ll be sure to answer.

Peder Aahdal (00:14:45):

Absolutely.

Isabelle Faletti (00:14:46):

Yeah. Reverend Christina asked a good question just simply about this section that you’re on. She asked, “What if you’re selling a product like tickets to a ministry event?”

Peder Aahdal (00:14:57):

Yes.

Isabelle Faletti (00:14:58):

It’s a good question.

Peder Aahdal (00:15:01):

It’s a very good question. So, I think that’s actually good to note here in this because we’ll see this in just a second. I’m actually still going to select this website traffic and I’ll work to answer your question here, Reverend Christina.

Peder Aahdal (00:15:16):

It’s going to ask me the different type of campaign type. Now, for the focus of this episode, we are focused on creating the search ad. This is for people who are searching for specific things within Google, and we are showcasing the ad for that. Now, Reverend Christina for what you’re talking about, honestly, there’s a big user case scenario with it. You’d probably want to end up doing something like a display ad, where you create an image ad for that event in some capacity.

Peder Aahdal (00:15:46):

Honestly, I’d also maybe probably recommend Facebook Ads. But a display ad in this case as well, targeting a specific region or whatever the other parameters you need to be for that, unless it is completely all virtual, and anybody can attend maybe. But you actually have an image ad that you then push out into the area to help promote that event.

Peder Aahdal (00:16:08):

So, I hope that makes some sense. You’ll see these square ad images all over the place. You go to any new site. If you see a little blue triangle and like a little square area, or a banner at the top, that is more than likely a Google display ad. That’s where it comes into play. Different use case scenario that we’re going to be talking about today a little bit, but we still want to make sure that you’re aware of that. And who knows, maybe down the road, we’ll maybe can do just a section on that someday, but…

Isabelle Faletti (00:16:40):

Yeah.

Peder Aahdal (00:16:42):

All right. Good question.

Isabelle Faletti (00:16:44):

Yeah.

Peder Aahdal (00:16:44):

It’s a great question. That’s a great question. All right. I should also note that you’re going to see here, select campaign type and some other different things. You’ll see shopping. Obviously, there’s some people here that would think, “Well, if I’m doing an event, maybe a shopping ad would be okay.” It’s a little more advanced than that. It’s more of you’re pulling in a feed from more like a clothing or retail store. That’s how you’re doing that.

Peder Aahdal (00:17:10):

Discovery, this run ads on YouTube, Gmail, Discover and more. There may be a case for some of you to do something like that, potentially. I’ll be honest, this is a product that’s more newer to Google, and they’re still working through that. So, I don’t really recommend that right now. And then video, similar to display idea, but that idea of … You’ll see these all the time, when you go to a YouTube video right now. You’ll get that little skip ad, skip ad feature type scenario, that’s what that is about.

Peder Aahdal (00:17:42):

You’re running in a video ad targeting a certain, maybe search or a channel or something of that nature, and you’re running a pre-roll ad through like something like YouTube there to show up. So, anyways, the main thing here, we’re focused on search.

Isabelle Faletti (00:17:58):

Yup. Perfect. So, search ads, again, those are based on keywords. So, a certain keyword that someone is searching for in Google. So, for example, if someone is searching for churches near me, that’s their keyword, whatever they’re typing in the Google searching for, that would be equivalent to a search ad because you want your ad to appear when people search for just specific keywords.

Peder Aahdal (00:18:27):

Yes, absolutely. So, select the ways you’d like to reach your goal. If I back this up a little bit here. You’re asked to put the website of the church. So, in this case, this is going to be a hodgepodge, a couple different things, but we’re going to act like ChurchSpring is the church, so we’ll add that in, and then start tracking your website traffic as a website conversion.

Peder Aahdal (00:18:52):

Just to clarify, a conversion can mean multiple things. Conversion, in this case, what they’re trying to say is, hey, if somebody comes to your website, do you want to call that a conversion? Type scenario. In this case, that might be what you really want. Anyways, that could happen. In this case, yeah, go ahead.

Isabelle Faletti (00:19:16):

Well, I was going to ask, what would you recommend then? Would you recommend that people add something or can you just continue without too many details for that?

Peder Aahdal (00:19:24):

Yes. To be honest, it is a little bit more of a, probably more of an advanced feature.

Isabelle Faletti (00:19:29):

Okay.

Peder Aahdal (00:19:31):

Because what we need to do is we need to install that tracking code. Now, we can do that again, but you can install that tracking code in the section on ChurchSpring as well, and the analytics section that we did five (episodes) ago, I believe. You can add that code in there. But in this case, we’re just going to click, Continue.

Isabelle Faletti (00:19:53):

Yup, yeah. If you’re just now beginning your Google Ads, totally fine, have the kind of default selection that they have there, and then just click Continue. The great thing about Google Ads is that if something is required that you haven’t done yet, if you haven’t set something up, it will tell you. Google wants you to run ads and they want you to have success with ads.

Isabelle Faletti (00:20:17):

So, when in doubt, kind of just select whatever their recommended default recommendation would be because they recommend that for a reason, and then as you get comfortable, that’s when you can kind of fine tune and make some adjustments.

Peder Aahdal (00:20:31):

Right. I will say if you want to take the more advanced scenario, that is probably a good thing to hop on a call, and then we can talk through some of that.

Isabelle Faletti (00:20:39):

Yeah, definitely.

Peder Aahdal (00:20:41):

All right. Looking at the networks side of things, this just means essentially the placement of these ads, and this is where it’s going to get a little confusing, because I said, “Hey, Peder,” or I showed you all the different campaign types, like there’s display and search, and then you come here, and you’re like, “Well, why is display in here?”

Peder Aahdal (00:21:00):

This is sometimes what Google does. I think they do a little less than they used to, but it used to be actually one and four, but those little square images you see across the Internet, and you’ll see this now, probably after this livestream. You’ll see there’s actually kind of like a search ad inside of a website block area, and what they’re doing is they’re taking the Search Ad that we will create, or a version of that for whatever the product or service may be.

Peder Aahdal (00:21:30):

They’re putting that in that little actually image area spot within Google’s Display Network. In this case, I’m going to recommend you uncheck it. I don’t think you need to do that for this at all because this is really hyperfocused to be focused on people searching for things like churches near me, things of that nature.

Isabelle Faletti (00:21:50):

So, remembering your goal is really what it comes down to.

Peder Aahdal (00:21:53):

Yup, remembering your goal. This is definitely more of an advanced feature. And I’m just going to say, you probably don’t worry about it. The only thing that would probably may be helpful is if you did have a campaign that you wanted to end automatically. You can set an end date here and a different start date, if that’s the case as well.

Isabelle Faletti (00:22:16):

Yeah, yeah. So, for Reverend Christina, if you are wanting to set up your Google Ad in advance to start selling tickets for your ministry event, you could work ahead, set yourself up for success and schedule your Google Ad to start, let’s say on Monday, but you’re working ahead on Thursday. If you’re planners, you can schedule an ad from beginning to end. I recommend you to plan.

Peder Aahdal (00:22:44):

I was going to say, if you’re the type of person who loves planning, that option is probably going to be really good for you.

Isabelle Faletti (00:22:50):

If this is the last minute, “Oh, I got to get that out,” then you just continue on.

Peder Aahdal (00:22:58):

All right. You’re going to see this locations here, and this is where it actually is going to get a little bit more advanced, but this is really specific or this is something you really want to pay attention to right here, because targeting is important. Because if you don’t do anything, all countries and territories, that is not what you want for your church. Your church is very specific to a specific location. You don’t even want United States and Canada or United States. That’s still way, way, way too broad. You want to get laser focused in on your area.

Peder Aahdal (00:23:29):

So, we’re going to enter another location. And when I type that, you’re going to see this advanced search functionality. If I click on that, what I typically recommend for churches in this scenario where we’re targeting, like churches near me, things of that nature, I really recommend you kind of do a radius. And you can only break it down to maybe five miles.

Peder Aahdal (00:23:56):

This might get really big, because I know, the example we’re going to give is Colorado Springs, Colorado. This isn’t exactly a small area, I know, but to help showcase what this looks like. I click that target, it’s going to bring me right down there, and you can begin to see like, okay, this is the area. Is that good enough? Do I need to increase it, something of that nature? You can go in and do that. If you do feel like, “You know what, I don’t want that,” you just click this X, and then you reenter the information above and you can kind of begin to see what we’re going to be targeting and if that needs to be adjusted or increased.

Isabelle Faletti (00:24:36):

Yeah. So, I love having a small radius essentially, five miles. You could potentially even do smaller depending on how large your city is. So, for people who are typing in churches near me, kind of think through your city’s culture and your city’s size. Are people wanting to drive five minutes to a church? I live in Colorado Springs and yes, I will definitely drive five minutes because traffic isn’t bad at all.

Isabelle Faletti (00:25:06):

Peder, however, he lives in South Dakota, and in more of a rural area. You will probably want to be having your radius a bit larger. So, maybe, I don’t know, what would you say Peder, 15 miles, maybe even larger?

Peder Aahdal (00:25:22):

Yeah. I would say probably 10 miles or something of that nature.

Isabelle Faletti (00:25:25):

Yup. It really depends on your city and the behaviors of your city that you know, how willing are people or how many miles people willing kind of drive and try out a new church or event or ministry.

Peder Aahdal (00:25:44):

Yup. I should also note that when you do some of this specific targeting, you can actually exclude locations if for some odd reason, you do need to do that, maybe like for an event. For some odd reason, you could do that. And if I do that, you can begin to see like, this is what the difference between a radius and targeting specific city looks like. And this is actually true inside of Facebook Ads as well. You’re going to get very focused in on like, this is what we’re targeting.

Isabelle Faletti (00:26:11):

Yup.

Peder Aahdal (00:26:13):

And so, you’re like, “Well, that’s good.” But there’s some people probably out here in the peripheral that would be good to fit, so that’s where you do the radius.

Isabelle Faletti (00:26:21):

Yup. Awesome. Oh, yeah, I love audience targeting. It’s so fun to me. We can probably spend a lot of time on this. We’ll just move on, and then-

Peder Aahdal (00:26:32):

We’re going to move on.

Isabelle Faletti (00:26:33):

… if anybody has questions about audience, pop it in in the questions or comments below. If you have a specific event or ministry that you’re thinking of for your church that you have a question about, add it in the comments, and we’ll make sure to answer your question about that.

Peder Aahdal (00:26:47):

Yup. All right. Looking at languages, this is obviously … I know, for some churches, maybe there is a different language you want to be targeting, you can do that here. You just need to X out English and search for that language. Audiences, this is more of an advanced feature. So, I’m not going to spend time on that. Just think of it this way as there’s a way that you can begin to start tracking people and target specific groups of people in some capacity. You can do that.

Peder Aahdal (00:27:16):

All right. Budget and bidding, the one thing that probably everybody is a little bit curious about-

Isabelle Faletti (00:27:20):

Yup. A big question, how much will this cost me?

Peder Aahdal (00:27:22):

Yes. How much will this cost me? So, there’s a couple things you want to understand when it comes to Google Ads. Number one, you only pay for what gets clicked. In other words, your ad could show up 1,000, 15,000 times, but if there’s no click, there’s no charge, okay? Which I can guarantee you, if it shows up 1,000 time and there’s no clicks, we probably need to adjust some things and targeting as well, but you get the idea.

Isabelle Faletti (00:27:57):

In this case, you want to be charged.

Peder Aahdal (00:27:59):

You want to be charged-

Isabelle Faletti (00:28:00):

Because that means that people are clicking on your ad.

Peder Aahdal (00:28:03):

Exactly. So, essentially, the impression of the ad is free. It’s the best way to look at it. The cost comes in when somebody clicks on it. So, that’s how the Google works in this capacity. We’ve talked about this before. There is really not really necessarily a minimum within Google. I would say probably going by Facebook’s a minimum of $5 a day, it’s probably a good thing to start with at minimum, just so you can begin to see what’s the volume of search in the area.

Peder Aahdal (00:28:33):

Google will let you know like, hey, if you increased your budget $5, you reach more people or you get more traffic to the website in some capacity. So, Google will give you optimization things in the future. We’re just going to say $5 from now. And then, what do you want to focus on conversions? Because I selected conversions at the beginning, this is why this is showing up here right now. But if you click, this is probably the one that is going to be the most streamlined just to move things forward in your world of clicks.

Peder Aahdal (00:29:07):

And then, set a maximum cost per click bid limit. What this means is selecting a maximum you’re willing to pay for per click. In other words, I don’t want to pay more than $3, $2, $6, whatever it may be. That’s where that would come into play. In this case, usually Google will tell you, they’ll give you an optimization thing where they’re going to focus on the maximizing clicks as much as possible. In this case, based on how we set things up, I’m going to leave that as is. I don’t think you need to worry about adjusting anything there either.

Isabelle Faletti (00:29:44):

To reiterate that for anybody who’s new to Google Ads, you just recommend that they do not select the set a maximum cost per click bid limit, wow, it’s a mouthful to say.

Peder Aahdal (00:29:56):

Yes, it is. In this case to begin with, I would say no just based on the fact of, if you can see here, Google is working to maximize the amount of clicks you get.

Isabelle Faletti (00:30:06):

Right.

Peder Aahdal (00:30:07):

So, this is going to that back idea. There’s always more advanced things you can do to make your ad more streamlined, but-

Isabelle Faletti (00:30:13):

Good, yeah.

Peder Aahdal (00:30:13):

… when we’re just starting out, I would recommend to make it easy on yourself, just what kind of Google do some of this.

Isabelle Faletti (00:30:20):

Yup. Okay, great.

Peder Aahdal (00:30:23):

All right. Ad extensions. I will say this, these are important, and these will help you probably increase your ad exposure, and all sorts of different things. So, I do recommend looking into that. Site link extensions, this is just essentially another way that you could add in little things to your ad that focuses on when people click on it, it takes them maybe to a different part of your website. So, the Contact Us page or the Start Here page, or the Christmas Eve service. You can have your ad, and underneath, it says, Christmas Eve service. When they click on Christmas Eve service, it takes them to the Christmas Eve service page.

Peder Aahdal (00:31:02):

So, things of that nature, that’s what site link extensions does. Call it extensions, this is just more information you can add to your church. Maybe a good use case scenario for some of the churches here is to actually add in the times of the services here. This isn’t something going to be that’s clickable, but it’s going to be probably helpful for people to understand when the services are.

Peder Aahdal (00:31:24):

Call extensions, this is one I absolutely recommend. If you don’t do any other ones, do this one. This is where you add in the phone number for the church or the ministry, depending on what you’re running the ad for, and then people will call that in.

Peder Aahdal (00:31:41):

So, a good example, and I showed this last time is, you’ll see there’ll be ads that are out there that have this phone number attached to it. And what it does is it allows people to actually just click on the ad to call the church or the ministry right away and not have to go to the main website. And that’s just a great way to honestly start talking to somebody quickly, helping them where they’re need is at that time.

Isabelle Faletti (00:32:08):

Yeah, especially with people being on their phones. I mean, that’s majority website visits of searches are on a mobile device.

Peder Aahdal (00:32:17):

Mobile device.

Isabelle Faletti (00:32:18):

Yeah. So, that makes it incredibly easy for someone who’s searching to just connect with you in a very quick, smooth way.

Peder Aahdal (00:32:26):

Yup. All right. We will move forward here, okay. Just think that was all the targeting.

Isabelle Faletti (00:32:35):

Right. I know. I know, and that’s exactly why we’re doing a ChurchSpring Live because there are a lot of different steps with setting up a Google Ad. So, we just went through kind of the first two steps, selecting your campaign settings. And then second step, which is extremely important, picking your audience. And then now, the third step, actually creating the ad that people will see when they type in church near me or whatever you will select.

Peder Aahdal (00:33:06):

Yeah. All right. So, what Google is going to do, it’s going to take a look at your church, or excuse me, look at … Yeah. It’s going to look at your church’s website, is what’s going to happen. It’s going to give you all these different ideas of, hey, these are different keywords you can target. What we’re doing here is we’re creating underneath the top level campaign. We’re creating they call an ad group or just another level below that, that focuses in on the targeting of the actual phrases we’re going to be doing for this section.

Peder Aahdal (00:33:38):

So, as we talked about, we want to do one here to showcase everybody of churches near me. This is just one of those ones that people are searching that everybody can take advantage of. So, it’s going to give you a bunch of options. Some of those might be good, some of them might not be good. It’s one of the things you’re going to have to kind of figure out for your specific location. But in this case, we’re going to do churches near me, and this is where you can begin to add in different things of different searches that you might want to target.

Peder Aahdal (00:34:11):

So, churches in Colorado. Obviously, insert your city name there instead. There’s just different ways you can target that. Now, this is something that is important to note here is, and this is where a lot of people get frustrated with Google Ads. I want to be very clear with this. Obviously, you’ve might think, “Well, Peder, there’s a lot of stuff I just went through.” Yes, but this right here, when you actually push the ad out into the world, it matters how you’re targeting those searches.

Peder Aahdal (00:34:48):

You’ll see down here broad match, phrase match, and the exact match. Exact match means I only want to show up for people who entered this search exactly. And if you’re nervous about ads to begin with, go ahead and do that. Everything you put in here, you just make it an exact match type search.

Isabelle Faletti (00:35:14):

Interesting.

Peder Aahdal (00:35:15):

Okay. Now, then there’s phrase match. And to be truthful, this is one that I probably end up doing the majority of the time to begin with, where it’s kind of this idea of churches in Colorado Springs, it doesn’t say Colorado after that. Phrase match would allow you to actually reach searches that are things like churches in Colorado Springs, Colorado, churches in Colorado Springs near me. It can go on for whatever it is, but it has to contain this phrase somehow. And so, essentially, that’s how the phrase match works.

Peder Aahdal (00:35:56):

Broad match, I’m going to say it for a lot of you, I wouldn’t recommend doing that. And the kicker is, is that unless you knew this to begin with, you would be entering your keywords of what you’re targeting as a broad match to begin with. And so, what Google does, it says, “Well, churches near me, well, that could mean a bunch of different things.” And so, it just throws your ad against a random, not actually random. It is targeted in some capacity understanding like churches near me. But I mean, it could substitute churches with something potentially else.

Isabelle Faletti (00:36:35):

Yeah.

Peder Aahdal (00:36:38):

You could be end up for reaching people who are looking for like a chapel for their wedding. It just all sorts of different things of that nature, and that’s what broad match is.

Isabelle Faletti (00:36:47):

Okay.

Peder Aahdal (00:36:49):

We always want to make sure that we’re doing at least phrase match where we add these in here, or exact match.

Isabelle Faletti (00:36:58):

Yup. Okay. That’s really, really key, then when someone is setting up the keywords.

Peder Aahdal (00:37:03):

Absolutely.

Isabelle Faletti (00:37:03):

Peder, for other keywords that churches could use, they could also use their denomination, correct?

Peder Aahdal (00:37:11):

Yes.

Isabelle Faletti (00:37:11):

Let’s say they’re a Baptist church, you could type in Baptist churches in your city or Baptist churches near me. So, if you are a specific denomination, that’s kind of a great keyword to include. Maybe even think about if you have a Christmas Eve service, so you could do churches with Christmas Eve services near me or something like that, or even with COVID.

Isabelle Faletti (00:37:42):

I know I have searched churches meeting in person. Kind of what is the season, the actual physical season that we’re in Christmas, Thanksgiving, et cetera, and any new circumstances in the world, such as a pandemic, how have your church able to kind of meet the need of search terms that people are truly searching?

Peder Aahdal (00:38:07):

Yup. Nope, that’s great. So, we have all these different versions of keywords we have in here. And essentially, this means that when we create an ad, these are what they’re going to be focused on reaching, people searching for these things specifically.

Peder Aahdal (00:38:26):

So, yeah, obviously, when you’re going through this, just remember the phrase and exact match functionality. But otherwise, yeah, go ahead and enter searches that you think the people might be searching in your … Or I should say, enter the searches that you want your ad to show up for the church. That’s the main goal here.

Isabelle Faletti (00:38:45):

Yup. Awesome. So, I would go to the fourth step here. I do want to check in with all of our live listeners, how are you doing out there? How are you feeling? I know that that step right there, step three, that was a lot of information.

Peder Aahdal (00:38:59):

A lot of information.

Isabelle Faletti (00:39:02):

The specific type of keywords, the phrase keyword matching. So, just drop a comment, let me know how you’re feeling about Google Ads. The unfortunate thing about livestreaming is that I can’t look across the way and kind of see your face and see your confusion or your excitement, or your head nodding. So, do me a favor and drop a comment for everybody who’s listening. Let me know how you’re feeling right now, as we kind of just give you all this information about Google Ads.

Peder Aahdal (00:39:33):

Indeed.

Isabelle Faletti (00:39:37):

All right. Peder, take it away.

Peder Aahdal (00:39:38):

All right. Now, we actually are in… Great to know all this, yeah, and we did a lot.

Isabelle Faletti (00:39:45):

I know.

Peder Aahdal (00:39:50):

It’s funny, even when as I’m teaching this, I’m like, “Man, there are a lot of steps for this.” But hopefully, this is why this is going to be helpful for everybody, yeah.

Isabelle Faletti (00:39:57):

Yeah. This is an intro level to Google Ads.

Peder Aahdal (00:40:00):

Yup. Okay. So, we come down here to the text ad. So, this is actually the ad that will show up. And as you will see here on the right hand side, as we begin to enter information, you’re going to see this begin to change. You kind of get an idea of what this will look like, ultimately, in the end, which is good. That’s essentially what probably part of you are like, “Okay, so this is the actual product that gets out into the public.”

Peder Aahdal (00:40:25):

Headline number one, let me just talk through headlines. Headlines are these little things on the ad you can see right here. Another way to look at this is, these right here, these are what they call the headlines, all right. Description, that is the little text down here that’s gray on the ad, and we can talk more about that. But as you can see, there’s character limits for each headline. In other words, you can’t go beyond 30 characters. Okay, and then when it comes to descriptions, you can’t go beyond 90.

Peder Aahdal (00:41:05):

So, how should we go about doing this? What do you want to add in as far as your headlines? But when we’re thinking about the phrase, for example, we’re talking about here, in this case, churches near me. In some capacity, I’m going to recommend you always have your church name in one of these headlines, especially if it can fit. Now, I understand that some of these, some churches names might go beyond 30 characters, there is a potential of that.

Isabelle Faletti (00:41:33):

Right, definitely.

Peder Aahdal (00:41:34):

But in some capacity, you want to have your church name in there. If you can’t, for some odd reason, fit it up here in the headline, then put it down here in the description somehow and in your discussion of the ministry or church. So, this is an example of we’re just entering the name of the church, some capacity here. Headline two, honestly, Isabelle brought up something that I didn’t think about before, but this might be … We can see if this will fit, right? We can always try it, right? So, services, in person, then we use the and symbol because there’s little more space, and online.

Isabelle Faletti (00:42:28):

Yes. I love that.

Peder Aahdal (00:42:31):

Okay. Now, we can begin to see that this is starting to populate, all right?

Isabelle Faletti (00:42:34):

Yes.

Peder Aahdal (00:42:36):

Headline three. Well, for some, it depends on who you’re trying to target. This is one of those little things you want to do. I mean, I’ll be honest, this is one thing that at least 2019 for sure was something that was really important.

Isabelle Faletti (00:42:57):

Yeah. Yeah, childcare is very important.

Peder Aahdal (00:43:05):

Childcare available in this field. There we go. And so, it doesn’t really showcase this here, but if I do, yeah. The headline three is one that will not always show up-

Isabelle Faletti (00:43:20):

Okay.

Peder Aahdal (00:43:21):

But sometimes, it will. As a matter of fact, I think this example I have here you can see there’s three headlines here. One, two, three.

Isabelle Faletti (00:43:28):

Okay, yup. That makes sense.

Peder Aahdal (00:43:30):

The main way you want to give is to the first two headlines. First, what you want to be sure you communicate in some capacity with your ad. This, you can kind of think of it as a bonus.

Peder Aahdal (00:43:44):

All right. Description number one. Once again, think of it this way. Description number one, you want to give this one the most amount of weight you want. A lot of times Google will be displaying your second description with description one. There is a common theme. It’s been a while since I feel like I’ve seen one that didn’t have both descriptions. But once again, give priority to the first section here. So, if you want to add in more details about the church in some capacity. I want to make sure that’s making sense here, hopefully.

Isabelle Faletti (00:44:26):

Yeah, it does.

Peder Aahdal (00:44:30):

Okay. All right. So, this could be done. I mean, you can figure out what you maybe like to have in some capacity here, but this is where you can maybe begin a little description about what your church talks about and preaches, things of that nature. As you can see here, I did give this kind of one big sentence here, but as you can tell, I’m almost already at 90 characters, right?

Isabelle Faletti (00:44:55):

Yeah.

Peder Aahdal (00:44:55):

I kind of have to figure out what do I want to communicate in that first line, and then is there something else I want to, and what’s the second thing that would be good to be able to tell in the second line. All right.

Isabelle Faletti (00:45:14):

Awesome.

Peder Aahdal (00:45:22):

We can do this Bible believing church.

Isabelle Faletti (00:45:28):

Yup. Kind of key elements from your mission statement, key elements that you even hear your congregation is saying, or new guests. So, your family friendly church based in the center of the city, kind of almost your elevator speech for your church because again, people are searching churches near me. This would be the first impression, and people are making the decision based on your headline and on your near description, if they want to click to learn more about you.

Isabelle Faletti (00:46:05):

It’s kind of like they are walking down the street. They see a business sign and a front entryway, a front window display, and someone has the decision, “Do I want to enter in this door to learn more?” That’s similar to the Google Ad. Do they want to click on this ad to enter into your website where you’re leading them? Awesome. That looks so great. Whoo-hoo!

Peder Aahdal (00:46:33):

Here we go.

Isabelle Faletti (00:46:34):

Nice. Oh, wait, no, I won’t with my celebratory banner over here yet until we click Save and Continue.

Peder Aahdal (00:46:42):

Yes. Now, you can click done and create another ad. You can actually run different ads at the same time to see which one performs the best. That’s the nice thing about marketing. You can do these we call split tests to figure out which ad would work the best. But obviously, in this case, we’re going to just say, okay, we’re going to click Done, and there we go. Save and Continue, and checking your campaign. From which I remember, hey, does all of this look good? Everything look okay, here? Yes. Then, you publish it.

Isabelle Faletti (00:47:17):

Oh, man, I celebrated too soon. Okay. Yay.

Peder Aahdal (00:47:19):

Yay.

Isabelle Faletti (00:47:20):

We published it. Wow. So, four steps, I believe is how they take you through it.

Peder Aahdal (00:47:33):

Yes.

Isabelle Faletti (00:47:34):

Like you just showed everybody, Peder, Google will take you through step by step. And there are a lot of different options within each step, a lot of advanced options, but I think you showed us the easiest way that you can launch an ad without getting into all the advanced elements.

Isabelle Faletti (00:47:55):

So, if you’re new to Google Ads, follow along with Peder again, go back and watch the replay, and choose the exact steps that Peder did. So, you don’t have to choose all the advanced options. I know, it’s really easy for me. I want to learn. I want to have this be the best ad possible, and it will be. It truly will be if you follow along with the steps that Peder just walked through.

Isabelle Faletti (00:48:19):

So, don’t get distracted when you’re going along for the first time to create your ad. If you have questions about what something means, pull up another tab and go to google.com and Google what does this mean this whatever the search is in Google Ads, and Google will help you out.

Peder Aahdal (00:48:37):

Absolutely.

Isabelle Faletti (00:48:39):

Peder, it looks like we have a question real quick from Brice. He says, “You didn’t put an end date, can you cancel the ad later on if you want?”

Peder Aahdal (00:48:48):

Good question, Brice. Yes, technically, you can. You can go in there and you can add. You can go back to the settings and say, end on this day. I’ve done that before. I should also note that if you put an end date on an ad and it ends, and then later on, you’re like, I want to turn that back on, you can do that as well. It’s got to wipe the end date and it’ll start again.

Peder Aahdal (00:49:12):

However, as maybe you just saw here, a little subtle thing I did is that if you want to pause your ad, you can just go up here and you can pause up the top. So, it was clicked enable just a little bit ago, I just went and I click pause. In other words, this ad can get approved, it can be ready to go, but until I have this with enabled, it’s not going to run at all.

Isabelle Faletti (00:49:37):

Awesome. And then, once you publish your ad, it will give you kind of the default view of the reports that you have on your screen here, Peder?

Peder Aahdal (00:49:46):

Yes.

Isabelle Faletti (00:49:47):

Can you give us a quick kind of high level overview or just explain to us what we’re seeing with the reports here?

Peder Aahdal (00:49:54):

Yes. That’s a good point. Yeah. What you’re going to see here when you log in is you’ll see clicks and impressions. Now, obviously, in our case, we work to maximize clicks. This is one thing we want to see is, are people even clicking on the ad? And then from there, you’ll see this average cost per click. These are all good things to know to begin with because this is what’s going to help you understand, when I run this ad, how much traffic am I going to get to the website, things of that nature.

Peder Aahdal (00:50:25):

And you can actually begin to kind of begin to understand, if I run an ad specifically for something else, I can maybe begin to get think, okay, I might have a similar cost per click with this ministry or something of that nature. That’s where that comes into play. And then cost here is just looking at total cost for the timeframe, which is up here in the top right hand corner.

Peder Aahdal (00:50:46):

So, you can adjust this kind of like what you can do in Google Analytics. You can select different timeframes and that will come into play. If we scroll down here, a little bit keywords, I’ll give you a list of the keywords that you’re targeting, and it’ll showcase how many clicks have come from each different keyword, and ads, and things of that nature.

Peder Aahdal (00:51:07):

And then there will actually be a section here as you begin to have people clicking on the ad that highlights a little bit more of sometimes the search queries they’re using, or maybe sometimes additional words that they’re using in the search that your ads are showing up for so you can actually come down here and add in additional keywords underneath manage keywords.

Isabelle Faletti (00:51:30):

Wow. That is amazing. Peder, that was incredibly helpful. Wow, I want every church right now listening to launch a Google Ad because as you just saw, it’s not as complicated as you would originally think. I know, when you go to ads, what was the ads.google.com to kind of start an ad, it can just look a wee bit overwhelming and a little confusing, and there’s a lot of options to click on. But overall, you just follow the steps and you really kind of think through what is my goal. And yeah, what’s my goal and how can I be helping my community.

Isabelle Faletti (00:52:18):

One of the important things, Peder, that you mentioned, is adding a phone call in that ad, and then also linking to your website. So, if your website is outdated, then people been going to your website and not know what to do. So, before you launch your ad, go to your website and make sure that it’s giving off a good first impression. So, if you need to do a little spring cleaning, it’s November, so I guess winter cleaning right now on your website, take a couple of minutes and update your website.

Isabelle Faletti (00:52:55):

If you’re paying for Google Ad, people are clicking on your ad because they want to learn more about your specific church and they go to your website, and again, it’s outdated or your service times are not correct, or if it isn’t easy to use on mobile, then take action on that.

Isabelle Faletti (00:53:16):

So, I will say for ChurchSpring, all of our websites are mobile optimized, which is super important, especially for these cases, for when you are running an ad. You won’t have to worry about it looking bad on mobile.

Isabelle Faletti (00:53:31):

So, Peder, thank you again, so much for doing this. I would love to open up with our livestream. For anybody who does have questions, I know we’ve been answering questions kind of throughout the live event here. So, if anybody has any last couple of questions, go ahead and put it in the comments below. As I mentioned before, this is Peder’s last ChurchSpring Live for this year. So, ask any questions that you have about ads, Google Ads, Facebook Ads, Google Analytics, and Peder will be happy to answer that for you. Or even if you have a specific ministry or outreach that you kind of want to get some thoughts on, you can pop that in the questions.

Isabelle Faletti (00:54:21):

I know I’ve mentioned this kind of in the past couple of weeks and then earlier today, but Peder is offering a free 30-minute digital outreach consult, just for ChurchSpring friends. This is an incredible tool that he’s offering. He’s had a handful of ChurchSpring members and ChurchSpring Live attendees taking him up on this offer. Peder, I know you’ve managed an ad campaign for a ChurchSpring Live member.

Peder Aahdal (00:54:55):

Yes.

Isabelle Faletti (00:54:55):

Yeah, ChurchSpring Live.

Peder Aahdal (00:54:58):

No. Absolutely, yeah. When you are looking to try to create to build an ad for something, and by all means everything that we’ve talked about in the past last ChurchSpring Lives, these are all valuable things to think through. But obviously, every time that you go to create an ad for your church or ministry, to a certain extent, it is going to be your need to get to have a campaign built around that idea. And in the case of, for example, one of the people that reached out, we ended up having to do something a little bit more advanced with Facebook to make things happen.

Peder Aahdal (00:55:33):

Now, that was a giveaway in some capacity that we’re doing for the church, the church ministry and it performed actually the best I’ve ever seen of any-

Isabelle Faletti (00:55:44):

Yeah. Incredibly well. Incredibly well.

Peder Aahdal (00:55:49):

Incredibly well. Within about less than, yeah, less than 48 hours, they had 48 people, 49 people register. So, it was pretty incredible. So, either way, your use case scenario for what you’re trying to do with your church ministry, whether it’s any more things out there with Google Search, or Google Display, or Facebook Ads, whatever it may be, if you have questions on that front, that’s what this isn’t meant to help you with. And by all means, talking with me, and we can, in many cases, there may be some things where you need to work to me, we can do a little bit more advanced targeting, basically on what you’re looking to accomplish, but that’s why I’m here to help churches and stuff like that.

Isabelle Faletti (00:56:37):

Yeah, that’s awesome. Go ahead and go to digitaloutreach.church/cs. You can schedule a time with Peder. So, Peder, thank you, again, for just taking the time to share with ChurchSpring Live members and friends. For the past couple of weeks, you have been such a joy to be working with. And I’ve had great fun and I know you have blessed all of our listeners, just with your amazing knowledge that you have about digital marketing. So, thank you. We’ve really appreciated it. I’m sure we will be having you on another time [inaudible 00:57:15].

Isabelle Faletti (00:57:19):

For those of you who you’re thinking, “Wow, my website may not be mobile optimized for these types of church ads or Google Ads that you’re talking about,” I do want to encourage you to learn more about ChurchSpring, if you’re not yet a member. Our cofounders, Mike and Rohn, put together a demo webinar less than 60 minutes, where we walk through what you need to know about ChurchSpring and how it can truly help your church website.

Isabelle Faletti (00:57:54):

Mike and Rohn, our cofounders, again, they go behind-the-scenes. We have live chat available, so you can ask questions with our team. So, go to churchspring.com/demo, if you just want to learn more about ChurchSpring or maybe you’re just the type of person who you say, “Nope, I don’t want to see. I just want to get in and try it myself. That’s how I am. I get that.” You can do that.

Isabelle Faletti (00:58:19):

We offer a free seven-day trial actually at churchspring.com/trial. No charge whatsoever. You can cancel anytime within your free seven-day trial. You can go in, try us out. You have full access to your plans. So, you won’t have a limited experience of ChurchSpring. So, churchSpring.com/trial.

Isabelle Faletti (00:58:46):

And if you have questions about ChurchSpring, we’re here for you. and I hope at the end of every ChurchSpring Live, you truly feel that we are here for you because we want to help the church just reach their communities and just not have a frustrating website because we’ve all been there and it’s not worth it. It is not worth it.

Isabelle Faletti (00:59:11):

So, I do want to invite everybody to next week. I don’t know if everybody knows, but if you’ve looked at the calendar, it is exactly 50 days until Christmas. That’s what Google said. So, I’m hoping Google isn’t lying to me. I didn’t actually count the days on the calendar. That’s 50 days until Christmas. And next week, we are going to be talking about five, easy five-minute tactics that you can take to prepare your church website for Christmas.

Isabelle Faletti (00:59:46):

Your church website, again, it’s the first impression. It is the front door that people are walking into to learn more about your church. And with the Christmas season, you have members going to your website to learn more about upcoming events, upcoming Christmas services, and you also have guests who are wanting to attend your church or attend your livestream. And your church website needs to be ready to communicate to your members, to your guests.

Isabelle Faletti (01:00:18):

So, we know that Christmas season is a super busy time for anybody, let alone also someone in ministry. So, that’s why I cofounder Rohn and myself next week, we are going to just break it down into five really easy five-minute tactics, so, each minute takes under five minutes that you can take to update your website for Christmas. I’m going to be pulling out my Christmas sweater. I don’t know if it’ll be my ugly Christmas sweater, my cat Christmas sweater or just my normal Christmas sweater. Either way, I’ll be bringing the Christmas cheer.

Isabelle Faletti (01:00:55):

So, next week, Thursday, November 12th at 10:00 AM Central, mark it on your calendar, you can go to our Facebook page here. Otherwise, we’re looking for invites to learn more about that. So, thank you again for everybody. We always enjoy our Thursday ChurchSpring Live events and we look forward to seeing you next week. Thanks everybody. Have a great day.

Peder Aahdal (01:01:24):

Cheers.