Google Promotion?

[jwithnell]

What has been your experience in using Google Ads to bump your church's search engine results? Specifically:

Even if the ad boosted your website metrics, did it result in more people visiting, sending questions etc.?

Did Google penalize you later in your organic search listing when you were no longer paying for the boost?

If you used an ad, was there a time of year that optimized your results? I.e., would there be an advantage to have one during what is culturally the "holiday" season.

Thanks for any insight

 

[TheInquirer]

Did Google penalize you later in your organic search listing when you were no longer paying for the boost?

I have never heard of this happening but with all the normal fluctuation in the search results and Google constantly taking more real estate at the top of the results pages, it would be hard to tell what caused the movement. However, you should always be showing up well for the name of your church in your particular city if the name is relatively unique.

Even if the ad boosted your website metrics, did it result in more people visiting, sending questions etc.?

What metrics are you thinking the ad would boost other than driving more traffic to the site?

How in tune are you with your current analytics and traffic sources?

Google ads can be a great way to burn through money if you don't know what you are doing.

 

[jwithnell]

@TheInquirer
Our session has been suggesting the Google ads and a person whose opinion I highly trust shared positive results from when he had worked on a website at his church in New Jersey. What he couldn't answer were the questions posted here: did more folks come to church and did the Ad affect organic searches?

In professional communication planning, you need to define an objective both for your message and for the recipients of your message. In this case, we love having people at the website, but our ultimate objective is the spread of the gospel (something we can't locally measure) and getting people through the church doors (something that can be counted and acted upon).

Yes, I study our metrics almost daily and can clearly see we are meeting many of our communication objectives. For example, I see we have people visiting from all over the world (the spread of the gospel). I can also see that a majority of our visitors are from the US; within that group, a majority of our visitors are from Virginia, closely followed by West Virginia and Maryland which are close by to us; within the Virginia group I see a majority are from here in Northern Virginia. So I can conclude from these stats that we are reaching a target audience who can potentially visit the church. I also follow patterns that suggest someone might visit: a single IP address may show up on the landing page, then explore our beliefs, information about our officers, and info such as our schedule. I start praying for that person then and there. This pattern often precedes a new visitor to the church.

As for unique names, Bethel has been Bethel for more than 40 years. In search results for a generic church near Leesburg, we come closest to the top result only because we are listed among the local churches for students at Patrick Henry College. A specific search for a Presbyterian church gets us in the first page or so. We are generally at the top of a search by specific name (unless people don't put in "Virginia" and they get routed to Leesburg, Florida). Of the visitors who have come in the last year or so and stayed, one family and one young professional had a Presbyterian background. We've had a number of others with a more generalized background. Our county as a whole has demographics of younger, well educated professionals who generally list "none" as their religion. How you are presented in electronic media is essential to this group. If we only wanted people who knew to search for a local Presbyterian church, we'd generally do well. It's the others who would have difficulty finding us and may have had little exposure to the gospel.