The creative side of your ministry is often tasked with coming up with nonprofit advertising ideas, but where should you start?
Churches often get a bad rap for boring advertising. It’s not something that’s as fun or engaging as snack food or cars.
However, creative advertising is key to getting your church noticed and greatly expanding your reach. You might even find it’s more enjoyable to create than traditional advertising.
Offer Free Ebooks
No matter what form of advertising you’re using, you need to give people a reason to interact with your ad. For instance, you may have an ad on Google or Facebook, but why should someone click it?
Because, they’re going to get something for free. While some experts say free ebooks as a marketing method is dead, this is far from true. As Blog Tyrant discovered, it’s all about making the freebie actually useful and not just a carbon copy of everything else already out there. Create a fun Bible study guide, a Q&A for teens/kids, funny things kids say in church, scripture that explains certain situations or anything else engaging and relevant.
Use Creative Text Ads
If you’re using Google AdWords or Facebook ads, all you have is a few lines of text to make a major impact. When trying to craft nonprofit advertising ideas with just text, you might not feel all that creative. However, clever word play goes a long way towards catching someone’s attention. Google offers advice on creating the most effective ads and Small Biz Trends guides you through better reaching your target audience.
The most important thing to remember is to not take yourself so seriously. Test out some fun or clever ads and you might find they perform better.
Hold Live Stream Sessions
You don’t need anything more than a smartphone and an available space to live stream. Odds are, you already have both, so the only cost is time. Consider this one of the easiest nonprofit advertising ideas and the most cost-effective.
Facebook is a great place to start since they offer live streaming services for free. Use text ads to advertise the live stream event. Now, use the actual event to make a major impact and drive people to your website and church. Answer questions, hold special services, let your choir perform, hold a talent show and let viewers vote, go behind the scenes or anything else you want to share.
Create Serial Stories
It’s always a good idea for churches to blog, but you may find yourself running out of ideas sometimes. A great organic advertising idea is to create serial faith-based stories. Tag them as faith, religious or Christian short stories and your church’s site will show up when users search for those terms.
While this is one of the hardest nonprofit advertising ideas, if you have a creative mind, you might find it to be one of the most fun. Create flash fiction for something quicker and shorter (usually 100-500 words). Create standard short stories of 1,000 words or more. But, to keep people coming back, make them serials with cliffhanger endings. It’s an advertising technique that continues to bring in new people and creates regular visitors too.
You could even create ebooks of the stories plus a few bonus stories to sell to raise money. Use free Christian backgrounds for your covers and you’re all set.
Hold Off-Season Events
Your church probably has all the standard seasonal events for Christmas, Easter and other holidays. Why not celebrate for some random reason? Faith isn’t a seasonal thing and if you want to bring in more people to your church, show them that.
Hold a back-to-school talent show or a mid-Spring gardening workshop. Local flyers or even text ads online generate interest and once people start attending your events, they’re happy to talk about them online and off with their friends and family.
Do YouTube Mini Musicals
Want to get really creative? As if writing stories weren’t enough, try your hand at doing YouTube mini musicals. Tell Bible stories in 5-10 minutes with a few catchy songs thrown in. Let your members have starring roles. You could even hold contests to let people online or in your local community participate.
Use Social Media As Bible Heroes
If you already use social media, you already have a wealth of nonprofit advertising ideas at your fingertips. But, take it up a notch. On certain days, interact with followers and create posts as Bible heroes. Kids and adults will love watching these legends come to life. You’ll need to find staff or members who really have a way with words to pull this off, but it’s well worth the effort.
Where does all your advertising lead? For online advertising, make sure you have a stunning church website to keep them engaged with your church well beyond any ads or advertising campaigns.
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