Facebook Ads for Churches: A Step-by-Step Guide

Recent studies have shown that there are close to 2.5 billion active users on Facebook.

Let me say that again … 2.5 billion ACTIVE users (“active” meaning people that log on to the site daily).

Think about it, close to half the world’s population is on Facebook daily.

This means:

Parents, children, grandparents—people of all ages, are on Facebook daily.

I’ve heard it said this way:

If there was a central hub destination in your city that EVERYONE (people of all ages) in your community went to DAILY, wouldn’t that be somewhere you would want to market your church?

Wouldn’t that be a place where you would do outreach …

Where you would get a billboard …

Where you would do anything to make sure people at this central hub destination knew about your church.

Well, you DO have a place like that where you could reach out to EVERYONE in your community daily.

That place is on Facebook.

Facebook ads are the perfect way for your church to connect with people in your community.

They can create a personable way for people to meet your pastor, see what your church is all about, and be invited to a service on Sunday!

The best part is Facebook ads don’t have to break the bank.

You can reach thousands of people daily while only spending $5 per day, or $150 a month.

If you were to send a mailer to people in your community, you’d be spending money on graphic design, printing, and postage—all of which could easily cost you thousands of dollars.

And that’s just for a one-time contact with a church flyer that would be delivered along with all the other junk mail that a person receives—where it’s likely to be ignored.

With Facebook, you can spend around $150/month to reach out to thousands of people in your community DAILY.

So what’s stopping you from using this resource to reach thousands on a minimal budget?

Is it the learning curve? Is it the technology?

In less than an hour, even the most “un-techy” person could have a Facebook Ad up and running for your church—an ad that would instantly start showing up in the Facebook feeds of thousands in your community.

Don’t believe me?

Let’s do it together. 

Below, I’ll walk you through 5 easy steps for setting up and running a Facebook Ad for your church.

Let’s jump in!

1. Set up a Facebook Business Manager account.

The first thing you should do is go to business.facebook.com and click on “CREATE ACCOUNT” in the top right.

Then, type in your church’s name in the “Business Name” section, and include the best email for your account. You will then need to enter your church’s address and a few other pieces of information.

2. Add an Ad Account to your Business Manager account.

Once in your Business Manager account, click on “Add Ad Account” and then click on “Create Ad Account.”

Type in the name of your Ad Account, which could be the name of your church, or anything else you would prefer that is easily identifiable for your church.

3. Create and install your Facebook Pixel on your church’s website

The Facebook pixel is a piece of code that you install on your website that is, in short, the “brain” behind Facebook ads. It will tell you when someone has visited your site, which pages they visited, when someone has performed an action on your site, etc. The Facebook pixel is vital to have installed on your website if you want to make the most of Facebook advertising.

In order to create and install your pixel, click on your newly created ad account, then click on the drop-down menu at the top left, and then select “Pixels.” From here click on “Create a Pixel.” You’ll be prompted to name your pixel—feel free to pick whatever you’d like and click “Create.” Congratulations, you have just created your pixel! (I told you this would be easy!)

ere’s the part where it can get just a little tricky, as it will require a piece of code being installed in the header section of your church’s website.

While on the same window, you’ll want to click on “Manually install the code yourself” and then copy the entire pixel code, which will be displayed in that same window. If you do not have access to your church’s website code, copy that entire pixel code, and email it to your web manager or website provider so they can install it on your website.

If you do not have access to your church’s website code, copy the entire pixel code, and email it to your web manager or website provider so they can install it on your website. And if you do have access to your church’s website code, all you need to do is copy and paste the pixel code into the bottom of the header section of your site, just above the </head> tag.

On to the next step!

4. Record a short “Invite video” with your pastor

Now for those who may be camera shy, creating an invite video may be slightly challenging. But don’t worry about it being perfect—as a matter of fact, videos that show some imperfections tend to do better than studio quality videos. And no need to film your video with an expensive camera, as any iPhone or android camera will do the trick. Holding your phone in selfie mode while filming will give you even better results!Here’s a quick script that can serve as a starting point for you to use for this video to make things a little easier:

Hey, there! My name is [PASTOR NAME] and I’m the pastor here at [CHURCH NAME]. I want to invite you to come out and join us this Sunday at 10am. Our services are always a great time. We have a place for everyone of all ages …  and we want you to be a part of it! We want you to be excited for Sunday morning just like our church family is! This weekend at 10am—just click the link below! We are already making space for you, come on out and be a part of what’s going on at [CHURCH NAME]!

5. Create your Facebook Ad

Now that you have recorded your invite video, let’s get to the part where we will actually create our ad! Go back to your Ads Manager page by clicking your ad account. Here,  click the green “CREATE” button. From here, you’ll be walked through the process to create your ad. 

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For Campaign Objective, click on “Traffic” and then name your campaign. You can name your campaign something like “General Invite Campaign”—or anything else you’d like, but something that will label it as an invite campaign is a good idea.

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For the audience, you’re going to want to target people in a radius around your church’s physical address. You can do this by going to the “Locations” section and typing in your church’s physical address there. After you do that, adjust the radius until it shows a potential reach of about 500,000 people in the window to the right. Depending on your location, your radius might be 1.5 miles or 15 miles. But just make sure you have a potential reach of at least 100,000 people, with 500,000 people being the optimal size. You can then save this audience for future use.

We’ll skip everything else on that page and go right to daily budget. Here you can enter your $5 a day budget. This budget is flexible and you can adjust this to whatever you’d like. I’d suggest starting at $5 a day, but you can go up or down from there.

Click “Continue” to go on to the next step.

Here we’ll create our actual ad. Give your ad a name at the top, then you’ll want to make sure your church’s Facebook page is selected as the Facebook page this ad will represent. For the format, select “Single Image or Video;”then click “Add Media” and find your invite video that you took using your phone to upload it.

For the “Primary Text,” which will be what you see as the text in the Facebook ad post, you can use something like the template below and then adjust for your own church:

Hi, my name’s [NAME], and I want to invite you to [CHURCH NAME] this Sunday … 

We know visiting a church for the first time can be a little weird or even awkward sometimes … 😬🤪

And we just want to say … don’t worry!

We’ve been there and we know that taking that first step is a big deal and can sometimes feel a little awkward … 

❤️We believe that God really cares about people so we try to show that same care for others and make sure that your first experience is the absolute best it can be!

⏱We meet every Sunday at [SERVICE TIME] at the [LOCATION].⏱

Join us this Sunday. We can’t wait to meet you!

For the headline, you’ll want to use something like the following:

‍✔️ JOIN US THIS WEEK!

For the description, you’ll want to use something like this: ‍

This Sunday at [SERVICE TIME/S]

And for the website URL, enter your church’s home page URL, or if you have a visitor page URL, you can use that instead.

The last step here will be to click on “Confirm”—and just like that you have a self-made, fully functioning Facebook ad for your church!

(Facebook goes through a review process for approval on all ads before pushing them live, this process can take an hour to half a day. But once it’s approved, it will then start to be shown on the feeds of people in your community!)

6. DONE!

By following these quick and easy steps, you will have a Facebook ad up and running for your church.

And all for only $5 a day. 

Think about it, for the price that you pay for a coffee, your church can get in front of thousands of people in your community.

Marketing your church through Facebook ads is going to be something that will be a must for every single church, and you can either miss the boat and miss out on reaching thousands in your neighborhood, or you can get on board and start using Facebook ads today!

By following the 5 steps above, you can have an effective ad up and running in no time at all! You’ll be better prepared to reach more of your community and further your reach for spreading the gospel.