How to improve Easter targeting: Facebook ad geo!

Easter Sunday tends to attract a large crowd of people. From your inactive attendees to new people, most churches have a packed house. And we pray alongside your team for the seed of the gospel to be planted in hearts and faith to be watered and strengthened. After prayer, where does this all start for many churches? With Facebook ads! And setting your Facebook ad geo to target your community, rather than a default setting. 

Geography, the forgotten targeting

Improving your social media game should be one of those things we ALL try to do regularly. The bells and whistles and tech seems to change regularly, so trying to keep on top of things is a part of the church comms job!

Let’s take a moment to go back to the first and most basic targeting option: geography.

Geography sets that boundary around where in the world your ad should appear. With the variety of targeting options, geography seems so simple. Pick a geographic boundary and go.

However, something occurs too often with the ads the FFM team sees in their social media feeds for churches from far away show up. Or worse, we see comments from people responding to ads who find out that they are too far away from an event to attend (as in, at least a few hours away).

Diagnosing what’s going on with your Facebook ad geography

Depending on how you set up your promotion, whether as a boost or as a separate ad, you see multiple options for demographic targeting, behavior, etc.

1. Missed Geo-Targeting in a Boosted Post: If your ad came from a boosted post, you can target geographically if you know where to look. Geographic targeting is available when you click on the “Edit” hyperlink just to the right of that option. 
2. Facebook “helps” and resets geography: At some point in the ad creation process, the geography gets set incorrectly – not by you but by Facebook! This recently happened to me while creating an ad, so I’m sure I’m not the only one. What happens is while you’re adjusting your objectives or targeting, it expands the geo to reach a broader audience. While helpful in most cases, for a local church, a much wider area (ex: an entire state) might not make sense.
3. Geography stays at default: The geography stays at the default setting – so the United States for most of you readers out there. Most local churches need hyperlocal targeting, which makes the most sense for your community and your objectives.

Get your geography ready for your Easter ad targeting

Easter promotions are coming up! Here are THREE things you can do to make sure your ads get in front of people who live nearby and focus your ad dollars on reaching your local community!

1. Create your ad through Facebook Ads Manager. You’ll have a more comprehensive view and control over all aspects of the ad setup through Ads Manager, rather than using the Boosted Post tool. If you’ve never done it before, you can find free help online! Facebook Blueprint offers training and can be a great place to get started.
2. Should you absolutely need to do it through a boosted post, be sure to click the EDIT link. This allows you to set your geographic targeting in a way that reaches your community.
3. Review your geography before submitting your ad for approval. Double-check everything!

Taking these steps will help you to focus your ad budget on reaching your local community and work to enhance all of the elements of your Easter promotion efforts!

Have your creative done but not sure how you’ll get it into all the places it needs to be? Even with all the great resources and tools out there, sometimes it’s a challenge to make it all happen.

We’re here to help. The Firm Foundations team helps struggling churches accelerate growth and connection through a firm foundation of marketing and communications best practices that reach, engage, and retain guests.

Ready to start making changes in how you communicate, book a call with the team today!