Should churches use paid advertising?
TL;DR
Consider paid ads for a specific audience, purpose and next step, with a budget you can afford to test. Treat advertising as one tool, and check whether another approach would make better use of the money.
Paid ads for churches?!
Today I wanted to answer a question that I get asked probably once or twice a month, and there's not a lot of reliable information online about it.
When paid church advertising is worth considering
I know not every church has even considered it before, while others already run paid ads quite successfully. So hopefully, you'll find this pretty interesting.
So, what's the answer?
Facebook ads. Instagram ads. Google ads. Ads for events. Ads for Sunday services. Ads for Christmas. Ads for toddler groups. Ads for Alpha.
Is it worth it?
Maybe.
Which I realise is slightly annoying.
But it’s the honest answer and I'll explain it here.
I don’t think paid advertising is a bad thing for churches to consider. In the right situation, it can be a useful tool.
But I also don’t think churches should throw money at ads just because businesses do it.
Churches are not businesses.
And that changes how we should think about it.
Most paid advertising fits into two broad buckets.
The first is brand awareness advertising.
This is where you’re not really asking someone to do anything yet. You just want them to see your name, recognise you, and become more familiar with you.
Big companies do this all the time.
The second is direct response advertising.
This is where you want someone to take a specific action.
Click here. Sign up. Book a call. Buy a ticket. Register your child. Come to this event.
There’s a clear next step.
And for churches, that distinction matters a lot.
Because in most cases, I’d be cautious about churches spending money on brand awareness ads.
Not because awareness is bad. Of course it’s good for people in your area to know your church exists.
But paid brand awareness can become very vague, very quickly.
“We just want more people to know about us.”
Okay, but what does that mean?
How will you know if it worked?
What are you actually hoping happens?
For businesses, even brand awareness usually sits inside some kind of commercial logic. They may not expect someone to buy today, but they’re still thinking about return.
For churches, that kind of calculation is much harder.
So unless you have a very clear reason and budget for it, I’d be careful.
Use paid ads for a specific event or opportunity
Where I think ads can make sense for churches is when you’re advertising something specific.
An event.
A holiday club.
An Alpha course.
A parenting course.
A community meal.
A financial education course.
A Christmas service.
A toddler group.
Something where there’s a clear action you want someone to take.
Because then you’re not just paying to “get your name out there”. You’re paying to get a specific message in front of a specific group of people, with a specific next step.
That’s much easier to measure.
Let’s say your church is running a summer holiday club for kids.
You want local parents to know about it. You have a sign-up page. You have limited spaces.
In that case, running a small local ad campaign could make sense.
You could spend £/$5 a day for 20 days.
That’s £/$100.
You show the ad to people in your local area. You make the message clear. You send people to a simple page where they can register.
Then, at the end, you can ask:
“Did this help more people sign up?”
That’s a much better question than:
“Did this make more people aware of us?”
Because now you have something concrete to look at.
Set realistic expectations for paid advertising
The mistake is thinking paid ads will fix the whole promotion problem.
They won’t.
An ad won’t fix a confusing event.
It won’t fix a bad landing page.
It won’t fix unclear messaging.
It won’t fix a clunky sign-up process.
The ad only amplifies what you already have.
So if the event is clear, genuinely useful, and easy to sign up for, ads can help.
But if the message is vague and the page is confusing, you’re paying to send more people into that confusion.
Consider the differences between Google and Facebook ads
For most local church events, I’d usually lean more towards Facebook and Instagram ads rather than Google ads.
Google ads rely on people searching for something. And in many local areas, the search volume for church-related community events may be quite low.
There may not be enough people searching things like:
“kids holiday club near me” “toddler group in [town]” “church event for families”
That doesn’t mean nobody is interested.
It just means they may not be actively searching for it on Google.
Meta ads are different.
With Facebook and Instagram, you can put the message in front of people in a certain geographical area. So if you’re running a kids holiday club, you can create an ad for local parents and let Meta find the people most likely to respond.
It’s not perfect.
But for small local event promotion, I think it often makes more sense.
There is one exception worth knowing about, though.
Google has something called Google Ad Grants, which gives eligible nonprofits access to up to £/$10,000 USD per month in free Google Search advertising.
That changes the equation.
Because if your church or charity qualifies, you’re not spending your own money in the same way.
Now, that doesn’t mean it’s automatically easy. You still need to qualify, manage it properly, have decent pages to send people to, and know what you’re trying to achieve.
But if your church is eligible, it’s worth looking into.
Set aside a budget for testing church ads
This is probably the biggest mindset shift I’d suggest.
If your church is going to run ads, don’t think of it as money you desperately need to “make work”.
Think of it as part of the promotion budget.
If you have a holiday club coming up and you decide to spend £/$100 on local ads, that money should be set aside in the same way you might set aside money for flyers, banners, signage, or anything else you’d use to promote the event.
It may work brilliantly.
It may do very little.
But if the whole success of the event depends on the ads working, that’s probably too much pressure to put on them.
Check the audience, action, next step and available skills
Before spending money on ads, I’d ask four questions:
Is there a clear action we want people to take?
Is the audience clear?
Is the next step simple?
Do we have someone who knows enough to manage it?
You don’t need an agency-level expert for a small local test.
But you do need someone who understands the basics.
Otherwise, the £/$100 might be better spent elsewhere.
Sometimes, paid ads are not the best use of the money.
If nobody in the church knows how to set them up, and you only have a small budget, you may get more value from printing simple flyers and getting them into real people’s hands.
Especially if those flyers are handed out through actual conversations.
At that point, the question isn’t:
“Are ads good or bad?”
The question is:
“Where will this money do the most good?”
Use a small budget, specific goal and measurable outcome
So here’s my general rule.
I wouldn’t spend church money on vague awareness ads unless there’s a very clear strategy behind it.
But I would consider paid ads for specific events, ministries, or opportunities where there is a clear audience, a clear message, and a clear next step.
Small budget.
Specific goal.
Measurable outcome.
Paid ads can be useful.
But they’re not a silver bullet. They’re just one tool.
And like most tools, they work best when you know exactly what job you’re asking them to do.