As often happens with youth ministry, I decided to try something new. I have two events this month, the Spring Fiesta and Movie on the Lawn, both on April 25, with one following the other. Now, any youth minister will tell you that no matter how much they plan an event, the hardest part is telling someone outside of the church.
Enter Google AdWords.
In addition to being a youth minister, I also manage the church website.
Surprise, surprise.
I am always looking for ways, ideas, tricks, changes, content, just about anything that will bring new visitors to the website. So, already tracking our visitors on Analytics, I decided to try out AdWords. I created at least two versions of each ad for each of the above mentioned events, for a grand total of four (4) possible ads to show. Google recommends this so you can try out various ads and see which ones have traction.
So far, I have a couple hundred impressions, but no actual clicks. Since I just added the campaign less than an hour ago, I am not too concerned. However, I hope to see some clicks before the day is out.
[Update] I also wanted to mention that I used the Google Partners section of AdWords to try and increase the reach of the campaign. Essentially, these are websites that are on the other half of online advertising and are members of AdSense. Google drives traffic to their site and the site takes them to the advertiser.
This got me thinking.
I chose sites that I am familiar with and would think someone else might visit. However, I could easily ask the youth group or members of the church what sites they visit. Since you can enter websites for Google to check against their AdSense subscribers (or perhaps get them to join since you asked about them), this would allow me to target sites I would not think about. I might do this if I can get this campaign off the ground, or perhaps if I can’t.