#20 - How Churches Can Harness the Power of Digital Evangelism with Justin Price

Embark on a transformative journey with us as Justin Price, Principal and CEO of Vers Creative, lends his extensive expertise to a lively discussion about the intersection of faith and modern marketing. Grapple with the unique challenges churches confront in the digital arena as Justin imparts strategies that blend the best of non-profit wisdom with for-profit innovation. Drawing inspiration from our vibrant encounters within Miami's Vous church community, we dissect the shift from traditional 'come and see' models to dynamic 'go and tell' approaches, pinpointing how religious organizations can authentically extend their reach without betraying their core mission.

Navigate the complex landscape of church marketing with us, where misconceptions often obstruct the path to progress. Justin, a veteran with over twenty years in church work, demolishes these barriers, advocating for the judicious implementation of new technologies amidst budget constraints and previous disappointments. We illuminate the significance of setting measurable goals and unravel the 'why' behind effective marketing tactics. Listen closely as we reveal the secrets to strategic evangelism that is not only quantifiable but also upholds the integrity of the church's outreach efforts.

In our final musings, Justin Price delves into the practicalities of leveraging digital marketing tools to their fullest potential. Discover the intricacies of navigating Google Ad Grants and circumventing the downfalls of monolithic email campaigns. We unravel the importance of targeted advertising and the magic of retargeting initiatives, ensuring that your church's message remains prevalent in the digital cosmos. Tune in for an honest and empowering discourse that promises to reshape your views on branding and its pivotal role in fostering church community growth.

Show Notes

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Transcript

Collin: 0:08

Well, hey, welcome back to another episode of the non-profit Renaissance podcast. I'm one of your co-hosts, Colin.

Heredes: 0:15

And I'm one of your co-hosts.

Collin: 0:16

H and we are back with another super fun episode, a few episodes. We're going to do another series, actually with an incredible guest. You've heard him before, you know him, you love him and we have a great guest today. Principal and CEO Justin Price.

Justin Price: 0:31

What's up guys? Thanks for having me back on the pod.

Heredes: 0:33

What's going on? Hola Justin¿. Cómo estás, y estoy español, colin. Spanish because Justin just did a little Spanish intensive in Miami the last couple of days and you went there, sponsored by Duolingo, to pick up and brush up your Spanish. Is that correct?

Justin Price: 0:50

First of all, miami just doesn't get the love it deserves, and I'm a big fan of Miami. I wasn't always a fan of Miami, but Miami, as I've heard it referred to.

Heredes: 1:02

Is Will Smith your reference, Colin?

Collin: 1:04

Yes, pretty much about it. Actually, you heard this song in the 90s. It's really carried me through.

Heredes: 1:11

Welcome to Miami, Honestly all.

Collin: 1:14

I know of that part is just Miami. He doesn't know the other. Oh man, I love Miami.

Heredes: 1:20

I've got mixed feelings. I've been in Miami for 20 plus years out there, but that's for another day. Another episode. While we did Spanish, we immersed ourselves hanging out with the Voo crew, with the Voo church yeah. Hanging out with tons of pastors.

Justin Price: 1:34

What a cool experience Incredible, I will say. I had a moment where I was just like we work with a lot of for-profits that are doing great work. We work with a lot of nonprofits that are doing great work. We work with even people like manufacturers. But the fourth category of people we work with is churches. What a how cool that verse. Got invited to a friends and family event at Voo pastors assembly. It was us and 500 pastors hanging out and talking about church work in a way that was real To me. It was pretty raw, it was pretty authentic conversations For me. It fired me up on a lot of things that we do, that we talk about for churches and got to have some phenomenal conversations which, in the church world, this conversation around marketing We've been very comfortable to brand it communications, church comms has been a very safe place. You try to start talking about sales and marketing in a church like what are we?

Justin Price: 2:48

doing. We're putting up some tables at the temple for Jesus to turn.

Collin: 2:53

Still taboo for sure. Taboo for sure, yeah.

Justin Price: 2:59

I don't know how to reconcile with everything, but I think the conversations that we're having are debunking quite a few myths around marketing. It's really fun. It's a privilege to get to talk to pastors. First of all, I have been serving the church for over two decades. I've been on staff at multiple places and I've served from outside of the staff position. To me, there's no greater honor than to get to serve somebody who's full-time just doing this day in and day out, and doing this being the hard work that is working in the church. I respect the conversations and the questions and the challenges.

Collin: 3:43

Quick math how many years Church work? How many years? 21. 21. 23. 23. That's 44. Am I doing that? Then I'll probably say about 15.

Heredes: 3:55

We're up there. We're senior citizens.

Collin: 4:02

Basically one retired pastor who started when he was born.

Heredes: 4:06

What's neat, Justin. I wanted to get to the Miami scene First. We talked to 30 plus pastors, while hanging there and sometimes answering the same question and debunking some marketing myths or opportunities that are usually not front and center with ministry and with pastors, or what they learn in seminary or what they get at the pastors conference. That's a cool thing about Voo being forward thinking Rich Wilkerson Jr, DC and the whole team, Adrian how they tackle and how they take on ministry and reaching Miami and beyond is awesome. There's an alignment there with us. It's great. Miami is rocking it because same day this is how Miami is crazy we had the divided and conquer. We had some of our partners and churches and friends that we know down the street at another event, city to city, also a whole another network of pastors growing and leading Voo rocking it with 500 plus pastors all over the nation. The conversation was similar on reaching, on growing the 10 million plus in the vicinity.

Justin Price: 5:02

How do you build a platform in which you can communicate in today's communication style, like how do we actually like? How do you leverage something for good?

Heredes: 5:14

and the difference, justins, of the traditional come and see, which I think we've done, some mostly done well, come and see, build it, build the steeple Boom, get the people. Don't miss out which is out this week best ever. Don't miss out. Come, come and see, as opposed to the commission of go and tell and that send out and what that digital marketing. Truly Start there, justin. What is marketing? What do we need marketing? Does the church need marketing? And? And debunk that because we had a lot of conversations and broke down some taboos. That was really encouraging to see pastors who get it while down in Miami, but I wanted our listeners, you know, across the nation, to to get glimpse of the conversations we had. Sure.

Justin Price: 5:52

I think and I think this is a pretty applicable for nonprofits and for-profit leaders to to understand some of these principles to. But but to look at it from the lens of the church, you know, for me these marketing principles were things like Social media channels. You can do content marketing on social media and we already like, we're pretty much just content generation houses as churches, right, and, and that's more or less, we're education content generating houses. Well, there's a full way in which that can happen and spread through the world Very seamlessly. But oftentimes we put in, you know, let's just say you're, you're a good, healthy, like Congregation that's been around for a while and maybe they were running like a two million dollar operating budget and they, whatever their church size is maybe it's a thousand people, maybe it's 500 people, whatever that is they're spending two million dollars to serve those people in the community around them. For a small amount more, they could like five percent more. Quick math on that, Colin.

Collin: 7:00

Yeah, it's about you give or take. Carry the one, it's, it's a hundred. It's a little more than that, yeah yeah, he's gonna post produce that answer.

Heredes: 7:08

The answer is and we're back right.

Justin Price: 7:12

So for like a hundred grand more, you could do things totally differently If you were to do how, hire like a marketing person on staff to distribute what you do as a content house and as an educator.

Justin Price: 7:24

Meaning that it costs us so much to bring people to come and see, to put a building over their heads and to get them to continue to come back and to participate and to pastor them and to Keep the lights on and all that kind of stuff. Right, there's this like baseline cost. But then there is another way in which communicating, in which you can go and tell for like five percent Unless even just go crazy, or ten percent more, you start distributing that same content. You could have twice as many people, three times as many people now being engaged, because you, you went in, you told and you left, and so you know marketing is, is the scientific side of communicating a with Measurable, tangible. You know, I really I consider the marketing versus communication being a goal driven and measurable Objective for communications. And so this is where this gets really tricky, because a lot of us who went to seminary Went to seminary before there was a thing called the internet.

Justin Price: 8:27

Hmm and before we had cell phones and a lot of people who went to seminary, who are leading churches today. Facts were taught how to teach the Bible. They were taught how to read the Bible, how to understand the Bible, how to Interpret the Bible. They were taught Greek. They were taught Hebrew. They were not taught how to code. They were not taught what web 3 is or what web 2.0 is or what email 2.0 is. Those are just technology solutions in which we can communicate, and marketing is goal oriented, measurable paths and systems in which we try to communicate in a way in which is effective. And so, if you're thinking like that, we've got the the idea down that there are opportunities for us to use these tools and technology to grow.

Justin Price: 9:17

I think there's a lot of churches in the early 2000s that that captured that with podcasting. So they started distributing their message on a free tool or a very low-cost tool, you know, typically like a couple hundred dollars for hosting podcasts and you can get thousands and thousands of downloads. Then some churches started to figure out how to utilize YouTube and some churches started to figure out how to Distribute in broadcast on Facebook. So they were using the communication channels and the technology and they were uncomfortable with that because they were. They were comfortable with that because they could give one staff member that work and say, take on a little bit of that work. Our tech guy or our worship guy or Communications girl or guy Gets to do that work. And we're just gonna keep doing the same thing We've always done. We're gonna have people come in, but we'll now take that message that we did inside and we're gonna now distribute that out.

Justin Price: 10:10

Still not marketing, but it's super confusing because those people most of the time weren't actually trained in marketing. There's a when we hire a marketer I Think this is a good context. When we hire a marketer at at verse, we will usually get between 600 and 1200 applications for a marketing role. We're not a super big agency. We are faith-based. We have we've got some controversial clients, like a secular marketer may be like I don't know if I wanna work with churches or some of the organizations we work with.

Heredes: 10:48

Let's name them.

Justin Price: 10:49

Like the pro-life, specifically the pro-life work that we do Positive controversy.

Justin Price: 10:54

Yeah, but in the marketing world we will still eat despite all of that, we'll get 600 to 1200 applicants in. I will test those people on what they actually understand from like marketing through. We have kind of like a series of steps in which people will try to filter out people who don't really know what they're doing. We usually get that down to about 25 people who actually know what they're doing, meaning that they actually have done it, they have experience, not just they understand the concepts and they fully understand what it means to set a measurable goal, monitor that goal, deliver on that goal, make the adjustments necessary to maximize the efforts being spent to hit that goal and that like that work is. It takes some talent, it takes some time, it takes those. I mean that takes a lot of work to develop that.

Justin Price: 11:50

When I first started and a lot of people first started I did things like I ran like content on Facebook for churches and it was like because we started doing this we would talk about.

Justin Price: 12:07

We started with like come to church or here's like what we're doing at our church on Facebook, and then I would take it and I would go like that's not that important to people who don't go to this church, right, but we would do like a video for an event that was for the community or what it really performed. The best was honestly always the missions work, like the outreach work, and people would from the church would share the outreach work because they were really proud that their church was actually doing outreach work and the people from the community actually responded to that. And then I figured out, like that work took me let's just say that took me five hours, maybe 10 hours, to get the video edit and everything. That work was the best content. But then and let's just say that the average employee is cost the church like 25 bucks an hour, right, so it cost the church like $250 with the resources to make that piece of content. What clicked for me was understanding that if I paid Facebook $50, I got 10 times the reach.

Justin Price: 13:08

So now the church paid 250, some cost 250 to make the content and to put it up there For $300, instead of 100 people engaging, we got a thousand engagements.

Justin Price: 13:20

That thing was not that hard. That was not that hard. What we do today, comparative like to the landscape today, 10 years ago that was not that hard. And so a lot of people have communications jobs and a lot of people who have marketing jobs. They have sustained success because of their did something that simple, including myself.

Justin Price: 13:41

The problem is is that to stay relevant and to be working with bigger companies, to work with billion dollar brands, to work with $100 million non-profits, you can't get by with just what you did 10 years ago and, honestly, we hardly can ever get by with what we did last year.

Justin Price: 13:57

And so the culture we have here is this culture of constant growth, of constant monitoring, of constant improvement and iterative approaches to everything, because that's what it takes to actually be good at this. And so when we talk about marketing, we talk about myths. There's just a lot of people who have good hearts. There's also a lot of people who know a lot about one piece they may know a lot about, they may have figured out how to do content marketing really well, but they don't understand how to do the ad buying. They may understand a lot about ad buying for a certain like for a type of thing. We've worked with marketers who are awesome at product advertising and using digital marketing and blogs and content generation for products that are under $100, but they could not sell services that are $50,000 services with any of the things that they figured out with that.

Justin Price: 14:50

And so we get these big pools of people who are like I can do marketing and they really can only do a small piece of this. And churches, I think, have had those people in their congregations with good hearts and they've said pay me to do this or let me spend some of the church's money to do these advertises. Like I'm doing this blog thing, I'm a popular this or that or whatever, or this has worked for me in the past years, and then the pastors are like we tried that already. It didn't really work with that particular person, and so that's kind of the landscape we're sitting in right now is like there's very few people who have been as focused on a demo as we have with church work, and so the conversations are different, they're unique and they're challenging to go. What is next and what should we be doing? And how do we apply this goal-oriented, money-driven results, checked, accountable communications? When we can heart, we're just like happy, you know, if our people show up and we can pull off Sunday. So you know there's a big gap there.

Heredes: 15:56

I love what you're saying, justin. One, it's distribution is not enough, right? I think you got eight-year-olds distributing stuff on YouTube like crazy. And so that strategy, that last and that actual the marketing piece, I love it because it's evangelism right, but 2.3, 4.0, where it's strategic evangelism, it's still doing what the church is called to do, but now it's trackable, measured, it's effective and efficient.

Heredes: 16:23

I'm going to flip it on you here real quick, putting on my XP, my senior pastor hat, because I sat on that chair where I've got to sign the checks, I've got to manage the budget and I'm like, yeah, but I can't see or feel or touch that. Justin, that's pretty, it's cool, I'm happy that the content's getting out there, but now you're telling me to pay Facebook for more. I don't want to give that guy, I don't want to give that platform, I don't want to pay that tool and I've been on both sides and that's a tough sell because I'd rather pay for somebody else to do more stuff over here next to me that I can see, rather than do the extra 50 bucks.

Justin Price: 16:57

You'd rather have like another employee.

Heredes: 16:59

That's typically what I hear and typically the challenge. Or why not give this person a raise to just do more of the YouTube thing, or to do more of the same thing they're doing?

Collin: 17:07

because that's easier to see and verify as opposed to, or are those people even real or what?

Heredes: 17:13

So talk to me about those, because we talk with pastors that that's continually the tension. We have a guarantee They've seen results. Our case studies in our track record speaks for itself, but it's still something they have to overcome. What would you tell the pastor thinking that's like dude, that's. I'm sure that's great. I mean, you know there's, we'll leave it to Amazon and Apple and people selling to us. They've got the millions and millions.

Justin Price: 17:37

We should only leave this technology to the growing organizations in the world.

Heredes: 17:43

Basic, which is so sad. Right, Because we experienced it, we know it's effective and but there's still a fear to embrace it and to make the jump or to take the risk.

Justin Price: 17:53

Well, I'm empathetic to the fear because I myself have failed plenty of times, and so most of these pastors. They're not fearful because they're scared of doing of God, doing a new thing or of doing something new, but because they've been burned. So I'm empathetic to the fear, which is what why I typically would say, like the best relationships with us always start small. It's not a big bite. You don't have to bite off a big salary is worth of work to see the results.

Justin Price: 18:25

The biggest challenge is connecting the gap between what is working and why it's working when it comes to terms of affecting the actual ministry objectives. We we were doing a discovery with the church last week. This is the first time that church came back and said our goals that we want you to help us reverse engineer would not be just butts and seeds, which typically it's like that's really the thing is like anybody could kind of like come in and be like. I'm not as convinced that like online attendance is that big of a deal, even though we know that's like kind of the first place most people will check your church out is they'll watch it online first. So that's a leading indicator.

Justin Price: 19:06

We start to set goals like we'll do baseline measurements, year over year measurements, because there's pretty big swings seasonally Within churches, so like a month over month isn't gonna tell us that valuable information, but if we can look at the last couple years of data on your website traffic, we also put in tools where we can watch people who come from ads and see what they do on your website.

Heredes: 19:28

Well, you can do that. Why would you do that? That's a net the cool. It's not just in. No the Bible said I don't know, well, no, but that's a it's creepy since I've entered this world is super creepy and the but it's not, but it's not. But it is right, but it's not, because I think we've all been through the information. Information's out there. The wrong people are buying it and using for bad yeah, yeah. So talk to me a little bit about that, because people don't know.

Justin Price: 19:54

I guess my the point to answer your question is there is technology in place in which we can track the advertising and the work that we're doing with, with marketing, whether that is an email that you're sending out to your congregation or to somebody who's interested in helping with a donation or a capital campaign.

Heredes: 20:12

and Most churches are stuck at 1.0 still, when even with things as simple as email oh right, we can do a whole episode on that, by the way, right, just sending out emails in two thousands, it's not enough so marketing like good marketing would be to say Sending email was the first thing and most of us are like we send out.

Justin Price: 20:30

I love this. Whenever I'm like, tell me about your email system. When talking to church, they're like we do. We got a, we got somebody who's doing email blast. I know it. We send now email blasts every week because I delete it and I'll be like, okay, cool, what are the metrics on that?

Heredes: 20:46

What is? What's that? What do you mean? Metrics.

Justin Price: 20:47

That means, and they're typically like we don't do like we don't stand here in America.

Collin: 20:52

We don't do that.

Justin Price: 20:58

So we'll look at. We'll look at things like the open rate, right, but lots of times are still bad data.

Heredes: 21:05

So Google is actually sending you to junk Email that you, your domain, is actually getting D-ranked and Google listings because you send out these e-blasts 1.0 style, which is just pray out there and spray baby which is such a waste, because a staff member will get discouraged or feel like they're doing the work of the Lord and we sent it to 50,000 people without knowing that no one opened it, nobody clicked it, nobody got the information.

Collin: 21:34

I'm hurting your 5,000 people in your area is 5,000 people up in Canada. Yes 5,000 people out and you know.

Heredes: 21:41

Yes, exactly. Well, justin, speak to this because this was part of the conversation and we can do episodes and episodes of this and this is Going to be a little bit of the secret sauce. And, by the way, when he says discovery road mapping for those who don't know, part of the process, the strategic process, reverse and how we engage with our partners and why we've seen the retention and the success rate We've seen over the last decade is starting with that strategy. So it's typically four to five sessions, two hours of pop, with our teams reverse engineering, discovering, understanding the goals, vision, mission and Reverse engineering the goals and what you want to achieve. So when he says discovery and verse thrives in doing those, we do the monthly with the partners, virtually all around and in person. So that's what that is.

Heredes: 22:20

When he says discover, it's not just a ten minute discovery call and I'm trying to sell you some widget. It's not that. Did I say discovery? You did that. Now it's it's, it's set, it's set in. But that's what that is. It's us discovering the goals and then working backwards to really see how we can help you. It's not one size fits all, however. The tools are Interchangeable and that's the beauty that we can challenge. But I do want to talk about the myths with Google ads, because most churches we talked to oh yeah, I paid somebody over there 400 bucks a month and they, man, they got me the Google grant and they manage it and we tried it for a year and they saw squat so they went to a conference and they're like I heard Google's giving out ten thousand dollars a month in ad words.

Justin Price: 23:01

Why would I pay For any ads? Why would it be Fred's? Yeah, I should be free Google.

Heredes: 23:06

Yeah, they'll try it. They'll throw money at somebody solopreneur or a small agency just doing that, or even a big agency, or even a big, a lot of big agencies just oh, we'll get you in the door and get it that. And talked about the experience because I even challenged, I remember, early on, and why not? Why is that money Not being channeled like it should? What's your experience with that and what should pastors and leaders know?

Justin Price: 23:51

all right. The first thing to know about the Google grant is it is a Strategic part of Google's business model in which to do tax write-offs right, and so they don't want the attacks right off part of their business model to cannibalize the profitable part of the business model, mm-hmm. Google's ad platform runs off of the basis in which it is the most desirable keywords are paid for.

Justin Price: 24:16

The more desirable they are, the More beating competition typically, the more desirable they are, the more they cost, right? So if there is 10,000 people who search church near me, google wants you to pay for that if you want to show up first when when somebody searches church near me right.

Heredes: 24:36

It's important to know it's an actual bid and auction. These prices are set based on interest.

Justin Price: 24:42

Right based on region change from month to month change.

Heredes: 24:44

So church near me is not gonna be the same in Alaska, that is, miami or in South Africa, and based on seasons, based on popular, all of the above. So it's a bidding when you talk. It's not a oh, it's $1 period across, it's it bit, it fluctuates, go ahead but I've been doing this for 10 years.

Justin Price: 24:59

I've never sat down and talked to any church who did not. When I say like, hey, how do you, how do new people find you? What do they do like, talk me through. Well, have somebody new walked into your church? Nobody has said anything other than they got invited by a friend. But if there's any technology, nobody has said anything more than they went and they googled church near me or a church or looked for a church on Google.

Justin Price: 25:30

So there's a few phrases that are pretty universal around the country that Google wants you to pay for. Those in most cities those are running a couple bucks. So here's the deal with the grant. The grant will give you words like up to $1.52, words that are not valuable. They're not going to be three, four, five, $10 words.

Justin Price: 25:54

The reason why people are willing to pay that much for those words is because if I can get Eridus to find my church first and he likes what he sees when he clicks on the church, he's likely to show up. If I wanted Eridus and his family and he fits the demographic of the people I want, it's certainly worth $10 to get Eridus' attention. The way that the metrics typically look is like I'm going to see 100 people I want to show that ad and maybe out of 105 to 10 in a good case with a church that has a good reputation, I might get 12, 15, 20. So that's like the click-through rate is the percentage out of 100 is going to be like. This is how basically good that ad was presented to the audience that it was shown to.

Heredes: 26:44

Not to lose our listeners here, but Google's giving me $10,000. I can use all that money for all that.

Justin Price: 26:48

They're only giving you the words that are least expensive, like under $2. They are not the high value words that don't convert.

Collin: 26:55

Right. So someone who doesn't know anything about this. They see $10,000 and say, oh cool $10,000, but they don't see the pool of what they can actually buy with that. So what do they do from there? How do we come in and help?

Justin Price: 27:05

Yeah, it's almost like when you're a kid and you're shopping for Christmas presents and you're like I want to buy my dad a grill because I know my dad needs a new grill, and your grandparents give you a couple bucks, or you saved up that $10 and you're trying to shop and you end up at the dollar store and all you could really afford is that crappy grill spatula that you still get burned when you use it because it's only 10 inches long. That's kind of like shopping with the Google Grand for. Christmas for your dad.

Collin: 27:36

Grandma Google has given you this money, but you said you can only shop here.

Justin Price: 27:40

It's like that. It's like you're just picking up the scraps of AdWords. It's actually super tough to use the Google Grand. There's very few agencies that use it for all $10,000. They will set it up, they will try to get it so that it gets as much traffic to your site. Here's the bigger problem, though. If your agency is trying to get to spend all the $10,000 because they're like they want you to feel like they're doing a good job spending the Google Grand meaning like they did a good job they set it up and they want you to see all the traffic go into your site, but it's the wrong traffic, it's bad traffic. They literally put words in there that are not even for the right people that should be coming to your church. Then Google looks at your website and all that traffic, because people, what they do is they go on and then they leave when the second they see like this is not what I was looking for. So what happens to your website? Organically, it goes down. The rankings continue to go down because let's click bait they're bouncing. So your bounce rate goes up the more that that agency sends the wrong people to your site. So then Google, whose job is to find the right thing for people and match them as fast to the right thing, or else they go. I'm going to look for a different search engine. They go. Well, I'm not going to show that site again to these people. I'm not going to show the site again to these people.

Justin Price: 28:55

And slowly but surely, we'll see churches who are like yeah, we've been doing Google ads for like three, four years. And I'm like, yeah, you guys aren't showing up anywhere. Yeah, and you're a big church Like I should be able to find you locally, if nothing else. They're like they've got a bunch of reviews. They got a bunch of people who come to their church every week, that go to their church website. Google should be rewarding you for that. But you've got somebody over here who's motivated by the wrong thing, which is just to spend that Google grant, and has just blown up your bounce rate. When you look at the actual analytics, when you dig the deeper level than just the surface vanity metrics, you start to realize a lot of churches are just getting burnt by people who are and let's be honest like $400. Most good marketers are worth two, three, $400, $500 an hour. Seriously.

Justin Price: 29:45

Yeah, you're saying that they're worth that, so you pay in somebody 400 bucks a month You're not going to get. You're either getting somebody who's not worth very much if they're willing to give like 10, spend 10 hours working on that at 400, or, mostly the time, what you're getting is you're getting like A cut in pace cookie cutter, yeah, feel good Either way, it's not good.

Heredes: 30:06

Yeah and Justin, because I do want to get to the the bounce rates. By the way, if that's somebody jumping on your site and literally rolling their eyes because now they're mad at them, your site, so the brand impression there is actually negative because they're like not this by they drop out in a second. Your site just keeps going to the back of the list. Right, you're your dear brand. We've seen it work in a different way, though. So it's not that the Google grant is all bad or it's all. Takes work, takes strategy. It takes, you know, tinkering with and figuring out the keywords. It's not all bad.

Justin Price: 30:36

It's not all bad, so just know, because we're one really cool strategy we figured out that's like we did like a year or two of like we couldn't spend it. We couldn't spend the grant, we couldn't figure out how to use it. If we can get enough traffic, if you can pay to play, you can get the right. Get good words going, you get. Start Climbing the rankings. This is my, my, free tip.

Heredes: 30:56

Yeah, and we, a lot of churches that jump on this find incredible results and this is time to kind of work we, and let's share it, because I think it's it's it's important.

Justin Price: 31:04

So first of all, like, we'll take all the low-hanging fruit we can get that are right, which are gonna be like the key phrases that have your church's name in it. Those are not very expensive words. You should be paying for those words, just making sure if someone actually was looking for you You're, you're gonna show up and not somebody else who looks or sounds like you. So that's the first little free tip is like use the Google grant for the stuff that's got your name in it and all of the stuff your youth groups name you've got that cool funny name will free your group, whatever it is Put. Throw that stuff in there too. Like, so buy those words, because when that mom or dad is actually looking for you for that Youth group name, you should show up on that.

Justin Price: 31:43

The second thing is when you have enough good traffic, come to the site. There is retargeting. So Google is not just ad words. This grant you can also use in Google display. Google display is typically not nearly as effective as an ad word because it's being displayed out on websites that may or may not be for your particular audience, but you can put it in the right zip codes and then ultimately, if you can get a certain number of people to your site. You can turn on a retargeting campaign. Retargeting is not that expensive and you can spend the Google grant on retargeting, which means when people come to your site they will see your messaging in a display ad, not I search.

Heredes: 32:25

A little banner, a little box, little square, a little yeah typically you put.

Justin Price: 32:29

You know we will load up a bunch of display ads that are that are Going to be intended for somebody who's already been to your site, so the messaging even in that is now not like you've never heard of us before, but it's like I'm trying to get you to actually show up to church. Yeah, because you did check us out at some point and so those display ads will follow people around this. This is the kind of annoying ad when I you've already bought that pair of shoes and you still keep getting targeted for it. They're not that expensive to to run those across the internet and to run those across all of your phone apps and the Google display program. It's a pretty big media program which is pretty diverse and there's a lot of placement for that. But that's the way that you can spend the ad grant From Google and those are those with like the two.

Justin Price: 33:16

Two tips is there are valuable, cheap words that you should get even though I Wouldn't say that like if I was to run an ad thing for you that those are the words that are like generating new people, because those are like people who already want it. But that is the by far that retargeting side of it. Like you put those things together, you get some of the thousand dollars worth of free words that are good words. Get the retargeting going and you add on like a few thousand dollars of like really good Adwords to that thing and you've got a super powerful. And I would say Like when we were looking at churches, I'd say probably about a one percentage of the churches are doing a good job With with that particular program.

Collin: 34:03

Hmm, Well, like we said, all of that value was for free right there, so so you're welcome.

Justin Price: 34:15

You've learned Really get our media team and the ad buying and marketing director rather than me.

Heredes: 34:23

But no, Listen, Justin and I know we've known each other for a few years now, but the team we fired, the folks with the experience and the access they've had to massive accounts, is incredible. Yeah, we've gotten to tap into that. It's been eye-opening for me. Who's been like, just put it on the billboard or just make more shirts? No, listen, there's some value to that, but that alone is spray, right, where is it praying? Spray, spray in May and and hopefully spray it everywhere. So, and it feels good because it's an ego, it's a pat on the back to my peers, like did you see my picture over there on that thing? Did you get my mailer? Yeah, amongst all the other trash, I trashed the track ability, the next gen, specially which? Native apps, native tools, native software, native networks. It's the language, it's the language and it and you can target and you can be specific and not just spray. We're gonna wrap this one because there's so much more I do want to talk about so much more and we'll do part two.

Heredes: 35:13

Man, we got to do part two on this, is that?

Collin: 35:15

alright, yeah, we can do a part two on this. We also. We also got branding where you talk about branding coming up, and and that's gonna be a super fun one as well.

Heredes: 35:22

Branding brand in just a brand D the drink. Oh uh, that's our other pot. You have another side podcast. Yeah, that's right.

Collin: 35:30

We do pay for that one, by the way, I brought to you by no. But yeah, we keep keep an eye out. We got some some good stuff coming up. Justin, thank you for all of that insight. If you want to know more first, creative comm will help you out. But thank you so much for listening. We will see you next time on the nonprofit Renaissance.

Outro: 35:48

Thanks again for listening to the nonprofit Renaissance. We hope it ignites a Renaissance in you and helps you go further and grow faster. Be sure to share, rate and subscribe and if you'd like to recommend or be a guest on our show, send us an email. At podcast at first, creative comm.