Digital Advertising: The Most Cost-Effective Tool for Evangelistic Events

When it comes to promoting evangelistic events, digital advertising is the most cost-effective tool available today.

The Study: Last year, as part of my PhD program, I conducted a study on the effectiveness of various advertising channels—including social media ads, YouTube ads, direct mail, and outdoor banners. SermonView has managed marketing for thousands of evangelistic campaigns across the United States and Canada over the past 15 years, so we have a wealth of data on campaign effectiveness.

One feature of our marketing system is offering pre-registration for events, both online and by telephone. This allows us to track how much we spend on each advertising channel and how many people pre-register as a result. We also use a guest tracking tool called InterestTracker, which many churches use to monitor attendance at evangelistic meetings.

For this study, we analyzed 119 events where Sermon View managed the marketing, pre-registration was offered, and InterestTracker was used to track attendance. This allowed us to compare the cost per pre-registration and attendance rates across different advertising channels.

Key Findings: When it comes to digital marketing, we specifically looked at advertising on Facebook and Instagram. Although we didn’t have enough data to include YouTube ads, our findings were clear. The cost per pre-registration from social media advertising was less than one-tenth the cost of direct mail. In other words, you can get over ten times the number of pre-registrations from social media advertising compared to direct mail for the same amount of money.

However, one common criticism of social media advertising is that pre-registrants don’t always attend the event. While this isn’t entirely true, we did find that attendees from Facebook and Instagram pre-registrations were less likely to show up. The attendance rate for pre-registrations from social media was 5.9%—about 1 in 17 on average—compared to a 45% attendance rate for those who pre-registered via direct mail.

The Benefits of Digital Marketing: Here’s what’s great about digital marketing: Even accounting for the lower attendance rates, the average cost per guest who actually attended from social media advertising was nearly 30% lower than the cost per guest from direct mail. Additionally, although many people don’t attend, you’re still adding a significant number of names to your interest list. These are real people who provided real contact information and had genuine interest, but life got in the way. Reaching out to them during and after the event gives you another opportunity to connect them with your church community.

Conclusion: As you can see, digital marketing is an incredibly effective tool for attracting an audience to your evangelistic event. If you’d like help with your marketing efforts, the Sermon View team does this every day and we’d love to support you.

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Thank you, Pastor, for your dedication to the gospel and for introducing people in your community to Jesus. God has placed you in your church at this time, and He’s equipped you to do the work. Let His Spirit flow through you as you touch the lives of those in your community.

I can’t wait to hear how God will use you in the days ahead!