Easter is one of the few days a year where non-Christians will often go to a church service. Whether because of family or their own feeling of obligation, church services tend to be much larger on Easter.
This is great news for us, but it doesn’t mean that we have no work to do. Advertising your Easter service(s) well is extremely important because more people will naturally respond to your invitation. So, what’s the best way to invite people? Here are seven ideas for you as you begin advertising your Easter service(s).
NOTE: for all of the digital advertising it’s important to make sure you advertise your specific Easter landing page so people find what they’re looking for immediately. You can read more about creating a specific Easter page at my post titled: Prepare your church website for Easter.
Door Hangers/Flyers
Door hangers and flyers are great ways to invite a large amount of people to your Easter service, and what’s great is that anybody who can walk a fair distance can participate! We love going out with our teams and doing door hangers because it’s a simple and easy way to invite people, and you feel so accomplished when you’re done (which is great for encouraging your volunteers).
Every Door Direct Mail
Every Door Direct Mail (or EDDM) is a great service from the United States Postal Service where you can send out flyers to general neighborhoods for much cheaper. For the standard EDDM it only costs 18.3 cents each! This is almost a third of the cost for a normal stamp! The way it works is that you choose a general area and the postal serviceman will give one flyer per household. They drop the price considerably because it doesn’t really take the mailman any extra time to simply add one flyer to every mailbox indiscriminately.
This option is great if you’re wanting to blanket nearby neighborhoods and you don’t have the time to use door hangers or if the neighborhoods are gated.
You can find out more info on EDDM on their website at this link.
Google Adwords (using Google Grants)
For the majority of people who will be attending an Easter service, they will be searching online for a church to go to. You can’t miss this golden opportunity to be put directly in front of people who are searching for a church. As I’ve written about before, I hope no one reading this is actually paying for Google Adwords for their church, but that you invest in setting up Google Grants. You can check out that post for more info on that subject.
Facebook/Instagram/Twitter
Utilizing social media (both paid and not) is extremely important. We don’t normally pay for Facebook ads, but we do during Christmas and Easter. Again, church is on more people’s minds and they’re much more likely to respond to an ad during this time of year than any other.
Personally, I prefer Facebook ads to any other as you have much more control over who you advertise to. Wanting couples with kids who live within 25 miles? Want ages 18-25 who are single? You can make all these types of specifications on Facebook which makes it extremely valuable. You can even have one add for middle age women, and a different ad campaign for the younger crowd.
Another way we utilize Facebook is by having church members video record themselves talking about how much they love a specific aspect of our church and inviting people to Easter. We’ll post these on our Facebook (about 2 or 3 times a week) and have everyone in the church share the video on their page to their friends, as well as paying minimal money to boost the post in our area so even more people will see them!
Local Event Websites
Never forget the power of simply being everywhere. People are always looking for things to do, and by being listed as an event website might just be the nudge a person needs. And, an added benefit is that it’s very easy to do, takes little time, and it’s free. Below I’ve listed a few options regardless of where you are, but keep in mind that there are probably some other options that are state or even city specific (especially if you have a lot of tourists come to your town).
- Your city’s chamber of commerce
- Eventful
- CBS Local (Google search your area)
- Events Near Here
Newspapers/Magazines
Newspapers are still extremely common and so advertising with your local paper could prove useful. Most let you choose general areas, and there’s even advertising available on the newspaper’s website as well. Keep in mind that the newspaper doesn’t have to be a big name either, but maybe even one of the small local papers or magazines.
Press Release
The last option we’ll cover is sending out a press release. Easter is definitely a time where churches still get the spotlight, even though Easter egg hunts are on the rise. If you’re doing something special or even an Easter egg hunt yourself, you should definitely see if someone wants to write a story on what you’re doing.
As Easter approaches, it’s important to make sure we’re doing everything we can to let me people know that there’s a church they should go to. Many of these options can be done year around, and don’t forget that the number 1 rule in advertising is consistency, so you should choose the options that give the best results and keep advertising your services throughout the year.
I’d love to hear if you have any advertising ideas I didn’t cover, or things you’d like to add. Feel free to write me in the comments below!