Digital Parish: Google Ads and the art of digital outreach

Ryan Dunn [00:00:00]:
Welcome to pastoring in the digital parish, your resource and point of connection for building your digital ministry toolkit and bringing your congregation into the digital age. Glad to have you back with us. My name is Ryan Dunn. In this session, we'll discuss the Google ads grant for church and work towards unlocking its incredible potential for your ministry. Our adjunct professor for this is Reverend Jen Swindell. She dives deep into the technical necessities of how to get set up from setting up a secure website, to adhering to Google's policies around analytics integration. We discussed the art of crafting groups that cut through the noise with generally emphasizing the importance of specificity and relevance, whether it's for an Easter service or a community centered blue Christmas event. You'll hear about her hands on tips for creating engaging landing pages using AI to captivate audiences and the do's and don'ts of digital outreach.

Ryan Dunn [00:00:58]:
Jen Swindell is the pastor of evangelism and communications at North Raleigh United Methodist Church. She also coaches and consults churches in regards to their digital outreach strategies. Her goal really is to help leaders make the time they already spend in social count more and have a measurable impact in their major goals and metrics. So let's unlock the power of Google and put it to work for your ministry. All right. Here we go. Here's Jen. Jen, first things first.

Ryan Dunn [00:01:29]:
Thanks so much for joining us Dunn pastor in the digital parish. How goes it with your soul today?

Jen Swindell [00:01:35]:
We are doing good. Beautiful day here in North Carolina.

Ryan Dunn [00:01:38]:
Cool. Well, we're gonna start at kind of a base level because really that's my level of understanding right now. So I have heard of the Google Ads Grant for churches. I know that in some way, shape or form, churches can get like $10,000 in advertising from Google. But beyond that and beyond taking the, the first steps, I'm not really sure what's going on. So give us the base level view view. What is the Google Ads grant? How does it work?

Jen Swindell [00:02:06]:
Yeah. So, the Google Ads grant is available for any nonprofit, 501c3, registered, and that is going to give them you know, the easy way to say it is $10,000 per month. It is technically 330 something dollars per day. It does reset daily for you, but it's a lot easier to just round that on up. Again, you are eligible whether you're individually a nonprofit or if you're part of an umbrella nonprofit. So, both of those are ways to work. And all you have to do to apply for it is go to google.com/nonprofits. If you already utilize Google, Google Workspace, Gmail for, you know, your nonprofit's domain email, you actually probably already have Google for Nonprofits, unless you're paying for that.

Jen Swindell [00:02:55]:
So it's just a different module that you activate on that nonprofit's page. And so it's, takes a couple of weeks to get it approved. You know, you scan in the paperwork, do that kind of thing, answer some questions. They have a little bit of video, sort of baseline knowledge for you that you've gotta pass a few Google forms tests Dunn, and then it is yours Dunn you're unlocked.

Ryan Dunn [00:03:16]:
Okay. Have you heard churches run into roadblocks into getting started in any way? You know, for example, ours has passed through her identity Dunn Google has passed through a number of different people. So tracking down, like, all the all the necessary permissions takes a little time. Are there

Jen Swindell [00:03:33]:
Yeah. There there's a lot of places you can get a roadblock. Dunn is some states depending on what you can. You can be a church who can take, donations, but you aren't actually an official nonprofit. So, depending on your church you know, again, I come from United Methodist background. So for us, we need that umbrella ruling letter as United Methodist, but we need the letter saying that we are in fact a official United Methodist Church. Sometimes in church planting, that can get a little wonky because you're actually connected to kind of a an anchor church potentially. And so in that case, you are kind of sharing a Google Nonprofits, which makes things a little bit more challenging, but both of you can send and use Google Ads.

Jen Swindell [00:04:14]:
I've done that with church. So that's a little bit of a roadblock. You sort of alluded the the biggest roadblock or the best gift you can give is when you get Google for nonprofits, make sure more than Dunn person has that admin access. Because if you have, for whatever reason, left the church or even if that email goes defunct for whatever reason, it it takes a midsize miracle to get the custody back from Google. So making sure that we pass on our digital footprint church like you used to pass on, you know, a binder when you you change jobs. Passing on your Google Nonprofits is important or making sure a couple you don't want 50 people to have access, but having more than Dunn is always a good add on as well. So again, knowing that you're a nonprofit, getting through that, and figuring out who owned your nonprofit. Again, if you do use it for your domain email, the hardest part is it's usually not your church domain that owns it because you didn't have an email on that church domain yet.

Jen Swindell [00:05:13]:
So it's a little tricky. A lot of times, it's been a personal email address of a tech oriented layperson or even a pastor or a staff person, a few people behind.

Ryan Dunn [00:05:24]:
Yeah. And sometimes you can look at that email and you'd be like, I I see who is behind this, but I don't know who that person is. Right. You know, they, it could be like 7 or 8 years old, and if it was a lay person who moved on long ago. Yeah. So, and and that's probably just a general practice that we need to keep aware of within the digits the digital ministry world with all of our logins, whether that be to, like, Instagram or Google or whatever, online, having it.

Jen Swindell [00:05:52]:
Knowing who owns it. You you get good security practice. Don't put the username and password. But I do have I call it my, like, communications magic sheet, and it has all of our usernames or URLs. And then if there's different emails, I have which of our emails because we have communications at or creative at so that we know who owns it. Because it's great for me when I forget because there's too much going on, but it's also important for whenever we do pass on or multiply or add staff or move on or, you know, change leadership. We've got to know who is where with what.

Ryan Dunn [00:06:25]:
Yeah. Well, let's get back to the Google Ads grants. How have you started to see or what are some examples of how churches use this innocence gift?

Jen Swindell [00:06:38]:
Yeah. So it's an amazing gift. It really is. Like you said, it's a gift. It, you know, obviously, it has probably some tax benefits for Google's business, but it has huge benefits for churches. And, you know, the the biggest benefit, the biggest most successful parts of Google Ads tend to be for more outreach oriented kind of events. So trunk or treats do amazing. Easter egg hunts do fantastic.

Jen Swindell [00:07:04]:
Even Christmas and Easter themselves do well because the biggest thing with Google Ads is Google is, providing these ads when people are searching for things that these ads are the answer to. So, unfortunately, as we know, especially with more creative, digital type pastor folks, not as many people church for 11 AM worship near me as my search for fun things to do with my kids this weekend. So we've got to be a little bit creative about what we think through with the Google Ad and how we decide what to put on there and kind of just what our expectations are. I do run ads for worship, and we do get folks that do that. But the number of folks that search for worship near me is exponentially smaller than the number of folks that are searching for fall festival or trunk or tree or family Christmas Eve or breakfast with Santa. All of those things are things that will perform a lot quicker and higher than you know, again, we have had some folks that are like, I have this great, like, theodicy content page, and it's a great blog. There's not as many people searching for theodicy in your geographical area that will have that here. It is.

Jen Swindell [00:08:13]:
It's sad.

Ryan Dunn [00:08:14]:
Well, so it it sounds like to get the ball rolling on something like this, is it almost kind of an event based style of advertising, or or what might be the platform that you recommend starting from?

Jen Swindell [00:08:27]:
Yeah. So I always love to start every church with kind of, like, I call it kinda my big couple. Right? So church near me. There's always folks that are gonna be new here, and they're searching for church near me. And then also, like, what's unique about your church? But again, not super, super niche unique because normal folks I mean, most folks don't search for the difference between United Methodist and Presbyterian. They don't know the difference. They're looking for a church. So making sure and again, you can add as much as you can.

Jen Swindell [00:08:57]:
So I think this is a good time to say many of us working in the digital space are used to perfecting the best copy. We choose the one thing, right? Because if I am paying for a Facebook ad, I'm, I've researched what is going to convert. I have one wording. I control all of the wording. I put it in there and it is that one perfect thing. You know, my analogy is it's like the fancy plate at the nice restaurant. There's only one version of it, right? With Google as a comparison, it's kind of like you're just going grocery shopping for the entire Cheesecake Factory menu. Right? You need lot of things in the kitchen.

Jen Swindell [00:09:34]:
The more things you've got in the kitchen, the more is going to get served up. But the challenge for those of us who are used to having more creative control is Google picks them. So when you make a Google ad, you actually put in kind of an unlimited number of keywords. You do want them to be relevant and as specific as possible. Then for each ad group, which is kinda like a topic. So again, I have an ad group on the Easter egg hunt, and I have an ad group on Easter worship because both of those are good and they're similar and some of them might have the same keywords, but we want to have again, if, especially for egg hunts on a different day, egg hunt's going to have different information and all of that as opposed to worship and different keywords. Cause if you're not having an egg hunt, don't send them to worship. You know, that that's a little click baity.

Jen Swindell [00:10:21]:
We don't want to be click baity. We want to employ and but you get to put 15 different options Dunn Google picks 3 of them. You put in 4 different options and Google picks 1 or 2 of them based on what they know about the person searching and based on what's performing well. So the nice thing about it is it's a little less pressure than a Facebook ad because you're just stuck in the pantry. And, you know, there are plenty of resources out there on some best practices Dunn we can even get into some of that maybe. But the freedom is it's it's not our dollars online you're paying for an ad. So make them like, make a bunch of different ad groups. Again, even when I've worked with colleagues, you know, I'll do my setup and then they'll do theirs for fun.

Jen Swindell [00:11:06]:
And sometimes theirs performs really well. And it's fun to see folks that do think creatively and outside of the box and what folks are searching for. But again, back to what we put in, because I wanted to explain that because you can put in as much as you want. I currently have, you know, 20, 30 ad groups and just keep going Dunn you can pause it after the event happens. But some things that I always have going is kind of a church near me that goes to my homepage. If you have a good kids or youth ministry, there are always, especially parents, looking for things to do with my kids, things to do with my youth, things for teens to do. So have those sorts of words going to your youth ministry page or your kids ministry page. There are a lot of folks that are searching for classes or small groups.

Jen Swindell [00:11:49]:
So things, like finding Christian community near me, going to, you know, groups page, Sunday school classrooms, small groups, whatever that looks like is great. And then again, always whatever kind of big worship is coming up is also really great. You know, Ash Wednesday, like, what is lent? You know, we made a whole page for lent and wrote on, like, why do we do lent? What is lent? That had a lot of interest, and we actually had some first time visitors at Ash Wednesday, which was not anticipated. But it was something that folks were already searching for because they're going, what is this Ash Wednesday? What is Lent? And if you can provide answers to that and provide an invite to church, it ends up turning out really well.

Ryan Dunn [00:12:31]:
Okay. Alright. So I'm starting to see the the this in practice then. So to to lay it through, somebody enters into Google, Easter Sunday service near me. And because you have set up these AdWords, then, the, the holy church of Jen Swindell pops up first in their feed. Right. Okay. And then, you may have that that search then linked towards your church's worship page.

Ryan Dunn [00:13:03]:
Is that correct?

Jen Swindell [00:13:04]:
Yeah. Or even better if it is Easter, having go to an Easter page is really good because we've all done this where we search for something. It looks really good. Maybe it is an ad or maybe it's not. And then you read it Dunn you're online, wait, this isn't what I was looking for. And then you hit back. Yeah. That's a bounce.

Jen Swindell [00:13:20]:
We don't like that. And it didn't get the person to come to the church. Right? So you want your your ad groups and your ads to be as specific as possible. So, again, worship services near me might go to a normal worship general worship page, especially if you're online, hey, we've got contemporary and blended and whatever we've got. But if it's an Easter service near me, I would try to put them to an Easter page if at all possible. Or at least, you know, you can even kind of if you don't have as many pages or can't do as many pages, maybe if you can use an anchor and send them to an an Easter section of your page is also really helpful.

Ryan Dunn [00:13:56]:
Okay. So in some cases, you're building specialized landing pages, but not in all cases?

Jen Swindell [00:14:02]:
Yeah. Again, it it really depends on what your capacity is.

Ryan Dunn [00:14:06]:
Mhmm.

Jen Swindell [00:14:06]:
You know, all of this does run off of content. And for, you know, our folks that are preaching, you know, sermon series pages can do really well if they're topical. You know, things like especially around Dunn Year's, if you're looking at goals with God or goals with grace or something like that, having a building out a whole landing page, putting those sermons. Again, we've been talking about AI a lot. Using AI to give a little Dunn word summary of that sermon to give some content so folks can get to know you and get to know that. That's a great on ramp for people if they're already searching online New Year's resolutions Dunn you have a sermon series on how to set goals with grace or goals you what are people searching for that we're already doing as a church that is worthwhile. You know, so many churches say we have such great stuff. It's just nobody knows about it.

Jen Swindell [00:15:01]:
You know, we're our own best kept secret. And Google Ads

Ryan Dunn [00:15:05]:
Use those exact words many a time. Yep.

Jen Swindell [00:15:08]:
Yep. And Google Ads are what help us not be our own best kept secret. But we have to be able to have a place and be able to know what it is. You know, our grief counseling, does a really good thing. Now, again, Google Ads does have some rules about using the words counseling. There are some restrictions on 12 step programs that require some extra checking just because of the vulnerability and those sorts of things. But things if you have, like, a Stephen ministry or a grief class, if you don't use the word counseling, class would work really well. That's huge.

Jen Swindell [00:15:42]:
You know, blue Christmas worship services, when you have keywords for things online, how do I have Christmas without my mom? What does it mean to be grieving this Christmas? And then you're able to provide light and life to folks who are searching for these things.

Ryan Dunn [00:15:59]:
Yeah. Well, you've worked with some other churches on this stuff. Have there been some keywords or key search phrases that have been big hits that have kind of surprised you?

Jen Swindell [00:16:09]:
The Blue Christmas was was a definite

Ryan Dunn [00:16:11]:
big Yeah.

Jen Swindell [00:16:11]:
Okay. That was one of those where, you know, Christmas concerts always do really well, and Christmas Eve do really well. And, you know, this church was like, we really wanna promote this. And I was like, okay. Like, you know, if people are searching for Blue Christmas, a lot of times they're looking for Elvis, not worship.

Ryan Dunn [00:16:27]:
Right.

Jen Swindell [00:16:28]:
You know, but I I had to think. Dunn, again, there there's some prayer and thought that goes into this of what is blue Christmas for? And it's for the grieving person. Dunn, you know, I know what it's like to go, again, like, how am I gonna do the 1st Christmas Dunn after my mom passed? And so that's where I sort of went to and sort of praying and fig figuring out keywords and typing those in. And again, I was so surprised that we ended up having first time visitors at Blue Christmas because, that's not what you think. But we were ready for it, you know, working with a church Dunn it was beautiful. And we had Stephen ministry there, which is kind of our church kind of listening partners, not counseling, but, you know, sort of just walking with someone through those valleys. And it was beautiful. And so those are places that are really exciting to have.

Jen Swindell [00:17:15]:
You know, the other thing, probably one of the cooler ones that I've done is a church did a, kind of outreach event called the dog days of summer. Everybody should do it. Really cool. They had you know, we know again, they had sort of been working with the grant. They knew, hey. Like, what are people searching? And so partnered with some local dog rescues Dunn a hot dog food truck. And they had, some bounce houses and fun stuff for the kids. But the whole thing was an a free indoor activity for families in July.

Ryan Dunn [00:17:50]:
Okay. That is an excellent idea.

Jen Swindell [00:17:52]:
Know, You were like, friends, we can only go to the zoo so many times. Not all of us can go to the beach every weekend, and it is too hot to be, you know, wherever. And so thinking about how the and it helps because it it when you get into a Google Grant mindset, you're also in a really, like, community engagement mindset. Right? You're trying to take off your churchy hat and say, what are normal people searching for? But also, what do they want? What can we provide as a church to our community? Because that's what it pushes you to think like.

Ryan Dunn [00:18:24]:
Yeah.

Jen Swindell [00:18:24]:
And so that the dog days of summer event was a really cool one that we were able to do and be able to engage with folks. And, again, through the ad grant, one other really important part is the ad grant just gets people to your website. Then it's your website's job to do its job to get people to the event. So sharing it really well, having a way for them to kind of plan their visit or RSVP so you can get their contact info, send them a reminder, send them follow-up. That's all kind of the next steps there. But, again, thinking big about how can we be invitational, where can we be, how can we go?

Ryan Dunn [00:19:04]:
You've mentioned that through this grant, we get like 300 something dollars a day. Now if you have 2 eyeballs set, or 2 sets of eyeballs, set upon your content through that day, that means you're not using the the Dunn. Right? You're just Dunn of charged in a sense for the effectiveness of your ad. And then is and then you control the effectiveness. So do you have some recommended best practices for really maximizing? Like, how am I gonna get the $300 every day instead of just spending a dollar 50?

Jen Swindell [00:19:38]:
Yeah. Well, I think it's a balance. Right? So there are so many places that will help you run ads for churches. You can pay agencies to run them for you. But some questions to ask or things to think about is, you know, and it's different. If you're a fully online place, then you can actually run your ads anywhere folks speak the language that you're producing in. So that opens it up, and you're a lot more likely to spend the full ad because your search volume is bigger. So one of the things when you set up campaigns as you go through setting up, the first thing you'll do is set up a campaign.

Jen Swindell [00:20:11]:
A campaign is kind of online the big umbrella that all those little ad groups I talked about kind of live under. The campaign has a a search radius. Now, again, those of us that are used to doing Facebook ads, in Raleigh, you don't run a Facebook ad with a bigger radius than 10, maybe 15 miles because nobody's driving more than 10 or 15 miles to come to my event. And if I'm advertising for someone an hour away, I'm wasting my church's tie you know, tithe dollars on that ad. Google's a little different, and it makes some churches a little nervous because especially when you start, you need a bigger search volume for Google to kind of decide that you know what you're doing at some point. Again, as we know, Google does not have any of their stuff public, and all of this is sort of conjecture and trends that I've seen. But you you'll start with a radius that's larger than what would probably be realistic, especially if you're in a larger city, and that is to sort of get more people searching even if it means they might not come. You know? So, again, I think, for me, it's less important to spend all $10,000 than it is to make sure that we're within a reasonable ability to have to

Ryan Dunn [00:21:29]:
come to our

Jen Swindell [00:21:30]:
church if we're a brick and mortar church. Right? Again, if you're if you're not, then you have a little bit more freedom, and you probably will have more effectiveness in that. But for us, you know, I run ads for us tending to be closer to the 40 to 70 mile radius, church, again, most folks won't drive for, but it helps. And then the more the more ads you put in there, the more chances you have to spend money. Right? Because, again, you're stocking a pantry. If I have salmon in the pantry but nobody ordered salmon, salmon doesn't get served tonight. Right? So, again, if I have my ads in there, but nobody searched for traditional worship near me today, that ad didn't get served. So it's the other reason that, you know, some folks are like, oh, no.

Jen Swindell [00:22:14]:
I forgot to pause my ads. I was like, well, no one was searching for trunk or treat in December, so it's okay. Right? You know, you still wanna pause them just in case, but it's a process. And, again, it it's very much an art, not a science, but you just have to think through how many things. Because, again, it it's hard to get the full full ad spend, and churches get discouraged by that. But, again, if you're seeing new visitors or if you're seeing that people are clicking on it, be excited about that. Be curious about why that is Dunn see where else you can grow that and be able to continue to do that would be my advice.

Ryan Dunn [00:22:51]:
Okay. So even still then, you can still put your, what is the odyssey ad in the ministry? And it's not really gonna cost you how much of anything. Right? Because I

Jen Swindell [00:23:02]:
will say fun fun fact, I taught a Christian journaling class. And so we did a Google ad. Guess how many people church Christian journaling? We had it run for, like, a month. We had 5. Yeah. But one of them came, and it was really cool. And it was a couple that came. And then the next week, they brought another couple.

Jen Swindell [00:23:23]:
So again, it didn't hurt anything. It I knew it wasn't going to, you know Christian journaling was not in the top ten searches. You know, it just wasn't. Yeah. But I think that's where we go where, you know, Google Ads, if you if your goal is $10,000 a month, then you're looking for the 99. Right? You're looking for the big events. That's where it's gonna be. But sometimes, you get the Dunn, and you're online, this is the weirdest thing, but it was beautiful.

Jen Swindell [00:23:50]:
And it was exactly what that person was searching for. And so I think there's value to it. Dunn, again, it's really what is your workflow. You know, if you've got a preacher who likes to write, you know, blogs, each individual blog post could be its own ad set if you wanted it to be. And then it's evergreen. And every time you know, we we spend so much time working on sermons and content. And if you put them on a sermon series page or on a sermons archive page, then it's it's there Dunn it can be an on Dunn for people for a long time. And that's really beautiful.

Ryan Dunn [00:24:24]:
Yeah. Well, your analogy there of of searching for the one over the 99 that's so pastorly. So I I have to ask, as you are a pastor, how did you get into all this Google Ads stuff?

Jen Swindell [00:24:35]:
Yeah. So, honestly, originally, it was our the church that I was serving decided to, like, take a chance on having, at the time, Church Marketing University, then it was Church Fuel to run our Google Dunn. And I just kinda fell in love with it. Like, I really, you know, I have been more of a tech communications pastor. You know, my my undergrad background was theater. I taught elementary school theater, but in seminary, one of my focuses was really on the fact that churches and technology had a really pretty wide divide. And so that's been kind of my passion Dunn working in communications ministry. And so it was really a matter of finding that.

Jen Swindell [00:25:17]:
And then, you know, I was so into the Google ad stuff while working with them, that it just sort of became a thing. I actually helped them with some of their Google Ads stuff for a while as well. And so it was a great time to just really learn and be able to do it. And then I was like, how do people not know about this? You know, I had been working in churches for 10 years, and I had barely you know, kinda like you said, I was like, maybe once or twice I heard someone say it existed, but I had never heard of people actually using it. And then once I actually saw it and realized, you know, again, is it easy to get a full $10,000 every month? No. But it's also not necessary. And so then I was able to, you know, have a couple of friends. You know, I have a friend, rural Eastern North Carolina Dunn set up some ads for their church.

Jen Swindell [00:26:04]:
And even, you know, without doing a whole lot of maintenance, they're still getting some visitors. You know, again, it's, you know, more like $2,000 a month of Google's ad, but that's getting about a Dunn new people to their website every time. And that's beautiful, and it's without a lot of upkeep. Again, some people are probably listening to this and being like, that's a lot of words. That's a lot of writing ads. You know, if you did this every sermon every week, it would be a lot. But if you set up those 5 things I mentioned and you just kinda let it go, again, Google does change their policies. You do need to be attentive if they email you, because you can lose the ad grant.

Jen Swindell [00:26:40]:
I think that's an important thing to go ahead and say. If you violate policies, and some of their policies are quirky. For instance, there was an issue with, All Saints United Methodist Church. The word saints was considered trademarked related to a football team. And so you get that. We had to we had to push back and get Google to say, okay, you may use the word saints for this church. Things like caps lock. You're not allowed to put all caps, for some words.

Jen Swindell [00:27:09]:
So some churches that use that in their branding can't use that in their Google Ads. But again, we have to it is Google's money, and it's Google's rules. And if we follow the rules, there's some beautiful things with it. And again, on our website, you can still use your caps or whatever you need to do for your branding guidelines. But, being attentive to the emails that Google sends is highly important if you're using the ad grant because it can get you either your account shut down temporarily or even permanently depending on what the issue is. So if you're jumping into the ad grant, please do make sure that someone is monitoring it. That goes into the sharing admin or making sure in a transition that it's a priority. Because if you keep it going, it's a gift that continues to give to your church after, you know, again, some hours of setup, but it can keep going.

Jen Swindell [00:28:02]:
But if you don't pay we just wanna make sure wanted to make sure we mentioned that in here as well.

Ryan Dunn [00:28:15]:
Yeah. Well, now that you've attended to the initial setup, how much time each week do you think you spend on it?

Jen Swindell [00:28:21]:
I mean, if there's nothing new that I'm posting, the only reason I have to go to my ads dashboard is if I'm curious how an ad is doing. Mhmm. Or, again, Google raises their hand and sends some emails, about some changes. It is important that you have Google Analytics on your website. That allows Google to sort of track the effectiveness of the ads, and you have to sync those up in the setup process. But in most web builders, adding analytics is a pretty quick thing to do, and then you just hit under settings, link to ads, and the same person with the same email address has to do that. So, again, depending on what your shared, you know, staff structure is, might need to add some admins and get that linked over. But again, once you've got analytics there and you've got it rolling, it it really does keep going.

Jen Swindell [00:29:09]:
Now it's good to kind of, you know, I sort of have it on my list at least once a month to think, hey. Is there anything else we need to do ads for? Is there anything else out there or coming? And that sort of a good framework or just put it in your workflow of when you if you create a new landing page or a new event or a new sermon ministry. Again, is this something people will search for? Because you don't have to do one for everything. You know? Again, it's easy to get overwhelmed with Google Ads. There is a lot of options. It could be an 8 hour a week thing. Because, again, if you were editing the sermon and writing up a page for it and then putting ads in, that could be significant, plus whatever your youth are doing and whatever your kids are doing and whatever small groups or classes you have. But, also, again, for a smaller scale church, maybe lesser staff, if you just get those going.

Jen Swindell [00:30:02]:
Once it's going, you know, again, if it could be 2 hours a year, just making sure nothing's broken and seeing what's happening. And, again, you know, unpausing your Christmas ads in October when your Christmas stuff's updated Dunn then pausing them and unpausing your Easter ads at Dunn And then same with trunk or treat or whatever your you know, if you have some of those seasonal things, turning them on and off appropriately. And that's really and making sure, again, I don't use dates in my content. Some people do, like, saying, hey. You know, this year, it's Sunday, you know, March 31st, and you have to change that content. I don't like to have to check back. So I just say Easter Sunday, and then I know click it. Like, when I'll update our site for it, but I don't that way, I don't have to go in to the core of the ads and, like, edit the words of the ad.

Jen Swindell [00:30:53]:
I just edit the page because it can just always be for Easter or for the egg hunt without, you know, they can click here for the date.

Ryan Dunn [00:31:01]:
Okay. So in the initial startup, if we're developing a checklist, it sounds like you need to have, access of your church Google to your church's Google identity. You need to have Google analytics linked to your website, Correct?

Jen Swindell [00:31:20]:
Yes.

Ryan Dunn [00:31:20]:
And then really you just need some well defined destinations for for the ads to lead through to. Is that?

Jen Swindell [00:31:28]:
Yep. Those are the big ones. You know, your your website does have to be complete. It does have to have a security certificate. It can't have, like, coming soon or broken links. You know, that's another place churches sometimes get Dunn up in getting the grant is they won't get approved from their website. It doesn't mean you need to go spend a $5,000 website redo with a fancy designer. It just means, again, no broken links, no broken images, no words of coming soon or to be determined, you know, they'll sort of scan your website for those things.

Jen Swindell [00:31:59]:
And so as long as you have kind of a healthy website, then that part's a lot easier. You do have to own your domain. So some people might utilize, like, a subdomain or if they haven't purchased a domain or they're using another web builder where it's, you know, jenswindell.wixor.word, you know, you can't get subdomain. You have to have your whole actual URL. So that's another thing that for some churches might be a a tweak that needs to happen before they can move forward with the grant.

Ryan Dunn [00:32:31]:
Okay. Do you know does a friendly URL work for that?

Jen Swindell [00:32:35]:
I think as long well, as long as you can still have the, like, slash Easter because you have to every page has to be on the domain. So you would have to mount it with a with a you have to have the subpages. Or you could just start with just your one main one

Ryan Dunn [00:32:52]:
Yeah.

Jen Swindell [00:32:52]:
Would be an option.

Ryan Dunn [00:32:53]:
Dedicated landing page in that case. Okay. Alright.

Jen Swindell [00:32:56]:
That makes sense. Google won't let you redirect. That's the other thing for, like, sermons online. Some churches that utilize things like church online, and that's where they send them, or YouTube, that's where they send them. You can't do an ad to your YouTube page or to your church online page. You have to do it to something on your domain dot org. So whether that's using an embed code to get your YouTube pulled over, you just have to be creative because it is only to the domain that belongs to your nonprofit.

Ryan Dunn [00:33:26]:
Alright. Alright. We're gonna see a bunch of churches start to take over Google here. This is gonna be exciting. Do you have any final thoughts or encouragement that you'd like to share with churches who are considering digital outreach?

Jen Swindell [00:33:37]:
I mean, I think, again, just understanding the power of being able to reach out to folks and, like, invite them back into church. You know, we've had I've had some beautiful stories of folks that, you know, we're able to learn to retrust the church in part because they discovered some of these outreach events from a Google ad, and so I think that's really important. You know, I think, again, if you have the money and want to hire folks to do it, that's a possibility. But I think part of why I was excited to be on here is to sort of say, it's worth a shot as long as you follow directions. Dunn, you know, again again, you can get it hurt, you know, but you really you have to if you pay attention, you know, it's free. It it's worth your thought, and it it is

Ryan Dunn [00:34:24]:
There's no penalty for trying it. Yeah.

Jen Swindell [00:34:26]:
Yeah. There's no penalty for trying. And, when you start seeing that folks have actually come to your site from it and, you know, folks say, hey. I found you on Google. That's a beautiful thing. And to know that you're able to invite more folks is just really great. And, again, building those relationships with folks, especially when you get into, you know, the things like grief or, you know, even Christian journaling. Like, it was really cool to know that they found us through the ad Dunn, you know, they really enjoyed it.

Jen Swindell [00:34:56]:
And it was a practice that they get to take with them. And, you know, I just think all that's really good, but just knowing it's step by step, Google does his it's really straightforward. You just have to go one thing at a time. But the other thing is just make sure you have a big enough search radius and that you put enough stuff in that pantry. And, again, have fun with it. Like, it is it's Dunn. It's free. It's a resource that a lot of churches aren't utilizing.

Jen Swindell [00:35:27]:
And so I think that's worth a shot. And to get more of, the churches out there, I think is great, especially when it's using Google's money to do it.

Ryan Dunn [00:35:36]:
Totally. Do you have any recommended resources for people to learn more about

Jen Swindell [00:35:41]:
this? Yeah. So Google itself actually has, a actual course that you can go through for Google for Google Ads for nonprofits, which is great. There's a lot of free blogs out there and things like that. Again, Church has some really good, hey, do I qualify? What do I need to think about? So that's a great resource that's already out there as well.

Ryan Dunn [00:36:04]:
Cool. Well, Jen, happy Friday. Thank you so much for giving time to us. Yeah.

Jen Swindell [00:36:09]:
I was excited Dunn good

Ryan Dunn [00:36:10]:
luck. Cool. Alrighty. Do you have the stuff you need to unlock the power of Google? Let's get talking about it on the Pastoring in the Digital Parish Facebook group. I'd love to hear your successes and the best practices that you've come across. If you want a good follow-up to this episode, then check out an episode that I did with Kayla Online called how social media transformed a fading congregation. It's got some more great outreach ideas. Also, I feel like digital ministry for small and rural churches might connect here pretty well as well.

Ryan Dunn [00:36:45]:
There are plenty of more episodes to explore at resourceumc.org/digitalparish. And as you know, resourceumc.org is your nation for resources and tips for leading across the United Methodist connection. My name is Ryan Dunn. I've had a lot of fun and I'll be back with you in a new episode of pastoring in the digital parish next week. Chat at you then peace.