Advertising Advantages For Non-profits

I recently read an article that my pastor had forwarded to me about using Google for Non-Profits ™ specifically AdWords ™ to help create traffic to the church’s website for free. Google for Non-Profits ™ offers a variety of apps that you can use to help promote and streamline your church without the huge cost and I encourage churches to take advantage of this service. I recently set up our account with Google for Non-Profits ™ and I am just scratching the surface of the awesome things it has to offer.

I want to focus on using AdWords ™ because of the potential this service can unlock to direct traffic to your website or live stream service. What is AdWords ™ and how can you use it to drive traffic to your site? Basically AdWords ™ is a service where you create a basic ad that uses only words that are posted along the side of the search engine page. When some one conducts a search on Google ™ that may be relevant to what you are advertising your ad will show up on the side of the screen. AdWords ™ uses not only an effectively written advertisement but targeted keywords that associate your ad with possible searches your audience might conduct. How can this be effective? If your church is wanting to promote that they will be offering an online service then you would create an ad in AdWords ™ that has keywords that would be used in a Google ™ search like internet, online, streaming, church, service, etc. The better your keyword choices are the more likely your ad will appear in searches and the more likely people may click on your ad which will direct them to your website.

Finding ways that will help you promote your church that won’t break the bank and is still highly effective is always hard but when you can find services like AdWords ™ it is always good to take advantage of those services. I have included a video that explains AdWords ™ and its uses. I hope you enjoy it and learn from it. 

Your Church Wants To Do What?

Courtesy of hcc3d.com

The last Sunday in September our church is having a worship night with our worship band, which sounds great and many will enjoy it. But towards the end of August our Pastor told us that he wants us to make a live audio and video recording that we will sell and immediately we were scrambling to figure out what we needed to do to pull this off and make it look professional. We had so many decisions to make in less than four weeks on how we're going to do this. The first question we had was are we going to attempt to record and mix the CD ourselves or are we going to have a professional come in and do it for us? We decided that the equipment we have right now wouldn't cut it if we wanted a good quality product so we opted to hire someone from our network of friends that could do the job for a decent price. The second question was do we make and distribute the final product ourselves? We decided that we did have the means to develop and distribute the CD. 

Since the audio was being recorded and mixed professionally we would have to make sure that the quality extended out to the packaging of the CD. How can I design and print out the liner and label without spending a lot of money and it not look "do-it-yourself"? In searching for companies that specialized in CD duplication I found one that I thought was reasonable and allowed me to customize the label and album artwork, and will print blank CDs so we can do the duplication ourselves. Websites like Mixonic.com are good sites to check out when you are looking to produce and distribute your own music or films without a record label or distribution company. For the video side of things, since we have the capabilities to produce the DVD in house, we will be shooting and editing the video ourselves for the DVD. But just like the CD we will order the printed blank DVDs with jackets and assemble the DVDs ourselves. 

When considering whether to go "DIY" or professional for a project like a CD or DVD recording there are a few key factors to evaluate. One factor of course is cost, what are the costs of doing it yourself versus having a professional do it for you. Another factor is time, how much time are you going to put into the project. Is it better for you to spend the time to produce yourself or hand it off to someone else. Finally, satisfaction, are you going to be satisfied with the final outcome of your project if you do it yourself or if a professional did it. How much control are willing to give up or want to be satisfied with your final project? Taking all these factors in consideration will help you make the right decision on which way to go.