Hello there!
I thought it might be a good time to give an update on our marketing efforts. We are continuing to experiment with our marketing which has yielded some interesting results and information that we can use once we get more programming up and running and the building opened this year.
First, our “You Are Spiritual Enough” Google Ad. We have paused it for the time being as we work on getting the building up and running, but since inception in early August 2019, we have achieved 26,115 impressions on Google, along with 144 clicks, all with only spending $166.26. We will look to utilize this ad again in the future and others as we have seen a large amount of impressions for very little cost.
Our Facebook Page continues to be the main source of interaction for those that are interested in Reaching Out. Over the past 10 days, we ran an ad on Facebook, promoting our post about the most recent All In Sunday regarding snow. With an ad spend of $31.00, we were able to reach 2,433 people and we had 5 people reach out to speak with us through messages. This ad also allowed us to gain 6 more page likes from non-Community of Christ members or friends. We now have a total of 45 people who like us on Facebook. You too can follow us on Facebook by clicking the link in the footer. Once we get into the building, we will be able to use the excitement and attention that a grand opening can give to promote another post and invite people to our grand opening celebration later this year.
Instagram has seen the most growth for us over the past few months. We have a total of 69 people who follow us on Instagram, from all over the Canada East Mission and Community of Christ in North America. We have not run any ads lately on Instagram, but will utilize the same excitement of our grand opening when the time comes. Our previous Instagram ad ran in December/January promoting our new website. For $50.00, we were able to reach 5,144 people on Instagram, where 99% were not following us. We also garnered 55 website visits from this quick sprint of an ad. We will continue to grow our Instagram following as we continue to deliver content (photos) from all of our services, events and programming. You too can follow us on Instagram using the link in the footer below.
Next up – Twitter. Our Twitter following is small, but we are still experimenting with how Twitter can help us. We currently have 4 followers but we are trying to determine how to grow this. Twitter is a bit of a tougher sell for some people and does not have the same number of users as Instagram and Facebook. That being said, we have not tried running an ad on Twitter yet. Again – we can utilize the grand opening to try and promote ourselves on Twitter.
Finally, now that we have a building we have an official business page on Google – you can check out the page here. We have some more work to do to get this business page more flushed out, but that will continue to happen as we work towards the completion of the building, the Bread and Honey Festival and our grand opening. Despite the need for growth on this page, we have earned 45 views – 34 from search and 11 from map views. We have also appeared in 36 searches total, with 34 of those searches being performed by customers who found our listing by searching for a category, product or service. I think we can all agree: people are looking for something. We are perfectly poised for growth in 2020 and I could not be happier of how things have gone so far.
To recap, for less than $250.00, we have been able to get 33,737 impressions across our networks through our ads and content. In 2020, that is a MASSIVE deal. You should all feel really good about how much progress has been made. I continue to hope that all of our marketing updates continue to show growth, but I am most looking forward to how much fanfare we can create around our grand celebration. More on that to come.
A key goal for us in 2020 is to develop a content strategy and calendar that will allow us be proactive instead of reactive for our content. Couple this with our S.M.I.T.H. program, and we should really start to see more traction, interaction and outreach through our social networks and ad platforms that will ultimately – hopefully – drive people through our doors to experience Reaching Out in person.
Until next time…
James Clark – C.F.O., Reaching Out