We had a problem.
We had spent $28 in click costs to Facebook, but had only one respondent. One person who took the 16-question survey about vocations. Weren’t young men interested in joining this very attractive-looking religious community?
Some experts would say keep the ads running until you spend $50. Not us. We know our market better.
Facebook ad for one of our contemplative communities
Our campaign was the Come & See Quiz, a series of 12 to 16 questions that ask the interest level and certain qualifications to join a particular community. The men type in their name, email, and in this case, address if they wanted a free book offered. As soon as the survey is completed, an email is sent to the vocation director.
So we switched the landing page of the ad – that’s where the person is taken when he clicks on the ad. The ad, which featured a compelling photo of a community member, asked single Catholic men to take the Come & See Quiz.
So instead of having the ad click to a special page on our own website at HolyVocations.com, we changed it to click on the survey that was on the community’s own Facebook page. We’re always testing the waters.
It worked.
Apparently, the men had been reluctant to fill out the ad on our website. Maybe our page wasn’t good-looking enough. Maybe they preferred staying on Facebook and going to the community’s fan page to find out more about them.
Seven in one day
On the first day, we got four responses, the first coming in from a night owl, at 12:19 am. But the next day, a Tuesday, we really blew the lid off. We got seven responses. In fact, we got 22 responses over a total of nine days. That’s more than two per day. We maxed out our ad spend limit during that time of $25 a day in click costs. We should have set the limit higher, at least in the first two or three days.
Here are some of the ad’s results:
| Seven who responded to our Come & See Quiz in one day | ||
| Time | Respondents (not their real names) | |
| 12:23 PM | Jack, from PA, age 17 – 25 | |
| 5:40 PM | Bill, from AL, age 17 – 25 | |
| 6:17 PM | Jose, from IA, age 17 – 25 | |
| 8:06 PM | Frank, from MO, age 17 – 25 | |
| 8:17 PM | Chuck, from NY, age 17 – 25 | |
| 9:22 PM | George, from OH, age 26+ | |
| 9:42 PM | Rod, from WA, age 17 – 25 | |
Three out of the seven above said yes to the question, “Would you be willing to come to visit our house to see what our life is like?”
For another question, two of the seven chose the response, “I would like to seriously look into becoming a Brother.” A third one chose, “I’m not only serious, but have contacted at least one other religious community about entering.”
The community also offered a free book in this campaign for those who completed the survey. While the book offer was not on the ad, it was on the survey itself. So it could have encouraged the “lookie Lou’s” to complete the survey. In fact, six of the seven gave their address to get the book.
Twenty-six in one month
This is our second campaign of the summer for this community. For the first campaign, we got 26 respondents over four weeks. The second campaign is still running and has 21 candidates in its first nine days.
One factor in our success is our proprietary list of devout Catholics, who are fans of a select list of nearly thirty Catholic colleges, publications, and organizations. These groups have been hand-picked over the years to reflect Catholics who are most likely to be serious and devout about their faith.
Our ads show up on these fans’ Facebook pages. One advantage over traditional print and website advertising is that we can target our audience by age, gender, and marital status. Thus, ads are highly targeted. Targeting is one of the essentials of advertising.
Other advertising, such as those on Catholic websites, newspapers or magazines, cannot do this. Besides this, demographics in popular Catholic websites and print publications tend to be skewed toward the fifty-plus age group.
Of course, this technique has worked for us for women’s communities as well as men’s.
(Please note that we cannot guarantee exactly the same results as you see here. We do our best to tweak our strategy as the campaign develops, and hit a home run for each of our communities.)
Summer and fall are good times to approach prospects to think about a vocation. As Christmas approaches, there is not as much interest. Why not get started on your Facebook ad campaign, and contact us today?
