Are you a vocation director often frustrated in finding good candidates?
Here’s some good news. It’s about a vocations ad campaign that worked, even though there wasn’t much advance time.
We usually recommend at least two to three months’ lead time before a retreat before we run these ads.
Using our Vocations Ad Campaign for an international men’s religious community, we found two signups in twelve days of advertising. The ads started to run only 30 days before the retreat started.
That’s very hopeful.
We set up eight Facebook ads beginning April 26, and sent them to 37,000 single men in the United States between the ages of 18 – 40. These men were part of our proprietary list of prayerful Catholics. We set up a customized 15-question vocations quiz for this community.
It worked.
One essential practice
The director and I were in constant contact during the campaign. I was busy as a mouse, tweaking the ads this way and that. We were getting a few signups each day. I asked him how the quiz-takers were coming along.
I’ll have to mention that our vocation director was good with one essential practice. He promptly followed up with these men. I’m fairly certain that he was at least emailing them, if not texting them or calling them, on the same day that they took the quiz. In other words, those men who were qualified were pleasantly surprised to find a personal email in their inbox or a personal contact from this same priest mentioned in the quiz. The director took an immediate interest in them.
Thus, there was no waiting two or three days, or a week before getting back to them. (Hint, hint to you vocation directors.)
Can you imagine if you were a candidate, getting an email or a text a week after taking the quiz? “Duh, who is this?” you would ask, gazing at all the dozens of emails in your inbox.
A Vocations Ad Campaign that’s just for you
The way that our Vocations Ad Campaign works is that the names, results and contact info are sent to our directors immediately by email, so you can follow up right away.
To sum up the results of our campaign, five out of the 17 who finished the survey said “sure,” when asked whether they’d like to come on the vocations retreat. Another four picked a response asking if another weekend was available. That means a total of nine were open to the idea of coming to a retreat. Isn’t that great?
The map of the U.S. above shows the distribution of completed responses.
Among these prospects, those who are not coming on this retreat can be sent newsletters to educate and inspire them to come on a future retreat. Followup is important.
This case study was from our “Test the Waters” campaign, at which you are not asked to undertaking an ongoing campaign. Also, this campaign involves only Facebook ads and the quiz, and not our complete newsletter program. (For this, see our full Come & See Vocation Promotion Program.)
An important aspect of our Vocation Ad Campaign is that the names we find are not shared with any other community. In other words, these prospects will not be confused from calls, emails and texts from other communities. These names are yours and yours alone.
Why not give our Vocation Ad Campaign a try? We are willing to offer a “Test the Waters” campaign for you now. Contact us at the number above, or go to our Contact Us page.
Disclaimer: These results are not guaranteed for every campaign that we run. Results are dependent on the bid auction, the quality of your photos, the time of year, and other situations.
