The Modern Front Door: How Paid Ads Put Your Church in Front of Strangers Looking for Hope

Here is a hard truth most of us learn the slow way: personal invitation is still the single best driver of attendance, but it has a ceiling. Your people can only invite the people they actually know. When you are trying to break 100, that ceiling becomes the thing standing between you and the next family God wants to reach.

Paid digital advertising is the one lever that lifts that ceiling. It puts your church in front of strangers in your community who are already, right now, looking for hope, and it does it at a cost a small church can afford. Think of it as the modern front door. While invitation depends on your members' relationships, ads create a consistent visitor pipeline that runs whether or not anyone happens to invite a coworker this week.

Two honest things before we go further. First, organic reach is dying. Facebook now shows your posts to only a fraction of your followers unless you pay. Second, ads only work when paired with fast human follow-up. The ad gets the inquiry, but a five-minute response is what turns that inquiry into someone sitting in your service.

The recommended path: let someone else run it

If you are a pastor without the time to learn ad platforms (and most of us are), the fastest route to results is NetMinistry's done-for-you visitor-advertising service. NetMinistry is the company behind 100 Strong and has served more than 60,000 churches over 25-plus years. The service handles the ad creation, the audience targeting, the landing pages that capture visitor information, and the reporting. Your only job is to follow up with the inquiries that come in.

This is the primary recommendation in the 100 Strong strategy. Everything below is for churches that would rather run their own.

The two ad engines every church should use

Google Ad Grant: $10,000 a month of free search ads. Eligible churches can apply for free search advertising that meets people at the exact moment they type things like "church near me" or "Sunday services in [your city]." Search starts about 53% of these journeys, so this is free fuel. Use it first. One eligibility note: tax-exempt status alone is not enough. A church needs its own IRS 501(c)(3) determination letter or documented coverage under a denomination's group exemption. NetMinistry can set up and manage the Grant for you.

Meta (Facebook and Instagram) ads. This is paid reach for emotional, visual storytelling and precise local targeting, with lookalike audiences and retargeting. It is where you tell your story to people who were not searching yet but are exactly the family you want to reach.

Put this into practice, free

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The funnel a church actually runs

Keep it simple: ad leads to a landing page ("Plan Your Visit" or "I'm New"), which has a three-field form (name, email, phone), which triggers fast personal follow-up, which produces a first visit. The ad's only job is the inquiry. The system does the rest.

A few details that matter. Use a dedicated landing page, not your homepage: one clear call to action, mobile-first, and answers to first-visit fears like what to wear, how long the service runs, parking, and kids' check-in. A three-field form converts around 25%, and every extra field you add drops conversion by about 4%. And remember that 96% of website visitors leave without acting, which is why retargeting (showing your ad again to people who already watched your video or visited your site) is your second chance. It can lift conversions by up to 150%.

Honest numbers you can plan around

Let me give you the real benchmarks, not the rosy ones:

• Cost per "Plan Your Visit" inquiry: about $3 to $10 (a strong campaign runs near $7.67).
• Cost per actual first-time visitor: roughly $20 to $33.
• A $500/month Meta budget realistically produces about 30 to 50 inquiries a month, which becomes 15 to 25 visitors a month.
• Inquiry to first-time visitor runs about 50% with good, fast follow-up, but drops to 20% when follow-up is weak.
• Recommended starting budget: $10 to $20 a day, or $300 to $600 a month.

Reply to a new inquiry within five minutes and you are 21 times more likely to qualify that lead. That single habit is worth more than doubling your ad budget.

The playbook

1. Get the free money first. Apply for the Google Ad Grant. To stay compliant, maintain at least a 5% click-through rate, avoid single-word or generic keywords, and run at least two ads per group.
2. Stand up one great landing page with a single call to action and a three-field form.
3. Run Meta lead ads with short, pastor-fronted video. Video crushes static images on cost. One church saw its cost per lead fall from $170 to $19 just by switching to video. Use Ads Manager, not the "boost" button, which buys vanity metrics instead of visitors. Start at $10 to $20 a day.
4. Target locally and by life-stage. Use a 5 to 15 mile radius and target "recently moved" new movers (May through September is peak). Meta removed religion as a targeting category, so use proxy interests like parenting and family plus broad Advantage+ audiences. Frame ads as "come visit" rather than cause or advocacy, so you do not trip the Special Ad Category that disables radius targeting.
5. Retarget the 96% who didn't act with testimonials and an invite.
6. Follow up in minutes, not days. Route every inquiry to a real person for a five-minute call or text.
7. Measure the full funnel and optimize monthly. Scale spend only as your capacity to welcome and follow up grows.

Where this fits your milestones

Ads matter most on the road to 25 and 50, when you simply do not have enough members to invite. A paid pipeline fills the gap. Start the Google Grant plus a $150 to $300 per month Meta video campaign six to eight weeks before any launch or relaunch, aiming for a list of 50-plus interested people before a big day. As you push toward 75 and 100, keep the ads running. Do not turn inward as you grow. The pipeline that got you here is what keeps you growing.

Your challenge this week

Apply for the Google Ad Grant. Locate your church's 501(c)(3) determination letter (or your denomination's group exemption documentation), then start the application. It is $10,000 a month of free advertising, and it costs you nothing but an afternoon to begin. If that feels like too much, visit /tools and let NetMinistry set it up for you.