The digital landscape can be intimidating, especially for church leaders and communicators who are new to the world of online marketing
One powerful tool at their disposal is Google Ad Grants, a program that offers free advertising to eligible nonprofit organizations, including churches.
Essentially, it functions like a gift card for Google Ads, providing a substantial monthly advertising budget of $10,000. This budget renews each month, contingent on maintaining an active account. With this grant, churches can effectively utilize Google Ads to promote their ministries and events, connecting with a wider audience and spreading their message effectively.
Our special guest, Molly Pelic, from Church Marketing University (CMU), sheds light on this incredible opportunity that many churches may not even know exists. Molly Pelic is an expert in church growth strategies and has a wealth of knowledge when it comes to leveraging technology for ministry purposes.
We discuss a multitude of valuable insights, including how churches can employ search ads, strategically select keywords, and create custom ads to appear at the top of search results. Imagine the possibilities of reaching out to a wider audience, attracting new visitors actively searching for your ministries and events.
So don't miss out! Tune in, embrace your tech-savviness, and continue the incredible work you do for your church!
Specifically, this episode highlights the following themes:
Links from this episode:
For more valuable information from Tech in Church, be sure to check out these:
Most churches really struggle to communicate consistently with their people and that can leave them feeling disconnected. Text In Church is an easy-to-use 2-way texting system created for churches to connect with their members and guests beyond Sunday mornings to make them feel known, noticed, and loved.
Text the word, CONNECT, to 816-429-9396 to start your free 60-day trial of Text In Church today to see just how easy it is.
The Tech In Church Podcast is a Text In Church team production. For more information about this podcast, go to https://podcast.textinchurch.com. For more information on Text in Church, visit https://textinchurch.com.
The digital landscape can be intimidating, especially for church leaders and communicators who are new to the world of online marketing
One powerful tool at their disposal is Google Ad Grants, a program that offers free advertising to eligible nonprofit organizations, including churches.
Essentially, it functions like a gift card for Google Ads, providing a substantial monthly advertising budget of $10,000. This budget renews each month, contingent on maintaining an active account. With this grant, churches can effectively utilize Google Ads to promote their ministries and events, connecting with a wider audience and spreading their message effectively.
Our special guest, Molly Pelic, from Church Marketing University (CMU), sheds light on this incredible opportunity that many churches may not even know exists. Molly Pelic is an expert in church growth strategies and has a wealth of knowledge when it comes to leveraging technology for ministry purposes.
We discuss a multitude of valuable insights, including how churches can employ search ads, strategically select keywords, and create custom ads to appear at the top of search results. Imagine the possibilities of reaching out to a wider audience, attracting new visitors actively searching for your ministries and events.
So don't miss out! Tune in, embrace your tech-savviness, and continue the incredible work you do for your church!
Specifically, this episode highlights the following themes:
Links from this episode:
For more valuable information from Tech in Church, be sure to check out these:
Most churches really struggle to communicate consistently with their people and that can leave them feeling disconnected. Text In Church is an easy-to-use 2-way texting system created for churches to connect with their members and guests beyond Sunday mornings to make them feel known, noticed, and loved.
Text the word, CONNECT, to 816-429-9396 to start your free 60-day trial of Text In Church today to see just how easy it is.
The Tech In Church Podcast is a Text In Church team production. For more information about this podcast, go to https://podcast.textinchurch.com. For more information on Text in Church, visit https://textinchurch.com.
Molly Pelic [00:00:00]:
The other thing I would say is you're probably doing a lot better than you think you are. Look around, see what God is doing, and rely on the fact that it's God doing it through you and not yourself, because you can do as much as you can. And at the end of the day, that's one of the challenging things about ministry, is it's not up to us, it's up to Him. So keep making that consistent, faithful, impact as much as you can, and then just trust that God's doing something even bigger than you know.
Nina Hampton [00:00:33]:
Hello, and welcome to the Tech and Church podcast, where we talk to everyday church communications who use simple tech tools to go from frazzled to focused. So, my name is Nina Hampton, and I'm here with my co host, Jeanette Yates. And we believe that you should spend less time worrying about technology and more time doing what you love in your ministry and in your personal life.
Jeanette Yates [00:00:52]:
Okay, so today we have a special episode for you guys. We're interviewing Molly Pelic, who is a church communicator and an expert on a particular tech tool, google Ad Grants. Now, Molly is the director of Church Marketing University Google Ads team, and she keeps up with all of the Google algorithm changes to optimize a church focused Google Ads strategy. Now, her team helps churches reach more people and grow their churches using the Google Ad grant. And she is really amazing at doing this, and I love hearing her talk about it. But more than that, she also serves at her church, the Miles City Church, and she loves reading. We share that in common. Molly, Heart, welcome to the podcast.
Jeanette Yates [00:01:37]:
Molly. It is so great to have you here today. And my first question for you, I just want to jump right in, because when I was reading over your bio for today's episode, I feel like I know a lot about you. Your expertise in getting out of escape rooms with your family, your love of Edgar Allan Poe. But I don't know anything about how you serve at your church. So could you please tell me a little bit about what you do at Mile City Church?
Molly Pelic [00:02:04]:
Yeah. So I attend mile city church in plymouth, michigan. We're part of Send network. So we're actually a church planting church. And I say we I haven't been with the church more than a couple of years, but the church has been around about seven years. And in that seven years, we've planted seven other churches, which some have gone on to plant churches as well. So the whole idea is churches planting churches. We bring church planters on staff, raise them up in a residency program, send them out to plant local churches in the community.
Molly Pelic [00:02:32]:
And we currently have our first ever Hispanic pastor on staff planting a Spanish church in our community. We just planted a Japanese campus of our church last year, and then many other churches coming on. So I'm involved sort of in the marketing, all things marketing, resourcing those church planters as much as I can be involved, good friends with a lot of those church planters, which is really cool to see. And then also involved in the youth ministry side of things. That's really my passion in the local church is youth ministry. So I love our student ministry program, our camps, all the different fun things we do there.
Jeanette Yates [00:03:09]:
Well, it's good to know, Molly, well, that you fit right in with the rest of our guests. Multiple things, all the but, uh, we're glad to have you here today to talk about something a little yes.
Molly Pelic [00:03:23]:
Yeah.
Nina Hampton [00:03:23]:
So, one, I am also a youth ministry, a lover of all things youth ministry. So we share a heart in that. I'm leaving for camp.
Molly Pelic [00:03:33]:
Awesome.
Nina Hampton [00:03:34]:
So, yeah, I'm real stressed out about it, but it's great. So as we dive into just kind of our discussion today, what you do for Church Market University is all the things with Google Ads and Google Ad grants, obviously, I know what that is, right? But I don't think if I was a part of the Texan church team and we worked with y'all like we do, I wouldn't know what the heck that is. So why don't you just kind of break it down for me, for us, for everybody listening? What is a Google Ad? Grant what is it? Why is it important? Yeah, let's start there. What even is it?
Molly Pelic [00:04:10]:
Yeah, so the Google Ad grant is something that Google sort of gives to nonprofit organizations, including churches, to basically get the word out about their organization. So it comes in the form of almost like a gift card to use on Google Ads. It's not like free money, but it is like a gift card applied to an account. And it's this huge number. It's $10,000 in advertising money a month, and that renews at the end of each month. As long as you're keeping your account active, as long as you're using it, it's $10,000 a month in advertising money a month. It's crazy. Yeah.
Molly Pelic [00:04:42]:
So you can reach, as you can imagine, thousands of people every month with that. And the cool thing about it is it's applied to Google search ads, which are if you think about like if you were searching for Sushi near me right there's, the results that pop up at the top that say sponsored or they say ad on them. Those results somebody paid to get their ad moved up to the top so that they are the first thing you see when you search that keyword. And the Google Ad grant lets churches organizations do the same thing. Basically, you pick which keywords you want to target. You write ads that would get someone searching that keyword to want to click, and your ad shows up at the top when somebody searches that keyword. So it's really powerful for churches that have ministries events. Like, for example, you could target the keyword things to do with kids near me and make sure that your kids ministry pops up at the top.
Molly Pelic [00:05:33]:
You don't have to pay any money for that ad because of the Google Ad grant. So it's a free way to get all of your church ministries events pages to show up at the top of search results when people are actually searching for the thing you're offering.
Jeanette Yates [00:05:46]:
So my next question, I don't think.
Nina Hampton [00:05:47]:
I realized that it was a month.
Jeanette Yates [00:05:48]:
Yeah, me neither.
Nina Hampton [00:05:49]:
I'm sorry, I didn't mean to cut dollars a month.
Jeanette Yates [00:05:52]:
I didn't realize that well, and I.
Nina Hampton [00:05:53]:
Had thought it was just like, they give you ten grand.
Molly Pelic [00:05:55]:
No, it's $10,000 a month. It's crazy. Yeah.
Jeanette Yates [00:05:58]:
So that kind of wise. You kind of answered my next question, but I want you to talk about it in the context of that $10,000 per month. So how does it help churches? Well, you've mentioned it helps get the word out about your church, but can you talk about how that $10,000, how that actually works to help churches?
Nina Hampton [00:06:19]:
How does $10,000 equal ministry?
Molly Pelic [00:06:24]:
Yes, absolutely. We talk about this a lot at Church Marking University. You guys talk about it a lot at Text and church. Like, you have to have people's contact information or you have to get connected with them somehow to even start that relationship. So the Google Ad grant is a great way to get connected with them when they're actually looking for something you're offering. So kids ministry is a good example. It could be you're offering small groups and people are searching, where can I find community? A lot of people are lonely. A lot of people are looking for people to connect with.
Molly Pelic [00:06:53]:
So your church can show up at the top of those results and then you can have some sort of call to action on that page to get them to take a next step. Plan a visit is a great one, right? Getting them to plan their visit to actually show up. Or maybe it's a simpler step, maybe it's request info about a small group or I'd love to learn more about kids ministry or even just download a kids ministry resource. Something that gets them to take a step to get you connected with them begins that relationship. Because for a lot of people, they're probably not going to never attended church before. They're probably not going to just walk through the doors of the church for the first time, get connected in a small group and start serving on their first right, like it's going to take a few steps. And the Google Ad grant is a great way to start those steps, I guess, to put your information in front of them, showing them that the church offers something they're looking for. People who aren't Christians probably don't know that they're searching for Jesus, but they do know that they're searching for things to do for their kids, or somewhere to drop their kids off this weekend, or an event to take their family to, or a group.
Molly Pelic [00:07:53]:
So it's really being able to show up when they have a need that they're searching for. We've had a lot of cool stories come in about how churches have used Google Ads. Get connected with people through that. And I'll give some more examples of this in a little bit. But like a big event that you're hosting, this could be a great way to get more registrations for free because it's Google's money. It could be your small group season opens and you want to get the word out about those. Easter, Christmas. We had one church that ran ads for their Trunk or Treat event in the fall, and the ads got so many people signed up for the event that they reached out to us.
Molly Pelic [00:08:28]:
We were running those ads for them and they said, can you turn those off for a little while? We can't handle more people. That's great. And then the cool part of that story is they reached out to us a week later and said, hey, I recruited a bunch more volunteers. I can host more people. Open that back up. So it's really a great way to double, triple, quadruple the number of people seeing any page on your website and then getting that many more people into, from a marketing perspective, the top of the funnel so that you can start getting them plugged in.
Jeanette Yates [00:08:55]:
Yeah, well, because one of the things that as you're talking, you're talking about website, you're talking about plan a visit, you're talking about all this stuff, which for those of you watching or listening, that means that they're using multiple tech tools, so they're using their website builder. Hopefully they're using text and church for that plan of visit, those different things. So this is just another way to bring in a tech tool to help you get people to that website, get people to that connect card, things like that. So that's kind of where the Google Ad grants meets your gathering of connection information. What's it called? Contact information.
Molly Pelic [00:09:39]:
Yeah.
Nina Hampton [00:09:39]:
So so now that I've heard all this, right, I'm random church leader person, I've heard all this. I'm intrigued. Great. So now I go to try to do this. What makes an ad good? You know what I mean? How do I know I can use this ten grand, but how do I know that I'm using it effectively? What's the most effective way to use it?
Molly Pelic [00:09:59]:
Yes. Well, first you got to actually get that grant and then have a plan for using the grant. So that's one of the main things I tell church leaders is like, don't go into this unless you have a plan. Whether it's a volunteer in the church who's going to help, whether you're hiring a company, a consultant to help have some sort of plan in place to use this effectively, because if you activate the Google Ad grant and then Google gives it to you and then you don't use it, they will take it away. So you need to have some idea of how are we going to use this? An actual system around how you're going to use it.
Jeanette Yates [00:10:29]:
So you want to have that set up. You want to know what ad you're going to run when you get that grant.
Molly Pelic [00:10:34]:
Yeah. And have a plan for who's going to check in on those ads, who's going to maintain those when Google releases an update, who's going to make that update on the account. You don't really want to just leave it out there. You can and you could just say, hey, we're just going to leave it out there and see how long it lasts. But Google really one of their requirements is they want you to be active and actually be actively engaging. They don't really want to just give this to somebody who's going to set up one thing and move on and forget about it. Right. It's a huge amount of advertising money they're giving.
Molly Pelic [00:11:03]:
So they want you to be intentional. And the way you'd want to be intentional is the first step is doing keyword research. So you need to know what people are searching related to your event. And if people aren't searching for something related to that event, like an example that will come up is like, people say, can I run ads for my board meeting? Probably not. People are probably not searching that right. Like, not connected to something people are actually looking for. And Google gives you tools to do that, so they actually have a keyword planning tool inside of it, as well as I like to sort of reverse engineer it and say, okay, based on this page, if somebody searched this thing, my page would be relevant. What thing would they be searching? And then think from the perspective of you and your friends.
Molly Pelic [00:11:48]:
Right. Like, if you have kids, okay, what am I searching to find things to do with my kids or you have a family, like, how do I find events for my family this weekend? Things like that. Really thinking, what are people actually searching to make sure that these ads are relevant to what they're searching? Yeah.
Nina Hampton [00:12:05]:
So it sounds like this is really effective around church events.
Molly Pelic [00:12:11]:
Yes. And then ongoing ministries that you do. So the six ads that we tell every church to run are your Plan a Visit page as long as you have an effective Plan a Visit system. So you want something like on that page, right. As long as you have somewhere to send those people to plan a visit. So Plan Your Visit is one your sermons page is one that we always say run ads to that a lot of people are looking for encouragement, inspiration, like, hey, what is teaching on money, teaching on family, like, those kind of things. So sermons page especially because the more people seeing your sermons, you can be having an impact. Even outside of someone walking through the doors, them just hearing your sermon can have an impact.
Molly Pelic [00:12:50]:
So sermons, plan a visit. Kids page. We always say tons of people search for things with kids and events is very similar. And then groups is another one. People search for community. And then finally, prayer. We always recommend having something out there for prayer. Whether you're using a smart connect card on that or inviting them to a prayer gathering, there's a lot of people searching for things like, I need help, I need support.
Molly Pelic [00:13:16]:
What should I do in my life? That prayer would actually answer that as the first step to get them toward a solution. Getting connected with a local pastor could be that step that they take to then get the resources they need or get the community they need. So those are kind of the biggest topics, but honestly, there's hundreds of different topics. You could advertise any event or ministry or like page on your website that is something people might be searching for.
Nina Hampton [00:13:40]:
Totally. So the church that my husband and I are serving at right now.
Molly Pelic [00:13:46]:
For.
Nina Hampton [00:13:46]:
I think, like, two years in COVID, we did a food drive every Thursday for kids, and we provided a week's worth of lunches for kids.
Molly Pelic [00:13:53]:
That's awesome.
Nina Hampton [00:13:53]:
Like, it could have been, you know what I mean? Like free meals. Free meals for families, you know what?
Molly Pelic [00:13:58]:
Yeah.
Nina Hampton [00:13:59]:
Or something like that. That's incredible.
Molly Pelic [00:14:01]:
Yeah. Things people are looking for.
Nina Hampton [00:14:02]:
Yeah, that's dope.
Jeanette Yates [00:14:03]:
So it sounds like a good ad is something that's relevant to the people in your community and that you put some intention behind it. And then I know that you've been doing this for a while now, and so I'm sure that you've come across many mistakes. And you mentioned one, like, don't run an ad to your board meeting that only has 15 people that are supposed to show up. But what are some other mistakes that churches want to avoid in relation to creating, setting up, and executing the Google Ad Grant strategy?
Molly Pelic [00:14:38]:
Yes. So first of all, don't enter credit card information on your Google Ad Grant account. It is a separate account. If you want to run paid ads, you want a second account because if you enter credit card information, you get in this weird loop of trying to remove it, but you can't remove it, and it causes all these issues. You have to reach out to Google support. Not fun. So just don't enter credit card information. When they approve the grant, they send you an invitation to what they called a payment profile, which basically lets you run ads on the account without entering a credit card.
Molly Pelic [00:15:08]:
You become like a payment admin without ever entering your credit card.
Nina Hampton [00:15:12]:
Good.
Molly Pelic [00:15:12]:
So don't ever enter your credit card information.
Nina Hampton [00:15:16]:
That was not what I thought you.
Molly Pelic [00:15:17]:
Were going to no, that's a big mistake. I always say, like, add multiple people as users on the account and make sure they all have two step verification on because more and more social media accounts get hacked. You lose access to this. You lose access to $10,000 a month in advertising budget. So make sure multiple people have access, their accounts are secure. Google is starting to even push more and more toward that. So they'll probably prompt you on that anyway. And then, like I said, make sure somebody is prepared to manage it.
Molly Pelic [00:15:45]:
A volunteer in your church, whether even for some people listening, that will be whoever's listening. If you hire a company, a consultant, like whoever you have managing it, make sure those people are ready to set aside time to do the keyword research to build those custom ads. Especially if you hire someone, make sure they're willing to learn who your church is and build ads based on that and not just build a generic set of ads for everyone. So same with a volunteer in your church. If you find somebody who knows marketing, make sure they actually take the time to know your church as well, to properly represent that. So you want that all to be custom. Google can really tell when you're making it generic or not custom to the church. They can tell that you're not putting the intentionality into it and they won't prioritize those ads.
Molly Pelic [00:16:32]:
So the best ads are going to be custom to your church. Somebody's actually spending time maintaining them, someone's checking in on them, doing the keyword research, all of that.
Nina Hampton [00:16:41]:
Yeah, you know what, it's funny because as you're talking, one of the things that I hear is like a church, as great as all of the ads are and everything, you got to have systems to back this stuff up. You have a prayer ad and you don't have any way for people to for those prayer requests to, one, be submitted, one, two be actually followed up with, you know what I mean? And actually a way to get them in the hands of your prayer team or whoever. Yeah, you're going to be up a creek a bit. It's going to be a bit of a struggle. And it's funny because I think thinking about some of our other podcast guests and talking about just what they've done I don't know. Honestly, if you want me to just be really bold, I think the Lord has done this really cool thing of letting all of our episodes kind of build on each other. You know what I'm saying? Just to be real, as great and as attainable as this is free money, right? And so there's a way to take advantage of it. But this is a high level tech tool, right? You know what I'm saying? This is not for the like.
Nina Hampton [00:17:52]:
And so knowing that if you're just starting out with your church's website, pump the brakes on Google Ads for a minute.
Molly Pelic [00:18:03]:
Absolutely.
Nina Hampton [00:18:04]:
You know what I mean? Let's get that tackled. Let's get a communication system, you know what I mean? Whatever that system is, let's get one text and church is great. Let's get something in place. We kind of are fond of it, but if you don't have a database system, let's get these things. Let's do that. And then once you kind of have all those pieces in place, now we can look at doing some Google Ad stuff. And I think that that's kind of an important thing to say. This isn't necessarily for the novice tech like, you know what I mean, who's just starting out in their church with tech tools, pump the brakes, learn about this.
Nina Hampton [00:18:52]:
Great, remember it, bookmark this episode, come back to it in six months or however long it takes for you to build, you know what I mean? Like those final pieces out. But for the love of God, revisit it. You know what I mean?
Molly Pelic [00:19:06]:
Well.
Jeanette Yates [00:19:07]:
And one of the things I will say is, yes, this is not a 101 tech tool, but one of the reasons I did invite Molly, or we invited you, Molly, is because this is something approachable if you are thinking and wanting to run ads. But the idea of running a Facebook ad makes you sweat and you don't even have any money anyway. I don't know about the church that y'all work with, but I know that none of the churches I've worked at had an ad budget per se.
Nina Hampton [00:19:40]:
No, no way.
Jeanette Yates [00:19:42]:
That's not a thing. And especially if it was an ad budget, it was like for the local newspaper. It wasn't for social media, it wasn't for any kind of digital ad. And so I think if you're like, okay, well, we want to run ads, but our $5 that we can afford to use to boost this post on Facebook isn't, you know, that's not going to get you where you want to go, but you also don't have $10,000 in the budget to run a Facebook ad. This is a great way to see how ads work to function, to learn how to build a strategy. And then I love the resources that CMU provides to help churches with this. You being one of those resources, you and your team, Molly, because even if you like me, the person that works at the church doesn't get all this. There are people that can help you learn about this and help you get someone that can monitor this ad and things like that.
Jeanette Yates [00:20:42]:
So why don't you talk a little bit about what so now you're going to put on your CMU hat a little bit more and just talk about actually how you help churches, how your team helps churches. And then if you want to share anything more about that, I'd love to give you the chance to do that.
Molly Pelic [00:20:56]:
Yeah. So I lead our Google Ad management team at CMU. We have a team of people. Basically, we've hired full time staff to keep up to date on all Google's algorithm changes, to check in on every account, every week, often multiple times a week. We have a system where churches in our program can request unlimited custom ads. So literally, any event, any ministry, anything you think of, you fill out that form. Our team does all that. Keyword research.
Molly Pelic [00:21:20]:
Our team does all that. And we know that can take a lot off of a church leader's plate. $10,000 a month is great to have, but like I said at the beginning, if you don't have a system to utilize that, that's not that great. So we want to handle that for as many church as possible by building those ads, maintaining it. Google's been rolling out a lot of changes. I just attended their marketing conference last week, and it's all about how AI is coming into ads. And for a lot of church leaders, this is like, wow, that's overwhelming. I don't even want to think about all that.
Molly Pelic [00:21:49]:
So that's what our team tries to do, is take that off as many people yes. Right. I know, right. But that's our goal. We call it the Grow program, and basically it's our best set of resources that are, hey, let's help your church grow. A huge part of that is making sure that you're inviting people to your church daily. If somebody isn't inviting people to your church, your church isn't going to grow. And we can use Google's Money to set up this system that invites people every day, inviting people to the pages on your website, to the ministries you offer, using Google's Money, getting those new people invited, and then you can keep the relationship from there, getting them to plan a, you know, having that connect card on the website.
Molly Pelic [00:22:28]:
It only works if people are seeing that page on the website. So this is a way to get more and more people to start that relationship. Yeah.
Jeanette Yates [00:22:35]:
It doesn't matter what the design looks like if nobody's going to be no one sees.
Nina Hampton [00:22:40]:
And I think that makes it so much more attainable, too, because that's my thing. As, again, the person who didn't know anything hearing this, I'm like, this is great, but I feel like to the church leader that didn't know what Google Ads were before this episode started, I'm stressed out.
Jeanette Yates [00:22:56]:
Yeah.
Nina Hampton [00:22:57]:
I am now overwhelmed because of how much stuff so that sounds like it just makes it so much more attainable that you guys are doing all of that on the church's behalf. Because I'm like, I can't do the keyword research. I don't know what that is. I don't know how to do SEO management.
Molly Pelic [00:23:12]:
That's a lot.
Nina Hampton [00:23:13]:
You know what I mean? And so, yeah, it's incredible.
Jeanette Yates [00:23:16]:
Sorry to no, well, so there was a little bit of a tech glitch there for a second. So it was one of those things where I was like, oh, this is why we do anyway, that's why we.
Nina Hampton [00:23:26]:
Do it on Riverside.
Jeanette Yates [00:23:27]:
All right, so let me pause there so they can cut all that out. So, Molly, you have a resource that lays out all the yes, you know, we highly encourage people checking out the grow curriculum over there at CMU, but Y'all created a resource for our listeners and watchers today, our viewers, to help them walk through this if they're like, I have enough of a grasp on this. I think I want to give it a whirl. So you have something that you can share with them today. Would you like to let them know how to get it and what exactly they're going to get inside this resource?
Molly Pelic [00:24:06]:
Yeah, so we put together a resource that includes basically our top resources on Google Ads. So it has how to apply for that ad grant, like the exact steps you go, like, if you get denied for the grant because there are reasons that Google might say your website isn't ready or whatever it is, what things to check in that case, really intense.
Nina Hampton [00:24:24]:
I did not know that they would deny you.
Molly Pelic [00:24:26]:
Oh, they can deny, but there's like five or six common reasons. And we put all those into a resource. We put a resource together of how to build effective ads. So what pieces you want information about? That all of those kind of things. I think it's like eight or ten resources in even slides like from this presentation on the podcast here that walk through all of that stories of how church leaders have used Google Ads. All of that is included and in that so I'll tell you how to get in a second but in that you will also get access to our other church growth resources. So basically, we've put together a free dashboard of all of our top church growth resources, including Google Ad. Information that you can access, share with your team, use that in your church to get some growth started in some different areas.
Molly Pelic [00:25:15]:
So you just text the keyword free to 417-204-5153, and if you do that, it'll give you a link back. Fill out that little form that you get back, and you will get access to Google Ad resources and all of our top church growth resources.
Jeanette Yates [00:25:31]:
Well, I know people are going to really be grateful for that. As we were talking and I kind of remembered when I was serving at my church many moons ago, way back in the day, I knew about Google Ad grants. Like, I heard a podcast about it and I was like, okay, I'm on it. And my mind blew within a week and I gave up on it. And so it's so great to have even just the resources that are going to be on that they're going to get. When they text that keyword, which by the way, we will put those in the keyword and the number in the show notes so you can do that and get access to that resource. But I know it's going to be so helpful for people working to figure this out and then of course they'll be able to reach out to you guys if they're like, let's just have Molly and her team work on.
Molly Pelic [00:26:31]:
With those resources. I know that's easier on your phone to text a keyword. If you're on your computer, you can go to churchmarketinguniversity.com free. That gets you the same free dashboard. So that's an option for people like watching the video or whatever. That might be easier.
Jeanette Yates [00:26:45]:
Oh, that's so team at the team over at CMU, they really know their tech tools, y'all?
Nina Hampton [00:26:51]:
They do.
Jeanette Yates [00:26:52]:
Which we absolutely love watching how you make technology and just not just like the tech piece, but the planning, the strategy, all of those things that you help churches, we love working with your team and helping get those prayer ads and the plan a visit and all that kind of stuff. It's so important to have all of those pieces together and it can be overwhelming to church leaders when they know they need to. A lot of church leaders are like, I know and so that's one of the reasons we do this podcast is because we want to hear what they're already doing. But also we get a chance to talk to church leaders and they say and what I want to do next is this or that. And so to be able to have resources to point them to is really great. So one of the questions we always ask all of our guests here on the podcast because we're really wanting to just encourage people, to encourage our fellow church communicators, our multi hat, multitasking church leaders to not give up, to try new things and also feel free to stick with what's working. We've talked about this before on the podcast how sometimes the best tech tool is the Do Not Disturb on your phone, like number one, hey, but also to try new things when available. But we want to ask you just like we ask all of our other church communicators, what encouragement would you give an overwhelmed church communicator? And it doesn't necessarily have to be about Google Ad grants, just in general.
Jeanette Yates [00:28:37]:
If you are talking to an overwhelmed church communicator today, what would you tell them?
Molly Pelic [00:28:40]:
Yeah, so I think the biggest thing that I would say, and we say this a lot at CMU is keep making small steps forward. It's tempting to say here's where I want to be and let me try to get to that point and jump right there. But often, I mean, all of us who serve in church ministry know you can't often just get to that point immediately. And even when you get there, there's always going to be more to do, whether it's more we have services every single weekend, so there's more planning, there's more systems you want to implement, even things are changing. So one of the big things that we say, and that I often remind myself, is keep making those small, consistent steps forward. Because as you're doing that, every small step leads to a bigger thing. Like leads to more and more. You know, we talked about how the Google Ad grant is a system that invites people to your church probably tomorrow, you're not going to have that system set up.
Molly Pelic [00:29:29]:
But if you block out time consistently to say, what's the next step I can take toward the system I want to create? And then just keep doing that, you're building systems that will give you years and years and years of impact. The work you're doing now if you're taking those steps toward different systems, builds you so much impact. So that's what I would say is like, pick a goal. Pick something that you want to work toward and then just make small steps toward that every day. Or maybe it's a small step a week or maybe sometimes it's just one small step a month that you can take, but something you can do in that direction to give you that long term impact. And then the other thing I would say is you're probably doing a lot better than you think you are. Take that time, look around, see what God is doing and rely on the fact that it's God doing it through you and not yourself because you can do as much as you can. And at the end of the day, that's one of the challenging things about ministry, is it's not up to us, it's up to Him.
Molly Pelic [00:30:22]:
So keep making that consistent, faithful impact as much as you can and then just trust that God's doing something even bigger than you know.
Jeanette Yates [00:30:29]:
Yeah. Well, amen. That's beautiful.
Nina Hampton [00:30:32]:
Yeah.
Jeanette Yates [00:30:32]:
Seen and seen.
Nina Hampton [00:30:34]:
I don't have anything else to say. Yeah, I'm good.
Jeanette Yates [00:30:38]:
Well, that is one of the things that we often talk about in this podcast is, yeah, we love tech. We love talking about tech. We are techies, not Trekkies, but maybe we are. I don't know. I am yeah, I was going to say I said that, but I know Nina is. But we also know that the tech tool is not going to build your community. It's not going to save someone. It's not going to create that relationship with your church community or with Christ.
Jeanette Yates [00:31:17]:
That that is something that only the Holy Spirit does and all that we always want to know. It's not the tech tool that matters. It's the heart and the relationship building behind the tech tool. It's what it allows you to do. Exactly. Well, thank you so much, Molly. Nina, thank you. I was going to wrap up, but do you have anything else you wanted to ask her? Since I always go rogue.
Jeanette Yates [00:31:44]:
Really let you go rogue.
Nina Hampton [00:31:45]:
I know I went rogue today. It was my day to go rogue. I don't I just want to thank you so much for your time and being willing to share this, because I think this is one of those things it's an incredible opportunity, but it's really overwhelming and it takes a lot of somebody this is one of those things that we need a guide. This opportunity that Google is giving everyone is amazing. We need a guide. We don't know what we're doing. And so just thank you for being willing to share and also thank you to CMU to be willing to be the guide, like, the consistent know, because basically I don't have to be a marketing professional because y'all are you know what saying? So, like, it just makes it that much easier. So I think this has been so helpful.
Nina Hampton [00:32:25]:
It's been helpful for me because I definitely have, like, three friends right now that are in ministry or about to plan a church that I'm about to.
Molly Pelic [00:32:31]:
Let know that this exists.
Nina Hampton [00:32:34]:
Real impact. Real impact, real ministry.
Jeanette Yates [00:32:36]:
This is all tell them about that keyword.
Molly Pelic [00:32:38]:
You can give it.
Jeanette Yates [00:32:39]:
Yeah, tell them to text that.
Nina Hampton [00:32:41]:
Do that. I can. So if you are looking for those opportunities, if you want those resources that CMU is providing for free, you can go to churchmarketinguniversity.com free and get it there. Or you can text the keyword if you're on your phone, if that's easier for you, text the word free. Free to 417-204-5153. So take your phone out, open your text messages up, put the number 417-204-5153. Text the word free. You'll get a link back.
Nina Hampton [00:33:09]:
Fill that out, and you'll get a dashboard with a ton of free resources that help kind of explain everything that Molly just explained to us. And yeah, well, that's a wrap.
Jeanette Yates [00:33:21]:
On today's show, we'd love to hear from you. Head to the comments of this video to share your favorite tech tools or to ask questions about Google Ad grants for churches. We'll be in the comments. I'm sure Molly will hop over and we'll help answer those questions. We look forward to hearing from you.
Nina Hampton [00:33:37]:
And if you want to know how tech tools like text and church can help you spend less time worrying about technology and more time doing what you love in your ministry and personal life. Make sure to subscribe wherever you're listening to this episode so that you won't miss out on future episodes.