Boosting Your Sermon Blog with the Google Ad Grant: A Case StudyLast Updated: February 17th, 2023

As a church, your goal is to reach as many people as possible with God’s truth. That’s why it’s frustrating to think your pastor spends hours preparing an inspiring sermon for Sunday, only to become an audio file buried somewhere deep within your website on Monday, largely forgotten. 

While posting sermons online is a good start to your digital marketing strategy, how do you maximize your outreach in a media-saturated world? The first answer is by using sermon blogs. Transforming lengthy sermons into concise blog posts increases your exposure and allows your church to gain more traction online. 

The second way to do this is by using a Google Ad Grant. These funds are specifically designed for nonprofits that provide essential community services, including churches. This is because everyday people are desperately searching Google for answers to life’s biggest questions. So a Google Ad Grant allows you to boost your blog posts, bringing God’s life-changing message to people seeking help. Although boosting posts may sound daunting at first, the process is simple once you get your Google ads up and running. 

Sermon Blogs Make Your Content Accessible

Most modern churches publish their weekly sermon in a video or audio format for people to listen online. Sometimes audio files are hard to find on church websites, and podcast sermons are challenging to locate with search keywords. In an era with an increasing emphasis on short-form video content, it’s a big request to ask someone to listen to a 30 or 45-minute sermon. Engaging readers with a brief 5 to 10-minute read is much easier. 

If you’re not familiar with the term, a sermon blog is simply presenting the meat of your sermon in a short, readable version specifically formatted for the web. A blog post does not include the full sermon transcript. For most pastors, a transcript is 5–15 full pages of text, including personal anecdotes and church-specific information. Blog writers transform these transcripts into posts by removing lengthy asides to produce an abbreviated article with clear points and specific takeaways. 

At Missional Marketing, our writers are trained to curate sermons into information-rich articles that the average internet user is much more likely to read than a 5-page manuscript. Our team knows how to optimize sermon blog posts with SEO keywords, eye-catching subtitles, and easily scannable text, while keeping your message intact.  

A Google Ad Grant Expands Your Reach

Google Ad Grants are especially for nonprofits with 501(c)3 status from the IRS as well as churches. To qualify, your nonprofit must apply for a Google Ad Grant. 

Once approved, your nonprofit is awarded up to $10,000 a month to access Google ads. Essentially, it’s a way for your church to run ad campaigns…for free! 

Utilizing a Google Ad Grant makes your message available to readers who are searching the web for meaningful content like yours. This is a great tool your church can use to boost its sermon blogs. By running ads at no cost, your Bible-based content reaches more people who need to hear it. 

Churches don’t always realize what a critical asset Google is to their marketing plan, especially when search algorithms are incorporated correctly. 

The Missional Marketing team has been running successful Google Ad Grant initiatives for decades, and our clients have experienced amazing results after only a few campaigns. 

Benefits of Boosting Your Sermon Blogs with Google Ad Grants

Carl Joseph Ministries knows the power of boosting blog posts with a Google Ad Grant. After running an online ministry for Christians worldwide, he was discouraged when he saw he wasn’t getting much online traffic. He wanted to try advertising to expand his reach. Missional Marketing ran a few campaigns for him and he was astounded by the results. 

Before starting Google Ad Grant services in February 2022, Carl received 50-75 new website visitors within a typical month. Of those, 33% was direct traffic and 20% was organic traffic. Any remaining traffic came from referrals. This was the ministry’s starting point. 

During the next ten months, the organization’s website traffic multiplied exponentially, seeing anywhere from 2,500 to 4,500 new visitors each month. Among the average of 3,300 monthly visitors, 94% was sourced from paid ads (grants). Only 2% was organic traffic. Another 2% was direct traffic, and the rest were referrals. Essentially, conducting custom grant campaigns for each blog increased web traffic by 4,300%.

Domino Effect of Boosting Your Sermon Blogs 

What made Carl Joseph’s campaigns so effective was that different campaigns ran for individual blog posts. This result is replicable by churches because their sermons can be transformed into engaging blog posts and custom ad campaigns overnight. Within a week of preaching, you can have an evergreen post answering a common question, and ad money backing it in the Google search results. The growth and traffic increases churches experience when these tactics are employed are significant. And when Google begins to notice that your church is consistently posting timely content on relevant topics, it will prioritize your content over other websites. With some search engine optimization and Google prioritization, your organic traffic will increase as well. 

Boosted Blogs Increase Engagement with Your Ideal Audience

The mistake most churches and ministries make when posting content to their website is expecting people to find it organically. Even organic traffic doesn’t happen spontaneously. It requires strategy, optimization, and visibility. Carl Joseph Ministries faced this problem—they posted content week after week, but very few people were reading it. 

When they ran ads targeting the specific audience for which their content was produced, they noticed a significant increase in traffic. Once people click on the boosted post, they often click through the website and view other pages. This happens more often when your target audience visits your website because they feel they’ve found a ministry that understands their needs. In the case of Carl Joseph Ministries, website traffic grew by more than 4,000% from running targeted ad campaigns. If they did it, your church can too!

Sermon Blogs Offer Easily Clickable and Shareable Content

Sermons are an elaborate, sometimes eloquent, but often very long way to convey a short sentiment. They are usually an exposition on just a few verses. This format is helpful in church, but it’s not the most accessible format to share biblical truths online. When someone searches for a specific verse or passage, they want an easy-to-read article that gives them the answer quickly. By investing your time and money producing sermon blogs and running complementary ad campaigns with them, you are providing the short, clickable content people need to easily connect and grow in their faith. When your sermon blogs are short and sweet, they’re also easily shareable. Someone can send a link to your post to a friend looking for answers. This, in turn, increases your traffic as people share your post on social media and other websites. 

How to Boost Your Sermon Blogs Today

When Carl Joseph Ministries started boosting their blogs, they experienced significant results in just a few weeks. It’s easy to be overwhelmed by the information overload online about different marketing strategies, especially with a limited church staff and schedule. If you need help transforming your sermons into blogs or getting started with Google Ad Grants, our team is here to help! Rather than fumbling around the back end of your website, trying to figure out the technology, we create a personalized plan to achieve your goals and put them into action, so you see measurable results quickly! Our team has run hundreds of Google Ad Grant campaigns, incorporating industry best practices to get the desired results. If the Carl Joseph Ministries’ story inspired you, contact our team today to discuss your church’s marketing goals.