Facebook Dark Posts

Imagine having the opportunity to hit your market right where they are at, with a very limited budget, and having it splash big for you. If you could reach 5000 people for $1 a day, would you do it? If your church could pump up the weekend’s service or an upcoming event that reached only single mothers, would you target that? How about an opportunity to drive website clicks for pennies to the dollar?

This can all be done via Facebook dark posts, and we want to show you the why, what and how to do them.

First, the why. The why behind every church post is simple: to help people find and follow their way home back to God. If we can move beyond the churchy answer and into the specifics though, it would help a ton. For dark posts, that means making a concentrated splash in your targeted demographic that has measurable results. Because you want to be noticed as a church, you have to put yourself out there just like you were dating. After all, your website is your digital front door to your audience; make it easy for them to walk through. So the why is good: to be a presence in your community’s life.

Second, the what. Facebook dark posts will show up in a person’s or business’s feed, not as a sponsored posts or advertisement, but rather a suggested post. That means two things: you can specifically target your audience and your audience can begin to curate their likes and interests, and hopefully, that will include you (especially with a click). With the dark posts, you can drive web clicks, engage in specific events, boost page likes and post engagement; really, the possibilities are near endless if you do it right.

Third, the how. This is what trips people up, but really, it’s quite simple. Here are the steps for you, one by one.

Click the down arrow in the upper right of your admin panel.
Scroll to “Create Ads.”
Choose your ad objective.
Choose your reach and budget.
Determine your ad’s appearance.
“Place Order.”

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These three steps will get your ad live and showing up to your specific and measurable audience. As you do this, you will create a larger splash for your intended demographic and stop wasting money on marketing plans that don’t work.

How do we know it works? We’ve used it at our church effectively, and it’s driven traffic not only to our website, but to our Sunday Services. When Catalyst Church spoke on God for the Addict, we placed a $1 a day ad about the upcoming message and four families showed up that were struggling with addiction (the families that admitted or said something about their issue). Here is our simple statistical analysis of Facebook dark posts for the church community, in two easy to take-a-way equations:

$100 = 4000 impressions + 20 website clicks

$1 = 40 impressions + .20 website clicks

Facebook dark posts work. Period. When you are willing to spend a little money, you go big with your audience, and make a real splash in your community. They’re a creative way to shake things up in social media, and drive home your point: helping people find and follow their way back home to God.