How to Manage Your Google Ads Grant
Keep in mind that there is a learning curve with Google Ads. After all, it is a product meant for professional marketers to use daily. You are wearing ten hats, and if you can spend 6 hours on this in the first month, you’re overachieving.
To make the most out of your time, rely on Google’s Skillshop courses to educate yourself.
You can do all of this work yourself, or you can easily find someone to do it for you. Use sites like Upwork.com or Fivver.com to find someone to get the first few ads established. This is a common task for people on these sites, and you can find many good people to do the work for less $ than you think and in a lot less time than it would take a newbie. You might have a volunteer who can help with this, but don’t just give anyone the keys to drive your fancy new car :).
Whether you do it yourself or find help, it is good to understand how it all works.
Woohoo! $10,000 Per Month! (not exactly)
Your grant is $330 per day.
(There goes our plan to carpet bomb the town ads promoting our Giving Day Campaign.)
But that’s ok. It is hard to spend $10,000 in the first few months anyway. Google needs some time to run our ads and learn how people interact with them before extending our ads to their maximum reach.
If you do hit a home run with a few ads and all of a sudden you have overspent your $330 per day, don’t sweat it. Google doesn’t bill you for those budget overages.
Once you have your grant, you will need to understand your keywords. Your ads will appear in front of people searching on Google, YouTube, etc., so create ads for your relevant keywords that get searched most frequently.
So it would be best if you found out which of your aspects of your organization people are interested in. Then you can set up Google Ad campaigns for these things around your most popular keywords. Your organization might end up with many low-performing campaigns and struggle to meet the minimum performance required by Google if you do not do this first.
Keyword Research Is The Key
When you’re building your keyword list, it can seem overwhelming. A clever tool built into Google Ads will ease the process. Known as the Keyword Planner, this lets you see how many people are searching for each term and what phrases they’re using; make sure to use these phrases in your ads!
Broad Match Keywords Are Your Swiss Army Knife
The broad match keyword format is an effective way of targeting words for users searching on Google. It is powerful because when you use (+housing +donation) or (-housing -donation); it’ll trigger your ads if someone searches using variations of those terms. So if someone searches “local housing organizations accepting donations,” then your ad will get activated. Broad match modified keywords will make your ads show up to the maximum number of people. They will also make sure that people are likely to be interested in what you have.
Include Your Keywords In Your Ads.
Be sure to set up an ad for each keyword that includes that keyword in the headline and the description. The close match between your ad and the searchers will lead them to click on it.
Google doesn’t waste valuable ad space on ads that aren’t getting clicked. So, don’t take comfort in the idea that your un-clicked ads create awareness. If your ads aren’t getting clicks, then you’ll need to troubleshoot your ads.
Track Your Ads’ Performance
At this point, you have a Google Ads account. You have a Google Analytics account. Get the most out of them by setting up some conversion goals. Use the conversion goals to track how the ads convert ad views into visitors, and how many of those visitors are doing what you want them to do on your site (email subscription, event sign-up, make a donation, etc.).
You will find that Google requires you to track meaningful conversions like these. Track as many as you can. It will help give you insight that applies well to all visitors, not just those driven by ads. Google will use this ROI information to guide their Google Ad Grant program into the future.
Conclusion
Google Ads Grants are a great way to get more exposure for your nonprofit’s website and generate leads. There is no cost, but you do have to meet certain criteria in order to be eligible. With an average of $10,000 per month in grant funding for nonprofits and small businesses, it’s worth taking some time to learn all about how you can apply for one. We’ve compiled this guide of resources and information that will help you decide if your organization is eligible to apply, how to get your account established, keys to get your first ad campaign up and running, and more!
Let us know below if there’s anything else you think would be helpful or important in understanding how Google Ads Grants can help grow your nonprofit.
Have you applied? What was the experience like? Let us know what questions still linger about this program, so we can try to answer them here.
