A Google Ad Grant gives charities up to $10,000 worth of free online advertising per month, to promote your website’s pages to the people that need your services. If you’re a UK charity that’s over £7,500 per month to help you raise awareness of your cause. That boost to your website’s traffic, can add thousands of extra visitors per month. You can put your message in front of audiences who need to hear it. I can help optimise your account to get great results and extract maximum value from your budget.
You want your non-profit to get noticed, impart information, offer services; and get donations, volunteers or support for your campaigns. Your website plays a vital role in this, but how can you ensure it gets visitors who are likely to be interested in what you have to say? That’s where Google Ad Grants come in useful.
You can rely on serendipity, hoping people find your website by searching Google. SEO techniques can improve your chances. You can try to get referrals from other websites, and undertake marketing activities. Then there’s paid advertising, which can be targeted and effective; however, it’s also expensive and beyond the marketing budget of smaller non-profits. Fortunately, Google offer free online advertising to non-profits and this is one of the most valuable online marketing tools you could hope for.
How does your non-profit apply for a Google Ad Grant?
The application differs depending on your country. Find out if you’re eligible | Make an application
Do you have the capacity to run a Google Adwords account?
There is only one real drawback. Your non-profit needs to have the staff time and skills to manage your Google Ad Grant. You need to devote time regularly, because Google insists you login at least once a month or risk losing the grant. Can you craft succinct, persuasive text ads, and choose keywords and phrases to attract the right audiences? You need to learn the skills to analyse the results and adjust your strategy, to make maximum use of your free allocation.
Ideally your staff would have the time to learn and practice these skills. Alternatively…
Hire me to manage your Google Ad Grants account
You will get an account that’s optimised to use as much of the annual $120,000 budget as possible, that focuses on promoting your website’s most important content, and is monitored and refined for success. If you intend to use your Google Grant to promote events, news and blog posts, and to keep refreshing the adverts and adding new campaigns, you’ll need to hire me for a few additional hours.
I create ad campaigns, write adverts and choose appropriate keywords for your audiences. Once your campaigns are up and running, I analyse the visitor traffic on an ongoing basis and make amendments to ads and keywords to boost the future effectiveness of your campaigns.
You get a quarterly results snapshot, with graphs so you can see what’s working and what needs further tweaking. Meanwhile you can login at any time to see for yourself how the ad campaigns are faring, or track the stats using the free Google Analytics tool. Want to see exactly what work I’ve done on the account? Adwords tracks every change.
You are encouraged to suggest priority areas of your website for promotion, and to be as involved as you want in the wording of ads. You can either leave it mostly in my capable hands, or work collaboratively to get the best results. We could even arrange a session with your staff to come up with advert ideas. I can also make recommendations for improving your website pages, to get better results.
Monthly Ad Grant management
Four hours per month
£200 | $260 per month
- I manage your account for you
- Build ad campaigns
- Optimise for best results
- Focus on real life results that reflect your mission
- Keep you compliant with policies
One-off Audit of your Ad Grant
Account health check
£200 | $260
- Policy compliance check
- Optimisation recommendations
- Help reactivate if suspended
- 3 hours of auditing, with written report
- 1 hour’s training on Skype, walking you through what needs to be done
One-to-one Adwords training
Sharing screens on Skype
£50 | $65 per hour
- Adwords basics, and expert tips
- How to comply with Ad Grants policies
- How to set up conversion tracking
- Using Google Analytics with Adwords
- Structured lesson plans, or informal guidance
- Your questions answered
Let me know what you need, whether it’s training to use your Google Ad Grant better, a one-off audit or monthly management of your campaigns.
Contact me to find out more about how I can help boost the audience for your charity website and get it noticed.
Google Ad Grant rules from 1st January 2018
As of January 2018, there’s a new focus on running a quality ad campaign and a raft of rules you need to comply with. The new Google Ad Grants rules your charity needs to know about.
Google Ad Grant case study: The Ectopic Pregnancy Trust
I’ve managed the Google Ad Grant for the Ectopic Pregnancy Trust website since October 2013. Currently we’re maxing out the $10,000 budget, and getting about 18,000 extra visits per month to their website because of the Ad Grant. The grant is used to promote their medical information to different audiences, with keywords for symptoms aimed at women of childbearing age and pointing to patient information; plus medical keywords and jargon to appear at the top of searches made by professionals. The stats below were for April 2018.
I presented this case study at Google’s Ad Grant Day in London, on 31st May and 1st June 2018: The Ectopic Pregnancy Trust’s use of a Google Grant
Watch my Google Ad Grants webinar
Presented on behalf of Lasa, October 2017. Read the slides