Improving Google Ads Grant Performance
Nonprofit organizations are often thrilled to find they can get $10,000 per month in free Google keyword advertising. Yet, within a few months of getting their Ads Grant, I often get the following types of questions:
“How do I get better performance from my Google Ads Grant?” “How do I keep from losing my Google Ads Grant?” “Why aren’t my Google keywords Ads performing better?”
Getting a Google Ads Grant for nonprofits is actually the easy part. Making your Google Ads work, extracting value from the $10,000/month in free ads is difficult (and not free). It is one of those classic things that is simple (when understood), but not easy. It takes a plan, integration, execution and ongoing testing and optimization in order for you to get any value and impact from the “free” ads.
Successful Google Ads Grant Management:
The Ads grant is “worth” $10,000/month, but it has no value to you if you do not manage it properly so you can gain awareness, donors, volunteers and advocacy from those ads. It is only in successful execution of the Ads grant that it becomes worth anything to you. That’s why it isn’t really “free.” To gain any value from it, you have to spend some time and/or money to make the Ads work for you.
Settin up Google Ads Grant properly
Before you activate your keyword ads, you need to be sure you understand and define your segments, their mindset and how they search. You then need to align your site and content to those keywords. Some of this is technical, such as your Meta and Alt tags, H1, H2, H3 headlines, URL structure, image names, etc. There are also the creative elements of copy written to highlight keywords and phrases often searched for, your internal and external links, social media, etc.
All of the elements of your content that Google will look at to determine if the key words you are buying are likely to be relevant to searchers and of high quality to them. If all the elements above are not executed in a way that makes Google think your ad will be a good search result for their users, you will fail to achieve a decent share of impressions for those key words and a lower ranking. Adding insult to injury, they will also charge you more for each. That’s how Google works to get the best search experience for their users and it drives all Google does.
Managing Google keyword Ads Grant for success
You have to start with your segments – who are you talking to, what is their mindset when they are searching, what problems are they trying to solve or questions they are trying to answer. Organizing your campaigns around being there with the right content when the right people are thinking of the right topics is key. When you do that, you will generate MUCH more value than $10,000/month.
Conversely, if you don’t, your campaigns will fail to generate much value for you and you put yourself at risk of losing your grant.
So, why hire me?
- I’ve done this work for longer than just about anyone, conducting our first search engine marketing campaign in the mid-1990’s. My agency also was one of the first with an analytics department. Since then I’ve done this hundreds of times, either directly or teaching and managing teams of others to do it for some of the most successful for-profit and nonprofit organizations in the world.
- I’m Google certified in their overall marketing platform, search and analytics.
- I’m more than a Google Ads specialist. I’m an integrated marketing and communications expert and I will ensure your Ads Grant is built to reinforce and fit within your overall marketing mix.
- I train you as I go. I share details of strategy and tactics with you, bring you along as a partner in creating your plans and teaching you how to do more and more of this yourself (or via a team member), so that over time, you become less dependent on me, not more. Simply put, I work from a different business model than most. I am not dependent on making you dependent me (though I can and do provide ongoing support if needed).
Getting started
Contact me. I’ll look through your site and do some basic keyword and search result research and then we can talk for 30 minutes, free of charge. I’ll share what I’ve found and some high-level recommendations as well as my anticipated initial fee.