Sometimes the best marketing campaigns don't cost a thing. Currently, most nonprofits are not taking advantage of one of the best opportunities in nonprofit marketing: Google Ad Grants. But, how do you get started and what are the best practices for the program and more broadly, nonprofit search marketing? Learn how nonprofits can expand their impact by using Google Ad Grants and search marketing strategies from our conversation with Nichole Vander Wall! Nonprofit Pulse is a podcast that explores trends, insights, and resources that help nonprofits accomplish their mission. See the full transcript and show notes: https://www.anedot.com/blog/google-ad... Learn more about Nonprofit Pulse: https://www.nonprofitpulse.com/ Nonprofit Pulse is brought to you by Anedot: Anedot helps organizations save time and money with powerful giving tools. With an easy-to-use platform, no monthly fees, and award-winning service, Anedot makes it easy for organizations of all sizes to receive donations online and grow their base. Anedot is trusted by more than 30,000 nonprofits, churches, ministries, campaigns, and universities. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Learn more about Anedot 💡: https://bit.ly/38R5nvu Get started today 🚀: https://bit.ly/3Egh8K2 Schedule a free demo 📅: https://bit.ly/3ngskjY Like us on Facebook 👍🏼: https://bit.ly/3k4kXu0 Follow us on Twitter 🐦: https://bit.ly/3C7mCVU Follow us on Instagram 📷: https://bit.ly/3lddZlK
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(00:00):
Sometimes the best marketing campaigns don't cost a thing.
Currently, most nonprofits are not taking advantage.
One of the best opportunities innonprofit marketing.
Google ad grants. How do you get started?
And what are the best practices for the program and more
broadly, Nonprofit search Marketing.
I'm Josh with Antidote and welcome to Nonprofit Polls,
(00:20):
where we explore trends, insights and resources and help
nonprofits accomplish their mission.
On this episode, we're joined byNicole Vanderwaal on the topic
of Google Ad Grants and nonprofit search marketing best
practices. Nicole is a search marketing
expert helping nonprofits attract supporters with Google
Ad Grants using a simplified process taken in the Ad Grant
(00:41):
Accelerator Framework. With more than 10 years of
experience serving nonprofits, Nicole helps organizations
thrive in their search marketingefforts through expert coaching
and consulting. Hey, Nicole.
Thanks so much for coming on thepodcast.
Yeah. Thanks for having me.
I'm really excited to go go through this today with you.
Yeah, so I've been excited for this conversation for a while.
(01:02):
We've been trying to get this book for many months.
You are in Australia and I am inAustin, TX.
So it's been a bit of a dance toget it to get the schedule
worked out, but we made it. We are here and super excited to
be talking about Google Ad Grants for Nonprofits.
Just a great resource for our community and there's always
(01:22):
more education to be had in in the area.
So super excited about the topic.
So maybe just first of all, let's let's define what we're
talking about for those who are not initiated.
What are Google Advertising grants and and why should
nonprofits care about Them? Yeah, fabulous question and I
love to just jump in just straight away and just get into
(01:43):
it. So the details are if you are a
registered nonprofit in in most countries in the in the the
world, not just the US, you are eligible for a 10,000 U.S.
dollar per month advertising grant that is run on the Google
platform. So $10,000 generally on the
(02:05):
Google platform you'll get, you know a click will be anywhere
from $2.00 to potentially $30.00.
So Google gives you that $10,000to spend throughout the month on
clicks to your website. OK, so when we talk about
Google, it's Google search ads. So when you, you know, type
something into Google, you know events near me or what's on this
weekend, you'll generally see a few advertisements at the top.
(02:29):
There will generally be about 3 ads and they'll have a little
sponsored or ad next to them andthat's how we know their
advertisements. So with the Google grant, Google
allows you to basically run freeadvertisements for your charity
to show up on the results page in order to get new people to
your website that might not knowabout your organization already.
(02:49):
And it's really Google's way of giving back to charities and
nonprofits so that, you know, you guys can really get the most
of people that are searching foryour cause or your mission or
potentially your services that wouldn't otherwise know about
you. So we're talking about 10,000 a
month here, which is 120,000 peryear, which is a massive,
massive budget, especially for anonprofit, for potentially your
(03:14):
nonprofit that might not have keep some money to spend on
advertising. This has done really a really
great offering and and really toget it just to jump into how to
get the Google grant, it's a very short application process.
You know, it'll generally take you anywhere from 10 to to
potentially a full hour to go ahead and apply, but then that's
pretty much it. Anyone can do it.
(03:36):
You don't need to be like in thegrants department or grant
specialist to apply for this grant.
It's really just asking you a few different questions about
your organization. It will validate with the
organization name percent that you are actually a valid
nonprofit. And then once you are approved,
which could be anywhere from 24 hours to whole week, then you'll
(03:57):
all of a sudden just have this new budget released and you'll
have this whole new fresh advertising account that you'll
be able to set up these ads. And yeah, you're sort of off to
the races. So it's one of the easiest in my
opinion grants to get because you know, typically when we
think about getting a grant, it's like you have to write out
a whole different thing. We have to generally hire like
(04:17):
potentially grant rider to help us ride it.
We need to like consult with different people to put the best
application together. But this is like if you're a
nonprofit, you're eligible, you're likely going to get it.
So there's sort of there's not aa big margin to get into this
this game. So it's that's why I think it's
really special in that sense. But yeah, also really easy to
(04:37):
get just for for any nonprofit marketer.
Yeah. And it really seems like a win
win for both Google and the nonprofits and that you know
with with Google ads it introduces nonprofits who may
not be advertising or who may not be advertising on Google
kind of introduced to their platform.
And for nonprofits it's it's a great program to to get free
(04:58):
advertising spend and then also to to get acquainted with the
Google ad platform and perhaps even just advertising in
general. So it's a it's a really great
program, highly recommended. What's new in the Google ad
grants program? What are you seeing?
Yeah. So that's a really great
question. And to be honest, like with SO
(05:19):
the Google grant I should say isonly search advertising.
So you can't necessarily run anyof your like display ads or any
YouTube activities. So if you want to do any like
video or image ads, you won't have be able to do those in your
Google grant. It's just search advertising.
So just search keywords, just you know the top three ads when
(05:39):
you when you search for something on the results page.
But that being said, what is newand it's kind of exciting
because the Google grants are a little bit slow in getting new
sort of initiatives or or advancing compared to paid ads.
So what is new is that we're seeing in a lot of our grants
lately is that they're surpassing the $10,000 budget.
(06:02):
So that just means like historically you would only be
able to spend a certain amount per day, like it generally
capped out around 328 per day about spend.
But now we're seeing Google sortof opening that a little bit.
So we're seeing clients you knowthat historically only were able
to spend 10,000 a month going upto 11,000 and a little bit
(06:23):
further up. So I guess like the call out is
if you have a grant, a Google grant active now and you're
potentially watching or listening to this podcast.
I would say that go ahead and open your daily budgets up a
little bit because you may want to there may be additional spend
that you just don't know about. So if you're you're one of those
people who you set all of your daily budgets to only hit that
(06:44):
3/28, I would go ahead and pop those open a little bit and
maybe even up to 500 because we know Google is allowing
nonprofits to spend more and youreally want to be able to
capture that an additional opportunity.
Same goes if you don't have a Google grant yet, just keep that
in mind. You don't want to really
restrict it to just 328 or that 300 per day.
Keep it a little bit open because you potentially might
(07:06):
get a little bit more than that 10 grand per month.
Yes. So Nicole, you help
organizations run their advertising programs through
Google grants. What are you seeing that's
really working for nonprofits? What do you see, tactics,
strategies, etcetera that you could share with our audience?
Yeah, definitely. So the number one, like if you
(07:26):
were talking about the the list of priorities of what to set up
in your ad grants account and I could like literally go on for
days of time telling you about like the top ten list.
But if we're just talking the number one priority of what to
set up in your grant today, thatcan make a difference.
Tomorrow is going to be a brand campaign.
So a brand campaign is just anyone who is typing in your
(07:49):
brand keyword, your brand name as a keyword, I should say.
So if you are, you know, if you are Susan G Komen, someone
typing in Susan G Komen walk. Susan G Komen Race, donate to
Susan G Komen. These are all people typing in
your brand keyword, so they technically likely already know
about your brand, right? So setting up a search campaign
(08:13):
using your brand keywords so these can be exact, match type,
phrase, match type or broad. It doesn't really matter with
your brand. But you want to go ahead and
have at least 5-5 brand keywordsin your brand search campaign
and then what you want to do is your advertisement on that
campaign. You want to make sure that your
call to action is very strong soyou're absolute like how you
(08:36):
judge success of your organization.
So for most organizations it's going to be donate Now you know
some organizations might be you know buy a ticket to our event
or whatever. Your main the main way that you
make money for organization. That needs to be your call to
action on your brand advertisement.
So like a example, I was workingwith a client about two weeks
(08:57):
ago and we just updated her brand ads.
We did nothing else in the account.
We just updated the brand ads tobe really strong.
You know, donate now, we need your urgent support.
You know, we need your help in order to keep 17 support groups
running. There's very, very strong call
to action, you know, really using positive sentiment and
(09:19):
donate now is the call to action.
And we came back a week later and someone had already made a
$300 a donation just within the first week, which is like crazy
for a grant cause generally grants are a little bit slower,
but to see a donation within seven days just in the brand
campaign from changing one smallthing is pretty unheard of.
(09:39):
So just make sure if or when youdo create your brand campaign or
if you have one right now that your call to action is very
strong and it's really what you want.
Those users that potentially already know your brand, already
have that know, like and trust what you want them to do, like
what action you want them to take on site.
I love that. And I love the story and what
(10:01):
that's essentially free money, right?
We were talking about nonprofitswho are so often scraping for
resources, trying to make every dollar count, using using these
ad grants to to gain new donors and and not just donations, but
even donors, right? Like cultivating these
relationships, building new new relationships with with those
who are going to support you. That's just it's huge.
(10:22):
And especially this time of the year, you know every everyone's
doing the end of your giving push and it's just a great year
to or a great time to be leaninginto your grants.
So what would you say as far as next steps for those who, who,
let's say they've gotten the grant, maybe they're they're
unsure what to do next, You know, obviously they can contact
(10:44):
you for help. But even beyond that, what would
you say if if they're already plugged in, what's some good
next steps for them? Yeah, definitely.
So I think if you already have your grant and you've been
approved and you've, you know potentially been running for a
couple weeks and you're just really not seeing the spend that
you're after, which is very, very common.
When I do help clients with their grants, generally they can
(11:05):
only spend a couple 100 and theyreally want to spend that 5000
or that 10,000. So generally what I recommend is
setting up a dynamic search campaign.
So this is sort of one of the, Iguess I should say like sneaky
or like hack campaigns that you can actually set up in the grant
account. So this is a search campaign
(11:28):
technically, but it's dynamic. So it's sort of like it's
definitely allowed, but it's like sort of on like the Gray
area between what is and isn't. But generally this dynamic
search campaign instead of usingkeywords, so instead of giving
it a bunch of keywords you want to target, it will you give it
your landing pages and Google will do the hard job of finding
(11:49):
all the keywords that you currently have on site or on
your landing pages that you giveit.
And then they will run advertisements.
So you don't necessarily write an advertisement with a bunch of
headlines or a landing page, youjust give Google 2 description
lines and then they'll do all ofthe other work.
So something to keep in mind if you so basically the the the
(12:11):
advertisement is dynamic. Google will dynamically put this
together. So if you are worried about like
your brand image or you have a very specific or strict brand
guide, this campaign probably isn't for you.
But if you aren't so much worried about your
advertisements and sort of what they're going to look like, then
I would definitely recommend this type of campaign.
(12:32):
Again, you just set up like yourgeneric search campaign.
However, when you go to make thead groups, it'll send you into
making standard AD groups. You'll just want to X out of the
process and then you'll want to rebuild.
Once the campaign sort of is in the the left navigation, you
want to go back into it, create a new ad group, but change it.
(12:53):
There's like a down arrow you can change from standard to
dynamic. So you want to create a dynamic
AD group and then you'll go ahead and choose either all
landing pages or all ad groups from standard campaigns,
whatever you want to choose as you are you're targeting.
And then you'll just pop in two description lines and that's
basically it. So it's really, you don't really
need hardly any content or information to get started.
(13:16):
And just one thing to mention, if you do build this dynamic
campaign and you notice that Google isn't suggesting any
landing pages or it isn't spending or it isn't serving and
it's possible that Google can't find any keywords on your
website and that happens when you have a new website.
Perhaps you've only you know your organization is only a year
old or it's a new website. Perhaps you do not know anything
(13:39):
about SEO and you haven't set upor optimized any keywords on
site, then that's going to be a massive reason why you're
dynamic might not work. And if that is the case and
dynamic isn't working for you, then you're going to have to go
back to the generic search and utilizing your exact phrase
match. And then you still can't spend
(14:00):
with the exacting phrase and youhave to really jump into broad
match keywords and really utilizing more broad generic
keywords to go ahead and get your account to spend.
You can also like you can also target adjacent categories to
yourself. So what might your target
(14:21):
audience be searching for that'ssimilar to what you have.
OK, so you do have to have like a landing page on your website
that talks about whatever this is, but you definitely can
utilize your grant to target things that are similar to what
you offer or similar services towhat you offer.
They don't necessarily, doesn't necessarily have to be just all
(14:41):
what you have. You can sort of branch out into
different areas to capture more audience and to get more people
to your website. But again, you need to have a
designated landing page on your site that speaks about that
adjacent offering, if that makessense.
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(15:03):
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(15:28):
What are some other common mistakes that that you've run
into orgs you're trying to do with the grant or or having
issues with the AD showing or even reporting what?
What are some common issues there?
Yeah. So the number one like common
mistake that people make and I guess I really didn't see about
this. So it's glad you bring this up.
But so with your grant account the the number one rule to
(15:52):
understand is that you can nevercompete against a paid
advertising account. So you are in a second priority
line in the auction. So if you can, so basically
you'll never be able to to run keywords like donate to charity
if you have a bunch of high competitive keywords in your
grant account, like donate to charity, you know, I donate to
(16:15):
whatever it might be, you know, walk for charity, 5K walk for
charity, those sort of like really high competition keywords
in your grant account, they're not going to run, you won't get
any spend, you won't get any impressions.
So a lot of times when I'm looking at ad grant accounts or
auditing through, I noticed thatall of the keywords are super
high competition keywords and I think that this really isn't
(16:38):
very clear to advertisers or nonprofits when they first get
their grant. So it's something that I try to
like really educate more nonprofits about but there's
absolutely like no reason to even have these high competition
keywords in your account becauseyou're never going to show for
like a donate to charity or likedonate type keywords.
(16:59):
So just to sort of reiterate, ifa paid advertiser, so if a
nonprofit with real money, so like you know, your your bigger
nonprofits that spend, you know,thousands of dollars per month
advertising on keywords like donate to charity, you know,
donate to whatever children's charity, donate to cancer, all
of these keywords. If anyone is paying real money,
(17:22):
their real money to bid on those, your grant will never
show on that keyword. So you're in a second priority
line at all times and you can never sort of jump the queue or
get ahead of them. You're basically being being
sold leftover impressions, leftover space on the results
page. So that in mind you need to go
(17:43):
for keywords that are medium to low competition, right.
So keywords that technically other paid advertisers might not
be bidding on and so those keywords are going to be more of
like your middle to top on the keywords right.
So if you know you have, if, if you are trying to get, you know,
if you're like a Leukemia Lymphoma Society of the US or
(18:04):
something and you're trying to get donations for people that
are struggling with cancer. So obviously you cannot use like
donate to cancer or donate to cancer charity.
Those keywords are going to be too competitive.
Those have to live in a paid account.
If you're going to bet on them, they have to be in a separate
account. But the keywords you will go for
in your grant are like the different types of cancer, you
(18:25):
know, signs and symptoms of those different types of
cancers, you know potentially like those mid to high funnel
keywords that are more people inlike the research phase, right.
So it's more of like people thatare just looking around and
researching that you want to capture with your grant and then
sort of those bottom funnel keywords live in a separate paid
(18:47):
account if you do have additional budget available for
those. Yeah.
So and I imagine with underserved causes, there might
be in a bit of an advantage there, right that that these
major keywords are not being bidon by paying ad customers.
So there there may be depending on what your nonprofit is
focused on and who you're serving, there may be
(19:08):
opportunity there to actually get a significant amount of
traffic regardless of of you know what the the current
competition is. And then secondly too, it just
made me think, Nicole, that what, what, however your ads are
performing on the Ad grant, don't equate that to what a true
(19:29):
paid ad campaign might produce. Yes, 100%, one hundred 100%.
So if you think about your ad grant, you can never so like how
people generally judge how like the the share of what their
their ads are getting. It's called impression share.
So a lot of people try to go for100% impression chair on their
(19:52):
brand keyword, which means that of all the impression, so of all
the eyeballs of people seeing ads, you're getting 100% of
them. So in your grant, you can never
even get like around 50 to 60 like.
It's just, it's not, it's not based on the whole because
you're not being able to like, see the whole.
So it's like something that you need to keep in mind is that
(20:13):
your impression share will nevermatch up to a paid account.
So you can say, Oh my grant has like 100% impression share, it
likely does not. It likely has 100% of the
impressions it can receive. But there's others that we know
that it can't. So it's like something to just
keep in mind, I see a lot of people like saying, oh, we have
like 50% impression share in thegrant or we have 100% on our
(20:35):
brand keywords in the grant. And I'm like, no, like there's
still other impressions, incremental impressions that you
could be getting in a paid account as well.
And would you recommend nonprofits run paid accounts
alongside their grant account? Yeah, definitely.
So this is like a really good question.
And I think that there's a couple things that I generally
(20:58):
like go through with a nonprofitto see if like, they're a good
fit. The first being like, if they
have a good amount of budget. So good amount of budget.
Like we're talking about 5000 a month at a minimum.
Like generally, like, you can spend less than that, right.
But you do need a good amount ofbudget to sort of have a second
(21:19):
paid ads account and do well sort of in the charity space
because there's so much competition.
So I would say if you have you know let's say between 3:00 and
$5000 you can spend per month and it is probably a really good
fit for you to try out search ads.
And then the second part of thatbeing is like have you
monetized, has your nonprofit monetized.
So when I say that, is there a way when someone lands on your
(21:42):
website, can they purchase something from you?
And if that is yes, then you aredefinitely a good fit for for
advertising. Also a little caveat, if you are
an e-commerce shop in your nonprofit, you want 100% should
be having a separate sort of e-commerce paid ads account that
has like your shopping feed and shopping campaigns and
(22:03):
everything like that. That sort of stuff can't sit in
the grant either. So yeah, just to sort of recap,
if you're if you have an e-commerce store, you should
definitely have a paid ads account regardless sort of of
your budget. The second being, if you have a
little bit of incremental budgetwith your organization to spend
on a monthly basis, so let's say3 to 5000.
(22:24):
And then, yeah, I think, I think, oh gosh, I forgot the
third one that I said, but I think that's pretty much it.
Yeah. And I I think like you want to
go at least like let's say for three months.
So if you have an appeal coming up, you want to do like get your
campaign set up, do a little bitof prospecting through the first
(22:44):
month, potentially second month and then the third month just
being like that hard conversion sale.
But yeah, I would say at least three months, you want to sort
of build up a lot of nonprofits,just say oh we have like a
three-week appeal and it's like that's not going to work for
advertising. It might, but it's not going to
be something that it's not goingto be scalable.
Like you're not going to have good enough learnings from such
(23:07):
a short campaign because the themachine learning and the bidding
takes a few weeks to learn to beable to drive conversion.
So you need to sort of keep thatin mind with running sort of
short term or campaigns. It's going to be really tricky
for your for your campaigns to to work well.
(23:28):
Cole, this has been so helpful. Any resources you would
recommend to our audience? Yeah, so I right now I am
hitting my YouTube channel pretty hard.
So I I'm uploading content twicea week of just optimizations or
just having to look into the grant accounts that I run and
sort of giving recommendations and showing what works.
(23:49):
So I'll go ahead and head over to my YouTube channel.
It's just my name, Nicole, and Isee H Ollie and then Vanderwall,
just how it sounds. And then you'll be able to see
sort of all of seriously all my content.
It's a pretty big vault at this point.
And yeah, all the clients that Iwork with are really
understanding and wanna help other nonprofits.
(24:11):
So they're really open with me showing, you know, their
accounts and like how I'm doing them and what's working.
So if you you're interested in even getting the grant or what's
working or how to do it, go on, head to my YouTube channel and
subscribe and you'll be able to see all of my courses as well
that are on my website sort of through my YouTube channel.
(24:32):
Awesome. Awesome.
Yeah. And if you check out the show
notes at nonprofitpolls.com, we'll have all of Nicole's links
there, as well as links for the Google ad grants.
Nicole, thanks so much for sharing about Google ad grants
and just advertising in general,and I hope it's spurred our
audience on to maybe pursuing this in 2024 and beyond.
And hopefully they will reach out to you and and get some
(24:56):
trusted expertise on if they do run their campaigns.
Yeah. Thank you so much.
Thank you. It's so, so fun to talk talk
back to someone in the US because I am missing my American
family here in Australia. So really good to chat with you
too. Yes, I'm so glad we got it
worked out. Hey, thanks for checking out
this episode. If you enjoyed it, please share
(25:17):
it with others or leave us a rating and review.
Find show notes and resources mentioned in this episode.
Visit nonprofitpulse.com there. You can also sign up for the
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latest trends, insights, and resources to help nonprofits
accomplish their mission. We'll see you next time.
Sometimes the best marketing campaigns don't cost a thing.
Currently, most nonprofits are not taking advantage.
One of the best opportunities innonprofit marketing.
Google ad grants. How do you get started?
And what are the best practices for the program and more
broadly, Nonprofit search Marketing.
I'm Josh with Antidote and welcome to Nonprofit Polls,
(00:20):
where we explore trends, insights and resources and help
nonprofits accomplish their mission.
On this episode, we're joined byNicole Vanderwaal on the topic
of Google Ad Grants and nonprofit search marketing best
practices. Nicole is a search marketing
expert helping nonprofits attract supporters with Google
Ad Grants using a simplified process taken in the Ad Grant
(00:41):
Accelerator Framework. With more than 10 years of
experience serving nonprofits, Nicole helps organizations
thrive in their search marketingefforts through expert coaching
and consulting. Hey, Nicole.
Thanks so much for coming on thepodcast.
Yeah. Thanks for having me.
I'm really excited to go go through this today with you.
Yeah, so I've been excited for this conversation for a while.
(01:02):
We've been trying to get this book for many months.
You are in Australia and I am inAustin, TX.
So it's been a bit of a dance toget it to get the schedule
worked out, but we made it. We are here and super excited to
be talking about Google Ad Grants for Nonprofits.
Just a great resource for our community and there's always
(01:22):
more education to be had in in the area.
So super excited about the topic.
So maybe just first of all, let's let's define what we're
talking about for those who are not initiated.
What are Google Advertising grants and and why should
nonprofits care about Them? Yeah, fabulous question and I
love to just jump in just straight away and just get into
(01:43):
it. So the details are if you are a
registered nonprofit in in most countries in the in the the
world, not just the US, you are eligible for a 10,000 U.S.
dollar per month advertising grant that is run on the Google
platform. So $10,000 generally on the
(02:05):
Google platform you'll get, you know a click will be anywhere
from $2.00 to potentially $30.00.
So Google gives you that $10,000to spend throughout the month on
clicks to your website. OK, so when we talk about
Google, it's Google search ads. So when you, you know, type
something into Google, you know events near me or what's on this
weekend, you'll generally see a few advertisements at the top.
(02:29):
There will generally be about 3 ads and they'll have a little
sponsored or ad next to them andthat's how we know their
advertisements. So with the Google grant, Google
allows you to basically run freeadvertisements for your charity
to show up on the results page in order to get new people to
your website that might not knowabout your organization already.
(02:49):
And it's really Google's way of giving back to charities and
nonprofits so that, you know, you guys can really get the most
of people that are searching foryour cause or your mission or
potentially your services that wouldn't otherwise know about
you. So we're talking about 10,000 a
month here, which is 120,000 peryear, which is a massive,
massive budget, especially for anonprofit, for potentially your
(03:14):
nonprofit that might not have keep some money to spend on
advertising. This has done really a really
great offering and and really toget it just to jump into how to
get the Google grant, it's a very short application process.
You know, it'll generally take you anywhere from 10 to to
potentially a full hour to go ahead and apply, but then that's
pretty much it. Anyone can do it.
(03:36):
You don't need to be like in thegrants department or grant
specialist to apply for this grant.
It's really just asking you a few different questions about
your organization. It will validate with the
organization name percent that you are actually a valid
nonprofit. And then once you are approved,
which could be anywhere from 24 hours to whole week, then you'll
(03:57):
all of a sudden just have this new budget released and you'll
have this whole new fresh advertising account that you'll
be able to set up these ads. And yeah, you're sort of off to
the races. So it's one of the easiest in my
opinion grants to get because you know, typically when we
think about getting a grant, it's like you have to write out
a whole different thing. We have to generally hire like
(04:17):
potentially grant rider to help us ride it.
We need to like consult with different people to put the best
application together. But this is like if you're a
nonprofit, you're eligible, you're likely going to get it.
So there's sort of there's not aa big margin to get into this
this game. So it's that's why I think it's
really special in that sense. But yeah, also really easy to
(04:37):
get just for for any nonprofit marketer.
Yeah. And it really seems like a win
win for both Google and the nonprofits and that you know
with with Google ads it introduces nonprofits who may
not be advertising or who may not be advertising on Google
kind of introduced to their platform.
And for nonprofits it's it's a great program to to get free
(04:58):
advertising spend and then also to to get acquainted with the
Google ad platform and perhaps even just advertising in
general. So it's a it's a really great
program, highly recommended. What's new in the Google ad
grants program? What are you seeing?
Yeah. So that's a really great
question. And to be honest, like with SO
(05:19):
the Google grant I should say isonly search advertising.
So you can't necessarily run anyof your like display ads or any
YouTube activities. So if you want to do any like
video or image ads, you won't have be able to do those in your
Google grant. It's just search advertising.
So just search keywords, just you know the top three ads when
(05:39):
you when you search for something on the results page.
But that being said, what is newand it's kind of exciting
because the Google grants are a little bit slow in getting new
sort of initiatives or or advancing compared to paid ads.
So what is new is that we're seeing in a lot of our grants
lately is that they're surpassing the $10,000 budget.
(06:02):
So that just means like historically you would only be
able to spend a certain amount per day, like it generally
capped out around 328 per day about spend.
But now we're seeing Google sortof opening that a little bit.
So we're seeing clients you knowthat historically only were able
to spend 10,000 a month going upto 11,000 and a little bit
(06:23):
further up. So I guess like the call out is
if you have a grant, a Google grant active now and you're
potentially watching or listening to this podcast.
I would say that go ahead and open your daily budgets up a
little bit because you may want to there may be additional spend
that you just don't know about. So if you're you're one of those
people who you set all of your daily budgets to only hit that
(06:44):
3/28, I would go ahead and pop those open a little bit and
maybe even up to 500 because we know Google is allowing
nonprofits to spend more and youreally want to be able to
capture that an additional opportunity.
Same goes if you don't have a Google grant yet, just keep that
in mind. You don't want to really
restrict it to just 328 or that 300 per day.
Keep it a little bit open because you potentially might
(07:06):
get a little bit more than that 10 grand per month.
Yes. So Nicole, you help
organizations run their advertising programs through
Google grants. What are you seeing that's
really working for nonprofits? What do you see, tactics,
strategies, etcetera that you could share with our audience?
Yeah, definitely. So the number one, like if you
(07:26):
were talking about the the list of priorities of what to set up
in your ad grants account and I could like literally go on for
days of time telling you about like the top ten list.
But if we're just talking the number one priority of what to
set up in your grant today, thatcan make a difference.
Tomorrow is going to be a brand campaign.
So a brand campaign is just anyone who is typing in your
(07:49):
brand keyword, your brand name as a keyword, I should say.
So if you are, you know, if you are Susan G Komen, someone
typing in Susan G Komen walk. Susan G Komen Race, donate to
Susan G Komen. These are all people typing in
your brand keyword, so they technically likely already know
about your brand, right? So setting up a search campaign
(08:13):
using your brand keywords so these can be exact, match type,
phrase, match type or broad. It doesn't really matter with
your brand. But you want to go ahead and
have at least 5-5 brand keywordsin your brand search campaign
and then what you want to do is your advertisement on that
campaign. You want to make sure that your
call to action is very strong soyou're absolute like how you
(08:36):
judge success of your organization.
So for most organizations it's going to be donate Now you know
some organizations might be you know buy a ticket to our event
or whatever. Your main the main way that you
make money for organization. That needs to be your call to
action on your brand advertisement.
So like a example, I was workingwith a client about two weeks
(08:57):
ago and we just updated her brand ads.
We did nothing else in the account.
We just updated the brand ads tobe really strong.
You know, donate now, we need your urgent support.
You know, we need your help in order to keep 17 support groups
running. There's very, very strong call
to action, you know, really using positive sentiment and
(09:19):
donate now is the call to action.
And we came back a week later and someone had already made a
$300 a donation just within the first week, which is like crazy
for a grant cause generally grants are a little bit slower,
but to see a donation within seven days just in the brand
campaign from changing one smallthing is pretty unheard of.
(09:39):
So just make sure if or when youdo create your brand campaign or
if you have one right now that your call to action is very
strong and it's really what you want.
Those users that potentially already know your brand, already
have that know, like and trust what you want them to do, like
what action you want them to take on site.
I love that. And I love the story and what
(10:01):
that's essentially free money, right?
We were talking about nonprofitswho are so often scraping for
resources, trying to make every dollar count, using using these
ad grants to to gain new donors and and not just donations, but
even donors, right? Like cultivating these
relationships, building new new relationships with with those
who are going to support you. That's just it's huge.
(10:22):
And especially this time of the year, you know every everyone's
doing the end of your giving push and it's just a great year
to or a great time to be leaninginto your grants.
So what would you say as far as next steps for those who, who,
let's say they've gotten the grant, maybe they're they're
unsure what to do next, You know, obviously they can contact
(10:44):
you for help. But even beyond that, what would
you say if if they're already plugged in, what's some good
next steps for them? Yeah, definitely.
So I think if you already have your grant and you've been
approved and you've, you know potentially been running for a
couple weeks and you're just really not seeing the spend that
you're after, which is very, very common.
When I do help clients with their grants, generally they can
(11:05):
only spend a couple 100 and theyreally want to spend that 5000
or that 10,000. So generally what I recommend is
setting up a dynamic search campaign.
So this is sort of one of the, Iguess I should say like sneaky
or like hack campaigns that you can actually set up in the grant
account. So this is a search campaign
(11:28):
technically, but it's dynamic. So it's sort of like it's
definitely allowed, but it's like sort of on like the Gray
area between what is and isn't. But generally this dynamic
search campaign instead of usingkeywords, so instead of giving
it a bunch of keywords you want to target, it will you give it
your landing pages and Google will do the hard job of finding
(11:49):
all the keywords that you currently have on site or on
your landing pages that you giveit.
And then they will run advertisements.
So you don't necessarily write an advertisement with a bunch of
headlines or a landing page, youjust give Google 2 description
lines and then they'll do all ofthe other work.
So something to keep in mind if you so basically the the the
(12:11):
advertisement is dynamic. Google will dynamically put this
together. So if you are worried about like
your brand image or you have a very specific or strict brand
guide, this campaign probably isn't for you.
But if you aren't so much worried about your
advertisements and sort of what they're going to look like, then
I would definitely recommend this type of campaign.
(12:32):
Again, you just set up like yourgeneric search campaign.
However, when you go to make thead groups, it'll send you into
making standard AD groups. You'll just want to X out of the
process and then you'll want to rebuild.
Once the campaign sort of is in the the left navigation, you
want to go back into it, create a new ad group, but change it.
(12:53):
There's like a down arrow you can change from standard to
dynamic. So you want to create a dynamic
AD group and then you'll go ahead and choose either all
landing pages or all ad groups from standard campaigns,
whatever you want to choose as you are you're targeting.
And then you'll just pop in two description lines and that's
basically it. So it's really, you don't really
need hardly any content or information to get started.
(13:16):
And just one thing to mention, if you do build this dynamic
campaign and you notice that Google isn't suggesting any
landing pages or it isn't spending or it isn't serving and
it's possible that Google can't find any keywords on your
website and that happens when you have a new website.
Perhaps you've only you know your organization is only a year
old or it's a new website. Perhaps you do not know anything
(13:39):
about SEO and you haven't set upor optimized any keywords on
site, then that's going to be a massive reason why you're
dynamic might not work. And if that is the case and
dynamic isn't working for you, then you're going to have to go
back to the generic search and utilizing your exact phrase
match. And then you still can't spend
(14:00):
with the exacting phrase and youhave to really jump into broad
match keywords and really utilizing more broad generic
keywords to go ahead and get your account to spend.
You can also like you can also target adjacent categories to
yourself. So what might your target
(14:21):
audience be searching for that'ssimilar to what you have.
OK, so you do have to have like a landing page on your website
that talks about whatever this is, but you definitely can
utilize your grant to target things that are similar to what
you offer or similar services towhat you offer.
They don't necessarily, doesn't necessarily have to be just all
(14:41):
what you have. You can sort of branch out into
different areas to capture more audience and to get more people
to your website. But again, you need to have a
designated landing page on your site that speaks about that
adjacent offering, if that makessense.
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(15:03):
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(15:28):
What are some other common mistakes that that you've run
into orgs you're trying to do with the grant or or having
issues with the AD showing or even reporting what?
What are some common issues there?
Yeah. So the number one like common
mistake that people make and I guess I really didn't see about
this. So it's glad you bring this up.
But so with your grant account the the number one rule to
(15:52):
understand is that you can nevercompete against a paid
advertising account. So you are in a second priority
line in the auction. So if you can, so basically
you'll never be able to to run keywords like donate to charity
if you have a bunch of high competitive keywords in your
grant account, like donate to charity, you know, I donate to
(16:15):
whatever it might be, you know, walk for charity, 5K walk for
charity, those sort of like really high competition keywords
in your grant account, they're not going to run, you won't get
any spend, you won't get any impressions.
So a lot of times when I'm looking at ad grant accounts or
auditing through, I noticed thatall of the keywords are super
high competition keywords and I think that this really isn't
(16:38):
very clear to advertisers or nonprofits when they first get
their grant. So it's something that I try to
like really educate more nonprofits about but there's
absolutely like no reason to even have these high competition
keywords in your account becauseyou're never going to show for
like a donate to charity or likedonate type keywords.
(16:59):
So just to sort of reiterate, ifa paid advertiser, so if a
nonprofit with real money, so like you know, your your bigger
nonprofits that spend, you know,thousands of dollars per month
advertising on keywords like donate to charity, you know,
donate to whatever children's charity, donate to cancer, all
of these keywords. If anyone is paying real money,
(17:22):
their real money to bid on those, your grant will never
show on that keyword. So you're in a second priority
line at all times and you can never sort of jump the queue or
get ahead of them. You're basically being being
sold leftover impressions, leftover space on the results
page. So that in mind you need to go
(17:43):
for keywords that are medium to low competition, right.
So keywords that technically other paid advertisers might not
be bidding on and so those keywords are going to be more of
like your middle to top on the keywords right.
So if you know you have, if, if you are trying to get, you know,
if you're like a Leukemia Lymphoma Society of the US or
(18:04):
something and you're trying to get donations for people that
are struggling with cancer. So obviously you cannot use like
donate to cancer or donate to cancer charity.
Those keywords are going to be too competitive.
Those have to live in a paid account.
If you're going to bet on them, they have to be in a separate
account. But the keywords you will go for
in your grant are like the different types of cancer, you
(18:25):
know, signs and symptoms of those different types of
cancers, you know potentially like those mid to high funnel
keywords that are more people inlike the research phase, right.
So it's more of like people thatare just looking around and
researching that you want to capture with your grant and then
sort of those bottom funnel keywords live in a separate paid
(18:47):
account if you do have additional budget available for
those. Yeah.
So and I imagine with underserved causes, there might
be in a bit of an advantage there, right that that these
major keywords are not being bidon by paying ad customers.
So there there may be depending on what your nonprofit is
focused on and who you're serving, there may be
(19:08):
opportunity there to actually get a significant amount of
traffic regardless of of you know what the the current
competition is. And then secondly too, it just
made me think, Nicole, that what, what, however your ads are
performing on the Ad grant, don't equate that to what a true
(19:29):
paid ad campaign might produce. Yes, 100%, one hundred 100%.
So if you think about your ad grant, you can never so like how
people generally judge how like the the share of what their
their ads are getting. It's called impression share.
So a lot of people try to go for100% impression chair on their
(19:52):
brand keyword, which means that of all the impression, so of all
the eyeballs of people seeing ads, you're getting 100% of
them. So in your grant, you can never
even get like around 50 to 60 like.
It's just, it's not, it's not based on the whole because
you're not being able to like, see the whole.
So it's like something that you need to keep in mind is that
(20:13):
your impression share will nevermatch up to a paid account.
So you can say, Oh my grant has like 100% impression share, it
likely does not. It likely has 100% of the
impressions it can receive. But there's others that we know
that it can't. So it's like something to just
keep in mind, I see a lot of people like saying, oh, we have
like 50% impression share in thegrant or we have 100% on our
(20:35):
brand keywords in the grant. And I'm like, no, like there's
still other impressions, incremental impressions that you
could be getting in a paid account as well.
And would you recommend nonprofits run paid accounts
alongside their grant account? Yeah, definitely.
So this is like a really good question.
And I think that there's a couple things that I generally
(20:58):
like go through with a nonprofitto see if like, they're a good
fit. The first being like, if they
have a good amount of budget. So good amount of budget.
Like we're talking about 5000 a month at a minimum.
Like generally, like, you can spend less than that, right.
But you do need a good amount ofbudget to sort of have a second
(21:19):
paid ads account and do well sort of in the charity space
because there's so much competition.
So I would say if you have you know let's say between 3:00 and
$5000 you can spend per month and it is probably a really good
fit for you to try out search ads.
And then the second part of thatbeing is like have you
monetized, has your nonprofit monetized.
So when I say that, is there a way when someone lands on your
(21:42):
website, can they purchase something from you?
And if that is yes, then you aredefinitely a good fit for for
advertising. Also a little caveat, if you are
an e-commerce shop in your nonprofit, you want 100% should
be having a separate sort of e-commerce paid ads account that
has like your shopping feed and shopping campaigns and
(22:03):
everything like that. That sort of stuff can't sit in
the grant either. So yeah, just to sort of recap,
if you're if you have an e-commerce store, you should
definitely have a paid ads account regardless sort of of
your budget. The second being, if you have a
little bit of incremental budgetwith your organization to spend
on a monthly basis, so let's say3 to 5000.
(22:24):
And then, yeah, I think, I think, oh gosh, I forgot the
third one that I said, but I think that's pretty much it.
Yeah. And I I think like you want to
go at least like let's say for three months.
So if you have an appeal coming up, you want to do like get your
campaign set up, do a little bitof prospecting through the first
(22:44):
month, potentially second month and then the third month just
being like that hard conversion sale.
But yeah, I would say at least three months, you want to sort
of build up a lot of nonprofits,just say oh we have like a
three-week appeal and it's like that's not going to work for
advertising. It might, but it's not going to
be something that it's not goingto be scalable.
Like you're not going to have good enough learnings from such
(23:07):
a short campaign because the themachine learning and the bidding
takes a few weeks to learn to beable to drive conversion.
So you need to sort of keep thatin mind with running sort of
short term or campaigns. It's going to be really tricky
for your for your campaigns to to work well.
(23:28):
Cole, this has been so helpful. Any resources you would
recommend to our audience? Yeah, so I right now I am
hitting my YouTube channel pretty hard.
So I I'm uploading content twicea week of just optimizations or
just having to look into the grant accounts that I run and
sort of giving recommendations and showing what works.
(23:49):
So I'll go ahead and head over to my YouTube channel.
It's just my name, Nicole, and Isee H Ollie and then Vanderwall,
just how it sounds. And then you'll be able to see
sort of all of seriously all my content.
It's a pretty big vault at this point.
And yeah, all the clients that Iwork with are really
understanding and wanna help other nonprofits.
(24:11):
So they're really open with me showing, you know, their
accounts and like how I'm doing them and what's working.
So if you you're interested in even getting the grant or what's
working or how to do it, go on, head to my YouTube channel and
subscribe and you'll be able to see all of my courses as well
that are on my website sort of through my YouTube channel.
(24:32):
Awesome. Awesome.
Yeah. And if you check out the show
notes at nonprofitpolls.com, we'll have all of Nicole's links
there, as well as links for the Google ad grants.
Nicole, thanks so much for sharing about Google ad grants
and just advertising in general,and I hope it's spurred our
audience on to maybe pursuing this in 2024 and beyond.
And hopefully they will reach out to you and and get some
(24:56):
trusted expertise on if they do run their campaigns.
Yeah. Thank you so much.
Thank you. It's so, so fun to talk talk
back to someone in the US because I am missing my American
family here in Australia. So really good to chat with you
too. Yes, I'm so glad we got it
worked out. Hey, thanks for checking out
this episode. If you enjoyed it, please share
(25:17):
it with others or leave us a rating and review.
Find show notes and resources mentioned in this episode.
Visit nonprofitpulse.com there. You can also sign up for the
Nonprofit Pulse Monthly newsletter, where we send the
latest trends, insights, and resources to help nonprofits
accomplish their mission. We'll see you next time.
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