If you are a registered charity sign up for Google non profits NOW. This brilliant program gives all approved members grants $10,000 every single month to use on Google Adwords (no matter what country you are in the grant is always in dollars). All you need to sign up is to be registered as a charity in one of these countries.
Google non profits will give you so much budget that smaller charities will struggle to use it. If you are regularly using your full grant you have the option to apply for $40,000 per month with Google Grantspro. If you are on the Grantspro program and are able to use your full budget you will get at least an extra 20,000 website views every single month. This guide will walk charities through the requirements for the two programs, explain how to set up adwords campaigns and give you practical advice to give you the best chance of getting the larger Adwords grant.
Contents:
Getting the Adwords Grant
Getting your Google non profits grant is simple. In the UK first visit the non profits site. Click join and have your registered UK charity number to hand. They don’t need much information from you – your registered charity number, contact details and a bit of information about your charity.
There are a few minor restrictions on what you can spend your money on:
- You can only have text adverts.
- You can only put the adverts on the main Google search page (not partners).
- You can only spend a maximum of $2.00/click.
The limit on what you can pay for each click can be seen as a bonus. Text adverts on the main Google search are one of the best ways of generating traffic to a webpage. If you are approved the starting grant is $10,000/month split into a daily budget. The $2.00 maximum cost per click means that if you use your full monthly budget you can generate at least 5000 extra visitors to your website every single month.
It can take a little while for them to process your application and for you to get your Adwords grant so be patient. It is worth the wait.
Tips – Running Your Adword Campaign
Google non profits grant gives you a huge budget. The only disadvantage is your budget will be a little tight because you can only spend a maximum of $2.00 per click. I have a good guide on the basics of Adwords on a budget. There are a few charity specific tactics which can make your adverts more effective.
Non Profit keyword planning
You want to use your whole grant each day but you can’t spend much on each click. It is probably a good idea to look at what phrases people are finding you for in the natural (unpaid) listings. If you haven’t already got Google webmaster tools I advise setting them up. There are a few ways of doing this so read the advice Google give in the link and see which way is easiest for you.
I recommend giving webmaster tools a month to collect data. After a month you will be able to see where you are appearing – even if you are not on page 1. They give you a list of your average positions and how many clicks you are getting.
Take a look at all the search terms with average positions of more than 10. For these phrases your webpage will be appearing on page 2 or further back and are worth targeting. The amount of impressions you are getting gives an idea how many people have searched for these terms.
If you want to appear for any of these terms but currently aren’t, try including them in your Adwords campaign as exact match keywords (described in Adwords on a budget). If you have good content on these pages you might find over time they will start to appear on page 1 as people visit them through Adwords and build links to your pages.
Don’t target phrases where you are appearing in the top 3 positions. That would be a waste of your grant.
Existing pages
If there is an existing page you want to promote, the Google keyword planner can help you choose relevant search terms. Simply visit the tool linked above and sign in with a Google account.
You will be taken to this page:
Expand the “search for new keywords and ad group ideas” box and you get the option to get keyword ideas from a URL – the your landing page box:
Search for your individual landing pages and add any keywords to your campaign that look good. You want a lot of keywords because of the size of your grant. Make sure that the “average cost per click” doesn’t say more than the equivalent of $2 or your click through % will be reduced which makes it harder to get the larger ‘Grantspro’ grant:
Choosing your budget
You want to have the highest possible click through rate (percentage of how many people who see your ad that click on it) for the next section. This means you should always set your maximum pay per click as $2. A high click through rate will improve your quality score making you get more visitors in the long run. You Adword grant is free so you should make the most of it.
For the first month it is best to get as many keywords as you can possibly think of for your website. After they have ran for a month you can see what is working and what isn’t. You can reduce your budget or remove keywords which are performing badly. In the next section you will learn how to measure which keywords people use to donate to your charity the most.
If you are limit your campaign budget to keywords which will use exactly $329 every day (your daily budget) the campaign has to perform perfectly. Aim to overshoot your budget as much as possible this will make using your full budget more likely.
Getting Grantspro
Google rewards you for using up all your budget. If you manage to use all $10,000 in two out of six months, and meet the other criteria listed below you can apply for a larger grant of up to $40,000 dollars.
- Set up conversion tracking and prove your campaigns are successful
- Have an average of 1% of searches for your keyword clicking on your advert
- Have an authorised ad manager working on your adverts at least once every two weeks
- Complete an annual survey and share conversion data.
Conversion tracking
Getting Grantspro will get you a huge amount of traffic so you should carefully plan to give yourself the best chance of getting this massive adwords grant. As a charity you are likely to have a system where people can donate and you can set up conversion tracking to see what keywords people are using to donate and how much they are donating.
A popular way of engaging with your audience is setting up an email list so you can show people what you are doing with the money you receive in a more personalised way. These tend to be better conversions for you to track as people are more likely to sign up to an email list first visit to your website then they are to donate on the first visit. Make sure people can donate or join your email marketing list on every page of your website and make these areas very prominent. Keep your email form short so people are more likely to sign up.
If you are using your full budget up regularly it is a good idea to try targeting the same keywords in different locations. That way you can see which areas perform best for your clickthrough rate and for your goals. Adjust your adverts accordingly to which are the cheapest, which are getting you the most donations and which have the best clickthrough rate to get you Grantspro.
Improving your click through rate
There are a few ways of improving your click through rate. Play about with each of your ad group’s descriptions (the text that appears below your title). This can really encourage people to visit your website. You will often find tweaking the descriptions on pages which are performing well is more effective than changing badly performing ones.
Keep trying out different keywords. You want to use up your full $10,000 which can be a challenge. Just keep adding as many as you think of. Create extra pages with more content and include them in your campaigns. If any of your adverts are performing particularly badly get rid of them. If you are struggling with using your full budget up just keep playing around until you do. Then you will be able to really focus on bringing the click through rate up.
Landing pages
A landing page is a webpage targeted at a specific keyword or goal. For example if one of your highest traffic keywords is “Foodbanks in Brighton”, you could make a landing page titled “where can I find a foodbank in Brighton” so that you are as relevant to what people are searching for as possible. Look at your conversion target and try to make a page which is as focused on this target as possible.
Conclusion
Follow this guide and you should get you on the Google non profits program and receive your $10,000 adwords grant. If you are able to use all your budget these tips should give you the best possible chance of getting Grantspro as well. If you are unable to use your full budget the ideas given about using landing pages and improving on your clickthrough rate will still help you create the best possible campaign. Over time even if you don’t wind up getting Grantspro the tips in that section will help you maximise donations with the conversion tracking. Good luck with your non profit application!
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