What Are Google Ad Grants?

Google wants to be part of helping nonprofits gain greater exposure in the marketplace, so they can expand the good work they do. If a nonprofit applies for a Google Ad Grant and qualifies, they can receive the equivalent of $10,000 of Google search result ads per month, enabling them to reach more people about their positive, often life-changing business missions. 

Google Ads is a paid advertising campaign that shows your ad in search engine results pages. Once you choose a keyword, you’ll learn how much it costs to advertise when people search for that keyword. These are often called Pay-Per-Click ads, because you pay a certain amount of money each time someone clicks on your ad. One benefit is that these ads appear next to or above search results, depending on the advertisements purchased, which allow your ad to be seen before organic search results. Ads can become quite expensive, which is why Google Grants for Nonprofits is such an important opportunity. Receiving the grant allows your business to use up to $10,000 towards Google Ads per month for free.

One benefit to Google Ads is that they can generate interest and traffic even when they are not clicked. Ads are placed in a prominent spot in search results for important keywords, so you gain exposure and name recognition even when users aren’t specifically purchasing your products or giving monetary donations. You can use your Google Ad Grant to place ads in predominant positions on search pages, which increase awareness of the important work your nonprofit business is doing. 

How Can Google Ad Grants Benefit Nonprofits?

• The main reason to participate in this program is it allows you to reach a broader audience resulting in more people who want to help your business. Whether you need donations, participants, volunteers, or some other kind of input, you can strategically use your ads to reach the searchers who can move your non-profit forward toward your goals.
• Compared to more broad-spectrum marketing, such as radio and television advertising, Google Ads are especially useful for creating a connection with a targeted audience, even if that target audience is broader than your previous reach. A person searching Google for “river clean-up Portland Oregon”, for example, is more likely to be interested in a local clean-water non-profit foundation than a person listening to the radio or watching television. 
• Many nonprofits rely on sales, donations, or exposure to meet and exceed their goals each year. Targeted Google Ads can drive traffic to a specific event, fundraiser, or product that you use to fund your nonprofit. Although Google isn’t going give you the $10,000 directly, Google Grants for Nonprofits provides ad space to garner more exposure, which will grow your customer base and ultimately increase your revenue through user donations and volunteering.

Google Ads Can Boost a Digital Marketing Campaign

• Being awarded a Google Ads Grant is a great way to boost all aspects of your digital marketing campaign, since you are given priority placement with ads that are seen above organic search results. 
• If you haven’t already done so, substantial keyword research is imperative.  Figuring out which keywords are connected to the types of users that want to find you (or organizations like you) is the core of any digital marketing campaign.
• This keyword research should be used to create a highly-clickable, popular ad to use your benefit most from your Google Ad Grant money. Those same keywords can now form the cornerstone of your SEO efforts. Make sure those same keywords are being used on your blog and your website content, since doing so will help people see your website in both the ads section and the organic search.
• Google Ads are a great place to experiment. Make sure you consistently rotate out low-performing ads and replace them with other content and headlines to see what people are most intrigued by. Pay attention to your bounce rate, though; if people click on your ad but then leave your website, they must not have found what they were looking for. 

Want help ramping up your nonprofit digital marketing efforts by creating an outstanding SEO campaign and using your Google Ad Grant to the fullest? Contact us at SocialSEO today!