I’ve been working with Google Grant accounts for several years now and wanted to pen a quick article outlining the benefits of this often misunderstood resource available to pretty much all non-profits globally.
Google Grants have been around for about 8 years, many nonprofit organisations are already boosting their web traffic (and more importantly their results) by using the Google Grant.
As a registered nonprofit organisation, you could take advantage of the Google Grant programme right now.
The Google Grant essentially gives you access to a monthly advertising account with $10,000 of Google Ads credit.
$10k of free ad spend – Wowzers!
Even with the restrictions placed on Google Ad Grantees the $10,000 can still give your cause a massive boost.
Here are a few of the benefits of the Google Grant programme:
Boost Your Volunteer Recruitment Efforts
There are a huge number of people searching for volunteer opportunities. These people are the kind of people that are super valuable to your cause – they want to make a positive impact in the world by giving your their time for free!
You can get in front of the amazing people who are searching for volunteer opportunities in the area that you serve. Whether you need people locally or overseas there’s lots of volunteer-related search traffic.
Newsletter Sign-ups
Remember that newsletter you’ve been slogging away producing for the last few months. Well, you can grow your mailing list using the grant.
Remember that not everybody will be ready to take an action like signing up to volunteer or making a donation or attending an event. With this in mind a newsletter can be a great “soft” action to start taking people on the journey of the work that your organisation undertakes.
You can take newsletter sign-ups on a journey to build up their interest in becoming more involved with your cause.
Recruiting New Financial Donors
Most people will start here when it comes to the Google Grant.
The reality is that it’s very tough to get traction on searches for things like “donate” or “sponsor a child” related keywords using the grant – because these terms are so competitive.
However, it’s still possible to use the grant to directly drive much needed revenue to your cause.
The key piece of advice I can offer you here is to stay focused on YOUR cause! Think about the issues that people who are likely to support you are likely to be searching for, if you get too generic then you simply won’t get traction using the Google Grant alone. Stay unique and focused for best results!
Lead Generation
In my opinion lead generation should be your number one focus when using the Google Grant – whether you feed these “leads” into a regular giving conversion programme or use the data to achieve some other objective is up to you and your priorities.
Lead generation is a very good way to get TANGIBLE results from your grant account – I’ll be writing a whole series of articles on lead generation in the near future.
Support Other Channel Activity
It’s extremely common behaviour for consumers to search for more information after seeing a message that resonates somewhere else. This might be following press coverage, seeing an outdoor poster, magazine ad, a television ad or just a conversation with friend.
The fact is, when that person goes and conducts a search to learn more that you get in front of them with relevant, interesting information! Remember, right time, right place – we’re talking the basic principles of marketing here.
Something Else?
There are so many ways to use the Grant, we can’t possibly list them all here. Tell us more about the interesting ways that your organisation is using the Grant to drive support and results for your cause?
If you need help or advice in setting up your Google Grant account then please get in touch with a Ninja today, we’d be happy to help.
