Many of the not for profit organizations I work with are starting to get their hands on the Google Ad Grants money. This money is so awesome because it helps support small to mid-sized non-profit organizations with what they need to start advertising and marketing across Google Ads.
In this article, we will talk about Google Ads Grants for non-profits and the best ways to optimize your digital presence before spending money on ads.
Why use Google Ads for Non-Profits?
Since most of my campaigns for non-profits involve Google ads, I get this question a lot. Why use Google ads for non-profit marketing? Google ads are a great way to reach out to new audiences who have not been exposed to your brand. Using retargeting strategies or custom audience building, you can really refine and target who you want to be displayed your advertisements to.
Here are generally the main ways I use Google ads for non-profits:
- Find donors
- Boost awareness
- Increase traffic
Now that you understand the basics, let’s move on to how you can improve your website, and build a strategy, to optimize your Google ads money.
Optimize Your Target Audience’s User Experience
So what does this mean exactly? It means if your target audience is donors, make sure your website is optimized for their experience. That would include:
- Easy to access the donation button
- Less than 5 steps in the donation process
- Information on where donations go
For most non-profits, there are generally three pockets of people they might want to target. Those are donors, volunteers, and supporters. These subgroups generally make up potential audiences non-profits target.
Furthermore, optimizing user experience might involve making your website simpler to use, or faster. Page speed has been known to affect SEO, so it’s important to optimize your images and on-page scripts for how long they take to load.
Create a Keyword Targeting Strategy for 2020
When it comes down to it, SEO is pretty far back in the list of priorities for non-profits. Optimizing SEO for your non-profit website is great for finding grant opportunities, generating organic traffic to your website, and growing your brand awareness. Creating a list of keywords to target is the first thing to do when looking at your SEO.
Here is my process for building a keyword strategy for non-profits:
- Analyze current keyword rankings
- Look at other organizations in the same industry but another state
- List keywords you want to be ranking for
- Compare against keywords you are currently ranking for to find opportunities
Since the beginning of 2020, I have helped 5 non-profit organizations build keyword strategies for their 2020 digital marketing plans. Using these exact steps, I helped them optimize their keyword strategy across their entire website and social media platform, which in turn made their ads cheaper. How can SEO make your Google ads cheaper?
As you optimize your strategy for a specific set of keywords, Google will make your cost per click cheaper because they know your website is an authority for the same keywords you are spending on ads. This is called quality score, and one of the primary reasons I recommend keyword optimizing your website before starting any ad campaign.
Build a Content Strategy for your Ads
Once an organization gets approved for Google Grants, we see them begin ads right away to increase traffic and awareness. This will work because you are spending money in a brute force effort, but creating a strategy and optimizing your digital presence per that strategy will always lead to the best ROI. You want to make sure you are spending that money effectively.
How do you build a content strategy for non-profits? Most of the large non-profits heavily rely on media and content for their digital marketing strategies. Paying for high-quality content has been proven to be worth it, and it will pay off in the long run.
For advertising, you want to have images and post text outlined, as well as graphic design elements across your imagery. This will help you as you target across different platforms and catch the same eyes, hoping they remember your brand.
Let Us Build Your Non-Profit Marketing Strategy
Once you follow these steps, you will be sure to have optimized your digital marketing strategy for Google ads. You should be using Google ads to enhance what you are currently doing across your website and social channels, and many organizations are relying on this money.
If you set up an effective platform for SEO, the Google ads will simple grow that platform and bring more users to your website. If you think your organization may be wasting your Google Ads Grants money, contact us for an audit of your current campaign. We will analyze your strategy and make suggestions on how you can improve.
