How to get free advertising on AdWords using a Google grant

Nick Beck, Managing Director of Tug shares his advice about Google grants - free advertising budgets to eligible non profit organizations using its popular AdWords program. The maximum initial AdWords budget is $10,000 per month (around £6,200). This grant is made in kind, not with actual money but with online advertising services from Google. That’s free advertising on Google!

1 - Do you qualify?

Firstly you must be operating as a not for profit organisation and you must be eligible. Eligible non-profits include, but are not limited to, organisations that serve communities in art, education, health, science and technology, and volunteerism.

Ineligible non-profits include, but are not limited to, those whose websites or missions are identified in the "Restrictions" below. Note: There is no information as to why these are chosen as restricted.
Organisations who don't qualify
Commercial / Goods and Services

* Car, boat and real estate donation websites
* Websites with a primary focus on selling goods, products or services
* Organizations generating more than 50% earned, commercial revenue
* Consumer credit counselling

Communities and Groups

* Programs requiring membership and/or providing benefit solely to members, such as clubs, sports teams, alumni, networking and other membership organizations
* Religious content or proselytizing on website as well as organizations that use religion or sexual orientation as factor in hiring or populations served
* Groups serving a primarily political function such as lobbying, think tanks and special interests

Other

* Promotion of illegal or disruptive tactics
* Websites serving solely as a portal or directory
* Websites participating in Google AdSense program

2 - You are eligible, so how do you apply?

Here’s the tricky bit.

It can take around 4 – 5 months to process a Google application. However it can take considerably less time. Arthritis Research UK applied for a grant and received confirmation within 6-8 weeks.

There is no clear information about the criteria used to review applications – only that it is judged on a case by case basis by a Google Grants Committee, which is made up of Google employees.

3 - Your application is successful: what happens next?

Let’s look at the objectives. What do you want to achieve from your Google advertising?

In the case of Arthritis Research UK, their objectives were clear. They were looking for a way to increase:

1. traffic to their website
2. website conversions, including registrations, number of people sharing their stories and donations

As Google’s advertising platform (adwords) revolves around a pay-per-click (PPC) basis the challenge is not just being accepted for the grant, but having the expertise and creativity to get people to click on your ads and actually spending all that free money. According to Google the average grantee clocks up only around £180 per month in clicks.

You can only advertise in the search engine results pages (SERP), not within Google’s content network. You can’t bid more than a dollar (around 62p) per click – many keywords will cost more than this and would therefore be unavailable.

Target keywords must be relevant to your charity and services. The ad copy has to reflect the mission of the charity as part of the ad – difficult when you’re only allowed 70 characters in the description, including spaces. You need to be skilled in writing ad copy.

You must demonstrate that you’re optimising your campaign – i.e. logging in regularly, responding to Google emails, managing the campaign properly.

Tug was employed to run Arthritis Research UK’s new Google Grant AdWords account. Here’s what we did:

* We made sure that the right keywords were used to bid on to ensure that Arthritis Research UK ads appeared for all relevant searches.
* A comprehensive account structure was created to ensure the best possible quality score, the best use of budgets, as well as ensuring that every ‘pay per click’ (PPC) ad served was 100% relevant to the search term used.
* Regular ad testing was carried out to ensure the highest possible click-through-rate (CTR).

4 -Is it worth the effort?

Yes, without a doubt!

In the case of Arthritis Research UK, on average each month, we generated:

* 25,000 new users
* 30 Arthritis Research UK registrations
* 15 data captures – this is where a user leaves a story about how Arthritis has affected their life
* Multiple donations

It’s worth noting that if you can legitimately spend the entire amount of money each month, Google is willing to raise the monthly grant to a maximum of £25,000 per month. This happened to Arthritis Research UK. The account has been such a success that they have now decided to budget some of their own money into a new PPC account that focuses on the Google Display Network (GDN) - spend on the GDN is not permitted within the Google Grant. This new account will use banners, text ads and click-to-play video ads to target users on the GDN. Besides the agency
management fee (as in this case) , all of this extra traffic and website engagement comes at no extra cost to Arthritis Research UK.

5 - Can your grant be taken away?

Yes it can

Any violation to program guidelines and policies, or misuse of the grant will cause the grant to be terminated (e.g. if started to host revenue generating ads on the landing pages).

6 - In conclusion

The Google Grant is definitely worth applying for. It really helps to have an agency like Tug, which has complete knowledge of what can and can’t be done with grant money, to make sure you’re using it efficiently and to help with the process.

The amount of money being spent shouldn’t be used as a success metric – it’s more about whether your ads are being frequently clicked on when they are served (i.e. click through rate) and what the extra traffic is actually doing for the charity.

Tug is a search marketing agency, providing expert strategic consultancy, campaign planning and management for major brands. Its search marketing team provides expertise in pay-per-click advertising campaigns, integrated search marketing and social media.