Below, you’ll find resources, tips and case studies to help you connect with people online through Ad Grants.
Resources
Ask us anything here, on our active online community
We activated new community forums in 5 languages (French, Spanish, German, Portuguese, and our newly launched English community (BETA). Check it out, and let us know your feedback!)
We welcome your questions and will respond directly to you! Common FAQs are here.
Learn how to improve click through rate or fix common tracking problems with how-to videos
From Ad Grants 101 to selecting keywords to fixing common tracking problems to understanding Smart Bidding, we have 25 educational videos in a variety of languages on our YouTube channel.
Consider partnering with an agency in Ad Grants’ Certified Professionals Community
Certified Professionals are agencies and consultants who offer Ad Grants expertise and nonprofit sector specialization to help Grantees use Ad Grants effectively.
- Find a Certified Professional from a list of 28 certified partners serving nonprofits globally.
- Get started with an agency guide to navigate the process of selecting and working with the right partner.
Get hands-on help and tailored campaign recommendations from digital marketing students
Thousands of Ad Grantees have worked with teams of digital marketing students through the Ad Grants Nonprofit Marketing Immersion (formerly the Online Marketing Challenge). Sign up through this form.
Look out for invitations to hands-on workshops by opting into “Special Offers” email notifications
Last year, we hosted 11 hands-on workshops at Google offices and met Ad Grantees around the world at 12 conferences. Connect with the Ad Grants team by opting into email notifications and our posts on our online community.
Tips
Understand what happens after someone clicks on your ads
Setting up good conversion tracking is critical to effective online ads. Clicks measure traffic to your site whereas conversions measure impact. Do people stay on your site? Do they take the actions you’d like them to? With conversion tracking, you may:
- Focus your effort on the most important keywords that drive results
- Bid higher with Maximize Conversions Smart Bidding
- Unlock features like conversion based ad rotation to automatically show your most effective ads
- See insights like how your online ads compare to your other marketing efforts to help decision-making.
If you use Google Analytics already, it’s easy to get started. Link it to your Google Ad Grants account and import your goals.
- If your goal is to raise awareness through content, use a Google Analytics Smart Goal.
- Other options, like time on site, pages per visit, and views on a common webpage tend to be duplicative of one another and are less likely to give you meaningful results. You can always check the number of pageviews on Google Analytics though.
- For most other goals, track when someone lands on a confirmation or thank you page or if not possible, track the button that clicks to that last step using Google Analytics Event Tracking.
If you’re already tracking, understand the value of each conversion
- If you’re tracking an action that has monetary value such as a membership fee, a ticket sale, or a donation, differentiate your conversions by their value with Google Analytics’ Ecommerce tracking.
- If you use a third party to process donations, you can also track how much your ads contribute. For example, we have guides for linking donation partners like Classy, Blackbaud Luminate, or Frontstream Artez.
If you’re already tracking, use conversion tracking features to understand the big picture
- If you use the default 30 day conversion window, adjust it to 90 days. Most nonprofits have a longer conversion cycles to engage, volunteer, and donate.
- If you use the default attribution model of Last Click, adjust it to Time Decay (or Data-driven if you have enough conversion data). Time Decay or Data-driven gives credit to the ads shown throughout your customer’s journey.
Bid more for clicks that take action on your site using Maximize conversions Smart bidding
When you have conversion tracking set up, enable Maximize conversions Smart bidding. It automatically sets the right bid for each auction to get you more conversions. In Ad Grants, it’s especially useful because conversion-based Smart bidding may exceed manual bid limits.
Earn website visitors’ trust to take action on your site by securing your entire site with HTTPS
Your audience expects a secure and private online experience when using your website, especially when considering signing up for email or making a donation. Secure your entire site with HTTPS, a secure connection so no one else can view or modify your site for some. Our Webmaster forum can help with questions.
Use Ad Grants’ policies as a guide to optimize your account performance
Our policies offer guidance on regular optimization techniques, such as building out your keyword lists into multi-word phrases, pausing low-quality keywords, and improving keywords or ads with low CTR. For example, your collective ads now have an average 12% CTR to earn people’s clicks! This video gives an overview of Ad Grants policies. If your monthly policy compliance report identified an issue in your account and you need help to resolve it, contact the Ad Grants customer service team directly through this form.
Case studies
To Write Love On Her Arms uses Ad Grants to generate income from their online store
“Using our Google Ad Grant, we were able to raise over $174,000 in online revenue in a year. This has had a huge impact on our work with those struggling with depression, addiction, self-injury, and suicidal thoughts.” - Lindsay Kolsch, Co-Executive Director, To Write Love On Her Arms. Read more.
Ad Grants helped DonorsChoose.org to raise $497,000 of donations
“We have seen continued growth and improvement to primary conversion tracking goals, thanks to a strategic use of Ad Grants. In just a year, we’ve raised an additional $497,000 through our ads. With our lean marketing budget, I wouldn’t have fathomed these kinds of results if it weren’t for Ad Grants.” - Yangsin Lau Vazquez, Growth Marketing Lead. Read more.
All Hands and Hearts uses Ad Grants’ Smart Bidding to raise 39% more donations at a tenth of the cost
“Utilizing Maximize conversions has dramatically increased results for our over 100 nonprofit Google Ad Grants accounts at Community boost. Sometimes I can’t help but daydream about how many lives are being saved or enriched by this amazing marketing tactic.” - Cameron Ripley, CEO of Community Boost Consulting. Read more.
Samaritans uses Ad Grants to test marketing strategies for effective paid ads during fundraisers
“We recommend other nonprofits use Google Analytics and conversion tracking to understand that supplementing an Ad Grants account with a paid Google Ads account is worth the investment,” says Michael Keating, Communications Manager. Read more.
How has your nonprofit used Google Ad Grants to further your mission? We want to hear from you! Share your story here.
Thank you for the work you do!
From the Ad Grants team and many volunteers at Google:
Ammar, Chris, Geraldine, Janelle, Ky, Michelle, Pauline, Samra, Sara, Shannon, Zach