There’s been lots of chatter in the digital charity communities recently about Google Grant Ads and changes to their performance. Many charities have seen a significant dip in performance due to a rise in average costs per click. Have you encountered this with your own Google Grant Ads?
Some useful links for staying up to date with the changes:
- The agency UpriseUp have created a handy Google Grant Ads news feed on their website, where they’re tracking trends and developments
- Grant Ads specialist Jason King regularly posts on his LinkedIn about changes to Grant Ads performance and tips for optimising
Despite the challenge, I’d still advocate for charities to make use of Google Grant Ads, for many reasons:
- The Google Grant is the most generous digital ad grant in the non-profit sector, worth up to $10k per month
- While it’s difficult to compete with commercial ads on conversion-based goals, Grant Ads are still really good for targeting top-of-funnel audiences. Target people searching for information about your cause, get them onto your website, ensure you have good calls to action on your site – and you’ll see a return from Grant Ads.
- Once you have your core campaigns set up (targeting brand keywords, informational searches, etc), they take very little time to manage, and can run in the background as a valuable ‘always-on’ channel
- You can use the Grant Ads account to test creative, gather data and use these insights in your paid Google Ads
Digital Charity Lab has a short online course on getting started with Google Grant Ads – with a significant discount on the full price for readers of this site.