Google Ads: Get your Google Grant Ad account sorted
Why?
Google Grant Ads are the overlooked middle child of digital marketing. Google offers a hugely generous grant (up to $10k per month in ad spend), and if the ads are set up correctly, they deliver highly engaged and valuable traffic. Yet many charities either don’t use them at all, or have an account that was set up years back and neglected ever since.
It’s a good time to sort this out – Wordstream are reporting that charities are seeing a significant surge in search impressions since the COVID-19 crisis started.
What Google Grant Ads require is a block of time for you to:
- learn how they work
- set up some basic campaigns, like a brand campaign that promotes your website.
Once that’s done, the account will only require small amounts of care and feeding, approximately two hours a month. I think two days is a realistic amount of time to do the setup, and this may actually be achievable if you’re working at home and other projects are cancelled.
How?
If you’re not yet using Google Grant Ads, you’ll need to:
- Set up a new Google Ads account
- Create some campaigns
- Connect it to your Analytics and import conversions
- Sign up for the Google Non Profits programme
- Apply to activate your Ads account under the Google grant programme
Step 5 can take quite a while to happen: Google says the current waiting time is 10-15 working days, and in practice I’m seeing it take longer. But you can work away on getting more ad campaigns written and published while you’re waiting for the account to be activated.
If you already have a Google Grant Ads account, you can go straight to improving your existing campaigns.
- Digital Charity Lab has an online course specifically on Google Grant Ads – and there’s a discount available
- If you have an existing account that needs fixing, we have a free downloadable checklist and cheatsheet for Google Grant Ads
- Wordstream have a Quick Guide to Google Grants Ads for Non Profits
- Google Grant Ads activation guide from Google