Did you know that Google offers charities £7000 of free advertising to use on its platform each month? Check out our post on Google Ad Grants to see if you charity is eligible, or read on for insider tips on how charities can make the most of their Google Ads allowance.
How can charities make the most of Google Ad grants?
£7000 may sound like a lot but when it comes to Google Ad Grants it pays to maximise every penny. With that in mind, here’s four tried & tested ways PPC experts ensure their Google Ads stand out from the crowd and reach the right audience.
Structure Your Ads Account
Structuring your Google Ads account is all about grouping your keywords into common themes and campaigns. It’s a great technique PPC experts use and is one of the easiest to set-up in the Google Ads platform.
For example, if your charity is a rehoming centre for pets, instead of running a campaign for “pets” you might run campaigns on “dogs” or “cats” to capture users specifically looking for these animals.
You can then take this a step further by creating ad groups that target related search terms. An ad group within a campaign around “dog” for instance might include: dog rehoming, dog rescue, or dog charity.
Choose The Right Keywords For Your Ad
As Google Ads works on keyword bidding, it’s essential to choose keywords that best match your cause. This will ensure your ads only appear in relevant searches and not just any search featuring that keyword. After all, you don’t want to appear in searches for Penguin books or Penguin biscuits if you’re a penguin rescue charity.
Google Ads has a free keyword planner you can use to identify keywords you should be bidding on. This includes insights on search volumes and CTRs (click through rates) so you can make decisions about which keywords are likely to perform best for you.
You can also use Google’s negative keywords feature to tell Google to disregard any keywords you don’t want to rank for. In the Penguin example, ‘books’ and ‘biscuits’ would be two negative keywords worth highlighting.
Audience segmentation is another neat trick charities can use to ensure they’re targeting their Google Ads at the right people.
You’ll find a dedicated Audience Segmentation tab within your Google Ads dashboard, which allows you to choose specific audiences who your ad will appear for. This can range from users who have previously visited your website, to people who are known to be passionate about the cause you represent.
Using audience segmentation to target your Google Ads in this way is a highly effective approach if you’re trying to gain the attention of a specific target market.
Track Your User Journey
And our final tip for charities looking to make the most of Google Ad Grants is to track your users’ journey. Far less creepy than it sounds, journey tracking involves looking at what individual website users are doing once they land on your site.
Why does this matter? Well, being aware of which pages and features your site users are most engaging with means you can tweak your Google Ads to mirror your customer journey – hopefully converting even more customers to your cause in the process.
As we said at the start, charities are entitled to £7000 of free advertising on Google so if you’re not already taking advantage make sure you sign-up.
And if you need support creating or managing your ads, give us a call. Our PPC team know all the secrets to creating high-converting ads that deliver fast results and are happy to help.
