£7,500 ($10,000) a month of free ad spend is attractive to UK charities, but many find it difficult to use effectively. In this blog, we share some helpful insights into making it work.
What is Google Ads Grants?
The Google Ads Grant is a programme that provides eligible UK charities with £7,500 (approx. $10,000 USD) per month in free Google Ads advertising. This means you can promote your non-profit on Google's search engine results pages, reaching a wider audience and potentially driving more traffic to your website.
To qualify for the Google Ads Grant in the UK, your organisation must:
Hold valid charity status. This means being registered with the Charity Commission for England and Wales, or with the appropriate regulatory body in Scotland or Northern Ireland;
Have a high-quality website. Your website must meet Google's standards, including having substantial content, clear navigation, and a secure connection (HTTPS);
Agree to Google's terms. You'll need to acknowledge and agree to Google's required certifications regarding non-discrimination and donation receipt and use; and
Adhere to programme policies. Once approved, you must follow Google Ads Grant policies, including guidelines for ad content, targeting, and account management - which includes making sure your campaigns achieve and maintain a Click Through Rate (CTR) of 5% or higher.
Key benefits of Google Ads Grant
Google says that its generous non-profits programme comes with a range of potential benefits:
Increased visibility
Reach more potential donors and volunteers actively searching for causes like yours.
Drive website traffic
Encourage visits to your website to learn more about your work, donate, or get involved.
Promote events and campaigns
Raise awareness for specific initiatives and encourage participation.
Maximise your impact
With a larger online presence, you can further your mission and make a greater difference.
Why is it so hard to achieve success with Google Ads Grant?
There are four key barriers to success:
It can only be used for search engine ads
Generous though it is, Google Ads Grant comes with one very big drawback: it's limited to ads on Google's search engine, and they're only shown to people who are actively conducting internet searches...
So, to get your ads, brand, and cause in front of people, they must already be undertaking searches that are relevant to your charity.
Charities tend to target the wrong searches
Given that your ads will only be shown to people conducting relevant searches, you need to make sure you target the right ones. However, partly because Google 'sells' it as helping attract donors and partly because that instinctively feels like a good use of the free ad spend, most charities attempt to run ads that will lead directly to donations.
But how many people do you suppose type "charity i can donate money to" into Google's search engine every month? Just 170 a across the whole of the UK, that's it.
Searches like "charity events near me" fair a little better with 590 searches a month, but it's still insignificant when you consider there are around 170,000 registered charities all wanting to attract this tiny audience.
This is therefore another big part of the problem: members of the public are not going to Google in large numbers with search queries that relate directly to individual giving and other forms of fundraising.
Ads are generally not relevant enough
The next issue we encounter regularly is that the ads charities create are often not relevant enough to the searches being performed, and so are less likely to catch the eyes of those doing the searching and even less likely to resonate enough to secure the necessary clicks.
Let's say your charity runs food banks in a selection of East Yorkshire towns, and you want to make more citizens aware that you exist and can help them feed their families. You might run ads that target a search such as "where can i find a food bank in beverley east yorks" but if the ad that is served just says "We operate food banks across East Yorkshire" that's unlikely to cut the mustard because your ad only partly addresses the search being performed, whereas an ad that reads "Find our food bank in Beverley" is much more likely to grab attention.
Poor quality ads are also therefore a contributor to the difficulties charities have when it comes to making Google Ads Grant work for them.
The destination doesn't match the ad copy and search query
Finally, there's the destination that people click through to from your ads.
Picture this: your national charity offers a variety of volunteer roles at locations across England. Someone who is looking for potential volunteering opportunities heads to Google and types "charity volunteering opportunities in chichester, east sussex" and sees an ad from you that reads "Volunteer for us in Chichester". It's certain to get noticed and secure that all important click. But if the page they arrive at just talks about volunteering in general with no mention of Chichester, they're going to bounce (browse away and leave your website) in under 10 seconds.
This is a massive flaw we see a lot: charities working hard to get the most from Google Ads Grant with campaigns that see lots of ad impressions served and lots of clicks acquired, but very low website engagement because the content that visitors see when they arrive is not directly related to the ads that made them click, or the search query that first triggered the ad to show up.
How to get results with Google Ads Grants
Those four barriers all need to be addressed if you're to succeed with the free ad spend on offer.
Here's how to do that.
Firstly, do some keyword research (or get it done for you). Use it to identify the sorts of searches people are performing regularly and that could be relevant to your charity. You may need to think more tangentially.
Then, think about the intent behind those searches. What is it people are looking for? Usually, people go to Google when they have an identified want or need that they are seeking to satisfy, which could be accessing support or just finding information.
Now, consider how you can answer those search queries. If someone is looking for information within the general ambit of what your charity does, create ads that show them that by reflecting their search query back at them in your ad copy.
Finally, create website destinations that satisfy people's search intent. Not only will Google itself reward your campaigns with higher Ad Quality Scores when you give people a great search experience, you'll also retain visitors on your website for longer and leave them feeling satisfied (and therefore more likely to return in future).
Key takeaways: how your charity can get the most from Google Ads Grant
Google's programme for non-profits is very generous, but getting value from that £7,500 ($10,000) a month of free ad spend means you have to be strategic and creative.
The free ad spend applies only to ads on Google's search engine, which means they will only be seen by people who are already actively searching
Don't waste your time and money on chasing donations because the volumes of search traffic are just too low
Identify higher volume search queries that are still relevant to your charity, its cause, and the work it does, and target these instead - even if that means thinking laterally
Make sure that you use compelling copy in your ads that will attract eyes and clicks
Send people to website destinations that are closely matched to the search they were performing
Overally, focus on giving people a great search experience
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