What Google Grants can teach you about AdSense

Google Grants is a very unique program sponsored by Google. The program works by donating in-kind AdWords advertising, and is available to 501(c)(3) organizations in the US, as well as other charitable organizations around the world.

The value of the grant is $10,000 a month, which is divided into a daily limit of approximately $329. Successful use of the grant allows recipients to renew the grant each month, or apply for an extension with can give as much as $50,000 per month. The money is put into an AdWords account budget, which lets you buy ad space on any of Google’s services, which shows ads as "sponsored links". You can see some examples by searching for "world poverty" on Google.

Although $10,000 would be relatively easy to spend in any other ad campaign, the Google Grant has a couple stipulations: one, the maximum bid for ad placement is capped at $1. Two, the grant has a "use it or lose it" policy, meaning that if you fail to actively manage the campaign and use most of the money, then you run the risk of being removed from the grant program.

Learning the Long Tail

One of the first things you will learn is that spending $329 every day is hard when you have to do it one dollar at a time (or even less, because even if your max bid is set at a dollar, the cost per click for the winning bid may only be as low as ten cents.) Since you only spend your grant money when somebody clicks your ad, it can be a challenge to find so many people to click your ad each day.

To solve this, you have to get creative with the keywords you use, and include specific and detailed search terms.

"Long tail" keywords tend to receive much less traffic, but tend to convert to sales (or donations) at a much higher rate. Being able to find and target these keywords means that you can more accurately target ads, which results in more people clicking on them (spending your grant money), and which hopefully leads to more website conversions.

You can also broad match more generic terms, however since you can only bid up to $1, these also run the risk of being outbid – which would result in your ad not showing.

Focus on the Goal

Google only gives you the AdWords Grant. The value of the grant to your organization will depend on your ability to make good use of it. This means that you have to find a way to monetize by driving traffic to your website and converting that traffic into donations. With a little practice, or by working with an experienced professional, you can turn a $10,000 ad budget into a successful marketing channel for generating donations.

In most commercial organizations, we measure this as a return on investment (ROI), which measures how much we get for how much we put in. With a Google grant, it is still important to maximize its potential. This may mean turning it into monetary support, recruiting volunteers, or bringing attention to an urgent issue. Whatever your plan, make sure you identify your goals early-on, otherwise you will never accomplish them.

Many non-profits also tend to get creative after receiving a grant, since they are used to soliciting larger donations from a smaller number of people. With the grant, they have the opportunity to solicit smaller donations from a huge number of people each month. It is a great way to build a large support base very quickly, which can be utilized and mobilized in the future.

Regardless of your tactics, focus on your goal: converting the grant money into support for your organization.

Make No Mistakes

One benefit to Adwords is that you cannot make a mistake. Of course, there are some strict guidelines for Google grants, which you should review carefully, but you cannot make a budgetary mistake at least. In other words, it is impossible to spend above your daily limit, meaning that you can experiment and try all sorts of ideas, ads, and keywords without worrying about spending too much money.

For most campaigns, Pay-Per-Click (PPC) managers are tightly limited by budget and have only a little bit of space to experiment and test without risking serious budget over-runs, or very poor cost-per-conversion results. With Google Grants, you can test and experiment as much as you want (active management is encouraged), and you can try things that you might not normally have the freedom to do with your regular campaign.

Great for Any Experience Level

Learning Adwords is very challenging in any other setting because every action may have a serious impact on budget and revenue. But with a Google grant, it is a perfect opportunity for individuals to learn how to manage an online PPC campaign without the worry and limitations of a normal budget.

This lets non-profit organizations manage their campaigns without needing to hire their own specialized staff. However, many non-profits have also found that more experience also results in better conversions, meaning that an experienced PPC manager tends to more than pay for themselves by increasing donations and accomplishing more with the same grant budget.

Also, experienced PPC managers generally have experience in conversion optimization, which can help design and optimize a website and other web properties to help your organization better accomplish its goals. This does not necessarily need to be done up front (although the Google grant requires that you have a website), and can be done later down the road.

Join the Community

One of the best parts of the Google grant is that you can see how powerful search engine marketing can be for your organization.

There is a large community of search engine and Internet marketing professionals out there, and most are very willing to help new people learn the ropes. If you ever have questions, concerns, or just need a bit of advice, look online or find a local community of search engine professionals. There are a lot of us out there, and we’d love to help you out.