Looking for more ways to raise awareness of your not-for-profit organisation online? Google offers grants of $10,000 per month to accredited not-for-profits to use towards AdWords - advertising on Google searches. Shaun Ryan explains how not-for-profits can benefit in this webinar.
The Google Adwords Grant is an initiative by Google designed to assist not-for-profit organisations by helping to increase awareness about their organisation and objectives to a wider audience of online searches. These online searchers are relevant to the NFP in question because the information they are searching for in Google are specific to a given NFP’s objectives
The Google interface is made up of two areas which deliver web results triggered by whatever has been typed into the search box. Immediately below the search box are the natural or organic listings. These are websites Google has ranked in an order based on their authority for a given search term.
The areas above and to the right of the search box are the Google AdWords Ads (see below). These are the Ads specifically covered by the grant. Typically, for a given set of search keywords, these ads can drive an extra 3,000 + UNIQUE visitors to your website every month. This would cost an ordinary business $1,000’s out of their marketing budgets to drive this sort of traffic to their websites. Accredited NFP’s can enjoy these listings at no charge from Google, to the tune of $10K every month.
The image above shows an ad that has been triggered by the search term “make a wish”. As you would expect, this ad, when clicked leads you directly to the make a wish foundation website. If you typed in a different search term, it is likely the Make A Wish Foundation would come up. For example, typing “golf clubs” would trigger a completely different set of ads.
These ads change for each keyword typed into the search box. Business owners that pay for those ads attempt to ‘outbid’ each other to vie for a better position in the interface. As you would expect, the ads that appear up the top tend to receive more interest. This process of ‘outbidding’ your competition for best position does come into play if you have the Grant because your ads are free. Google will never charge you for showing an ad within their interface if you’re a successful Grant applicant.
If your not-for-profit is accredited, you will have the necessary documentation required to submit with the Grant Application, which takes about a week to process.
Yes. The ads link online searchers to a website. If you have a .org or .org.au extension this is extremely beneficial as this signifies that you are NFP from a domain name perspective.
After having met with the management of Flusmart in May 2012, it was decided that to boost their public profile in light of the coming flu season, a Google Grant would be ideal. The Grant was completed, submitted and ads were ‘live’ by mid-June. The following data for June, July and August are the actual figures attributed to the Grant, and the traffic from the ads.
To summarise, this webinar will go into some detail how, with our help, you can leverage the Google AdWords interface to drive thousands of extra visitors to your site every month via the Google Grant. I will outline the processes involved and what you can expect from being a Grant recipient in terms of an increase in awareness of your organisation. We will then have a closer look at the above case study and how the grant has driven the flusmart site up in the organic rankings by increasing its authority in the ‘eyes’ of Google. There will be a very special deal offered to any NFP who wishes to take advantage of our expertise and knowledge of the Google AdWords interface.
Shaun Ryan is a founding director of BlackMagic Marketing, and online marketing firm specialising in maximising business’ exposure through social media, brand awareness, SEO and of course using AdWords. Their offices are in Melbourne. If you have any questions prior to the webinar you can reach Shaun here: s.ryan@blackmagicmarketing.com.au
