Did you know that, under the right conditions, Google will give you $10,000 to spend AdWords, absolutely free? No, well, neither did we until this week! The trick is, you have to be a registered charity.
Google provides British charities with a very generous free advertising spend. In fact, this is not only for charities, but for non-profit organisations too.
Introducing Google Ad Grants
Google Ad Grants is a service specifically for charities and non-profit organisations. It benefits thousands of charities around the world already, but there are still many that have not yet taken advantage of this extremely generous and charitable act from Google.
There are almost 200,000 charities in the UK, with around 2,500 new organisations registered every year. There is no clear data on the total number of non-profit organisations, so we can only guess at how many organisations are eligible for the Google Ad Grant – assuming that around 250,000 organisations could apply, this suggests that Google, in theory, could give away up to $25,000,000,000 in free advertising – that’s around £19 billion!
How To Get Your Ad Grants?
Obtaining an Ad Grant is not a straightforward process – with so much money at stake, there is obviously a fair amount of paperwork to be completed to prove eligibility. Our PPC manager will be more than happy to assist you and your charitable organisation in obtaining the grant, and what’s more, we’ll also manage your campaign to ensure that you get the best possible results from your funding.
To be eligible you need to hold a valid charity status, which means being registered with the Charity Commission for England and Wales. If your charity has an only shop, you will only get funding if 100% of the revenue from the shop goes to supporting the charity programme.
You Will Have To Turn AdSense Off
One sticking point is that you cannot monetize a website with Google AdSense while delivering traffic from a Google Ad Grants campaign, so if you have been using Google AdSense to raise funds, you will have to pause this while your AdWords campaign is running.
Don’t Blow It All At Once!
Google AdWords is a very complex advertising system. Advertisers have to pay every time somebody clicks on one of their ads, and the amount paid per click is determined by the AdWords bidding system. Without some guidance it is very easy to spend a month’s advertising budget in just a few days, without generating any useful leads.
Over the years our PPC managers have learned how to manage ad campaigns effectively for a wide range of businesses, to ensure that they gain the most from their monthly budgets. AdWords is, in some ways, part science and part art. We constantly analyse campaigns and optimise ad copy to deliver the best click-through rates (CTR) possible, while also providing advice on landing page optimisation to increase conversions. You can read more of our PPC tips here.
Well designed and optimised landing pages are one of the most important factors in a successful AdWords campaign – if you are not planning precisely how your new visitors will be turned into customers, you are probably going to see a lot of money wasted.
However, Google Grants Ads are not managed in exactly the same way as business AdWords. For a start, bids are capped at $2 per click, so you won’t be able to push your charity’s adverts to the top of Google simply by outbidding everybody else.
If you are running a registered charity in the UK and want some help with your Internet marketing then contact Freelance SEO Essex today, and we’ll review your website and charity and propose a course of action, which will ultimately increase awareness in your cause and give a boost to your fundraising.