How to get started with your Google AdWords campaign
Yesterday the HandsOn Tech Chicago team hosted a free workshop for nonprofits on how to use Google AdWords for their organization. This post is a follow up to that workshop, explaining what was covered and providing links to further resources.
What is Google Grants? Google Grants provides qualifying nonprofits with free advertising on Google.com search results via the Google AdWords program.
Google AdWords allows you to create advertisements for your organization that appear when someone searches Google for specific keywords. You can literally create advertisements for as many purposes as you want. Some nonprofit organizations use their AdWords account to:
- Solicit donations
- Recruit volunteers and staff
- Promote events
- Raise awareness for their mission or cause
For example, if a user does a search for "donate books" on Google, relevant advertisements about donated books appear on the right side of the page. The user has the option of clicking on whatever ad is most important to their search or need.
Normally AdWords would charge your organization every time someone clicks on your advertisement on Google. However, through Google Grants, you don't get charged at all. Google Grants provides your organization with $10,000 a month in free advertising, so when someone clicks on your ad, Google deducts a fee from your account. We'll discuss that more in-depth later.
Why should you use Google AdWords? There are several reasons. You can reach users that are interested in your organization by having your ads send people to your website homepage. You can reach a large, targeted audience for free, by choosing the zip code where you want your ads to appear, the language, the time of day, and more. You can also monitor your account, track your performance, and measure your success.
The first step to setting up your AdWords account is choosing the goals for your campaign. You provide a link in your advertisement, usually to your organization's homepage. What do you want people to do once they get there? Do you want them to make a donation, sign up for a newsletter, register to volunteer, or something else? Once you know what you want people to do, it will be easier to choose keywords that will trigger your ads to appear in Google Search.
Here is the Google AdWords interface. When you login into your account, this is what you will see. The "Campaigns" tab at the top left will provide you with a list of all the campaigns you create for your organization. Basically, a campaign is just a way of creating separate ads for your organization. For example, our organization has a campaign for recruiting volunteers, one for promoting our workshops, and another for promoting our events. You want to separate them because the keywords you want to trigger your ads for recruiting volunteers will be different than the keywords you want to trigger your ads for promoting workshops.
Your advertisements and keywords fall under campaigns. If you have a campaign for recruiting volunteers for your youth camp, you will be able to create different ads and a whole set of keywords for those ads. For example, if you are recruiting volunteers for your youth camp, some keywords you may choose could be "youth camp volunteer", "volunteer at youth camp", "youth camp volunteering", "need youth camp volunteer". When someone types any of those keywords into Google, your advertisement will appear on the right. Google AdWords allows you to also create keyword match types, where you can choose general phrases, exact phrases, and even negative keywords which means that you specifically don't want your ad to appear when someone types in a particular phrase.
Google provides some good tips for creating your advertisements. First, you should include your keyword in the top line of the ad. Google will automatically bold it. You should include a call to action, so Google users know what you want them to do. "Donate Now", "Volunteer Here", and "Sign Up" are all examples. You should also create a few different ads so you can test which ones people click on.
The Keywords tab allows you to add, edit, pause or delete keywords. It also shows you how many people have clicked on your keywords (clicks), how many impressions it has garnered (Impr.), your Click-Through Rate (CTR), and average cost per click (Avg. CPC). You use these tools to track how well your keywords are doing at getting people to click on your advertisements.
When you choose a new keyword, you also have to bid on how much you are willing to pay every time someone clicks on your advertisement. Your account does not get charged until someone actually clicks on your ad, so you won't be charged every time you appear in search results. The Google Grants program allows you to bid a maximum of $1 dollar, but in the nonprofit sector you are likely to be bidding less than that.
Lastly, when setting up your AdWords campaign, you shoud look at the settings of the campaign on the "Settings" tab.
Be sure to set the loaction to the proper geographical location that you want your ad to appear. So if you are located in the city of Chicago, you probably only want to recruit volunteers that are also in the city of Chicago. Google AdWords allows you to set your campaign so that only people who are searching the internet in Chicago will see your ads. You can also set the language, but not the networks where you want your ads to appear. Normally Google AdWords allows a business to have their ads appear not only on Google's Search results, but also on blogs, forums and other websites. With Google Grants your ads appear only on Google's Search results page.
If you are interested in applying for the Google Grants program, complete the following steps:
- Complete an online application at https://google-for-nonprofits.appspot.com/application
- Application will be reviewed by Google team
- You will be notified via email with the outcome of the review
- If approved, you will be provided with detailed instructions on how to create an account and next steps
The PowerPoint deck from our Google AdWords presentation is below. If you have any questions about setting up your AdWords campaign, email the HandsOn Tech Chicago team at handsontechchicago@gmail.com or tweet us at @HandsOnTechChi. In our next post we will discuss Google AdWords monitoring, tracking and optimization.
