If you’re a marketer working on behalf of a nonprofit organization, one of the best opportunities at your disposal is the Google Ads Grant. This program offered by Google provides up to $10,000/month in free ad credit for eligible 501(c)(3)s. That’s right—totally free.
If you haven’t already activated an account for your org, follow our guidance in part one of this series. If you’ve got an account set up and are ready to level up your performance, read on!
Priority #1: Max Out The $10,000/Month Ad Credit
Your first goal with your Google Ads Grant account should be to increase spend until you’re successfully reaching the $10,000/month allowance. (Don’t worry, since you don’t even add a payment method to the account, you will not incur inadvertent charges. And if the account exceeds the $10,000/month as can sometimes happen, you won’t be billed.)
Based on our experience supporting nonprofits in their ad strategy and management, here are some tactics we recommend when first setting up your search campaigns.
1. Set up Dynamic Search Ads (DSAs) that target your entire website domain.
DSAs are one of the easiest, quickest ways to get ads up and running. Unlike traditional search ad units, DSAs do not require you to input keywords to target. Instead, they automatically crawl your website to identify content themes and serve on relevant searches. DSAs generate headlines tailored to the searcher’s query and point them to the most fitting landing page. All you have to provide are two descriptions of 90 characters or fewer, each.
2. Build out the more targeted, keyword-based Responsive Search Ads (RSAs).
It can be helpful to start by looking at your website’s main navigation menu as a high-level guide. Map each content area of the site to an ad campaign, such as:
- Brand keywords (aka your organization name, acronym, and close variations)
- Generic names for your industry and services
- Specific programs or publications that have recognition
- Employees, board members, or other high-profile individuals
For each RSA, write up to 15 headlines and 4 descriptions (populate them all, if you can) that reflect each campaign theme. Google will dynamically rotate combinations of headlines + descriptions to learn what performs best.
3. Use the Maximize Conversions bid strategy.
The Max Conversions approach is important because, as one of Google’s automated bidding strategies, it is not subject to the restriction of a $2.00 CPC cap. In layman’s terms, this means your account will bid more aggressively, spend more dollars, and ultimately get more results.
However, you’ll need to make sure you’ve set up proper conversion tracking. Connect to your Google Analytics account to track what’s important to your organization; e.g. file downloads, donations, and email sign-ups.
4. Don’t forget to set up ad extensions.
Extensions are extra pieces of information that expand your ad beyond the headline and description. By increasing the ad’s size and visibility, you increase the likelihood of a stronger click-through rate (CTR). Extension options include:
- Sitelinks to specific pages (e.g., Donate, About Us, Contact, Subscribe to Emails)
- Callouts (e.g., “Certified 501c3”, “Over XXX Members”, “Founded in YYYY”)
- Business logo
- Business name
- Phone number (if your organization has one)
5. Add a Performance Max campaign.
Historically, Grant accounts have only been eligible to run Google Search ads. However, more recently, another campaign type has also become available: Performance Max (also called PMax). PMax is Google’s most AI-forward product that is built to scale and learn efficiently. It functions similarly to DSAs in that the Search ads within it are not keyword-based, but more independently find opportunity based on your website content and audience. It also serves on Google Maps when you connect to your business’s location—particularly impactful for organizations that value foot traffic. It does require a bit more legwork in the set-up as you should ideally provide 15 short headlines, 5 long headlines, 5 descriptions, 20 images, and video assets.
Once you’re spending $10,000/month (or close to it), it’s time to focus on getting more bang for your buck out of the account.
Priority #2: Optimize for Efficiency
After 2-3 months, you should have accumulated enough data to establish a baseline and get a sense of your overall performance. Now you can shift focus to not just maxing out that $10,000/month, but making optimizations to get even stronger results out of the account.
1. Set aside 30 minutes each month for keyword refinement.
So what keywords is your brand actually showing up on? This is why the search terms report is important. In the left-hand menu, navigate to Insights and Reports >> Search terms. This is where you can 1) exclude keywords that are irrelevant to your organization, and 2) add keywords to be deliberately targeted. If your account is close to the 5% CTR minimum threshold, pause low-CTR keywords.
2. Make sure you have enough conversion data.
As a tool powered by machine learning, Google Ads needs a sufficient amount of data in order to learn effectively. Looking at the most recent 30-day period in Google Ads, are you seeing at least 30 conversions per campaign? This is an ideal target to hit. If a campaign has less than 15 conversions in a month, it will likely struggle to spend. This is an indicator you may need to add more conversion types to the account. Consider some of these mid- or lower-funnel actions:
- Time on site (e.g., session duration of 3:00 or more)
- Views per session (e.g., 3 unique pageviews or more)
- Visits to key pages (e.g., important publications, a donation campaign landing page, volunteer pages)
3. Refresh ad copy for iterative creative testing.
A healthy practice of any ads account is to regularly review and iterate on your ad copy. Roughly every quarter or so, take 30-60 minutes to remove low-performing headlines and descriptions and swap in new ones. In Google Ads: click into a campaign >> Assets >> Performance tab and filter to headline and descriptions. Sort by CTR and scroll down to find those with the lowest CTR (while still accumulating decent impression volume) to identify low-performers. Writing even 3-4 pieces of new ad copy will go a long way to keep your account working hard.
4. Adjust your budgets and bid strategies.
If you’ve had no problem reaching the $10,000 ceiling each month, a more advanced approach is to specify unique budgets and bid strategies per campaign.
- As a general principle, gradually lower daily budgets for campaigns that are less efficient and increase spend towards higher-performing campaigns. Avoid shifting too drastically—this can trigger a reset and send the campaign back into a learning period, compromising performance. As a general rule of thumb, adjust budgets 10% at a time.
- For traffic-focused campaigns, shift to a Maximize Clicks bid strategy. This is subject to the $2.00 CPC max, but tends to serve more widely than Maximize Conversions. It’s ideal for broad campaigns with high search volume.
- If your organization brings in revenue online—perhaps through donations or an ecommerce merchandise store—shift those relevant campaigns to target revenue by choosing Maximize Conversion Value. Begin with the least efficient campaign and set the target ROAS equal to where the campaign has been in the last 30 days. From here, you can steadily increase the efficiency target (max of +20% per month) to push the campaign to yield more.
- For campaigns with a specific conversion action, such as a lead form or email sign-up, use the Target CPA bid strategy. Start by setting your target CPA to where the campaign has performed in the last 30 days, and again slowly increase the target (max of +20% per month).
Finally, don’t forget to abide by Google’s requirements to keep your account in good standing.
Over the years we have been proud to partner with many nonprofits (like the Milbank Memorial Fund, Boulder International Film Festival, Environmental Research & Education Foundation, and others) doing good in the world to put their Google Ads Grants to work.
