A Charity's AdWords Grant Spending Almost Nothing

An allowance that goes unspent

A registered charity was approved this summer for free advertising through Google's nonprofit program. A volunteer set up a campaign with a dozen keywords, and the ads went live.

In November, with the year-end giving season ahead, someone checks the account. It is spending a small part of its monthly allowance, and the ads have appeared on few searches.

The allowance does not carry over, so every unspent month is simply gone. The cause is rarely the ads themselves. It is the rules a grant account plays by.

How a grant account differs

A grant account looks like any other AdWords account, but it runs under the program's own terms:

• A monthly allowance of free advertising that does not roll over.
• A ceiling on bids, well below what busy keywords cost.
• Text ads only, with no images or video.
• Google search only, not the display network or partner sites.
• Ads that lead to the charity's approved website.

The second rule decides most of what happens. Every keyword enters an auction with a bid that cannot rise past the ceiling, however much the charity might want it to.

Why broad keywords rarely show

Each time someone searches, AdWords ranks the eligible ads by the bid and by how relevant and useful each ad and its page look for that search.

A broad keyword such as team building or summer camp draws businesses bidding far above the grant's ceiling, and the charity's ad is outbid nearly every time.

The result looks like a broken campaign. In fact it is a campaign entered in auctions it cannot win.

Specific keywords that can win

Longer, more specific phrases draw fewer paying bidders. A search for a ropes course for school groups near a particular town, or a youth leadership camp with bursaries, is one a charity can win.

Write them from the words people use: the program, the age group, the place, the season. Each phrase reaches fewer people, so a grant account needs many such phrases rather than a few big ones.

Since late September, phrase and exact match also cover close variants such as plurals and misspellings, so a list of specific phrases reaches a little further than it once did.

One ad group for each program

Group the keywords by program, each with its own ads. People looking for a school trip and those planning a company team day want different things, and each ad should speak to one of them.

An ad that repeats the searcher's words and names the program reads as the answer, which is what the auction's relevance measure looks for.

The search terms report shows the actual searches behind each ad. Read it monthly, add the useful phrases as keywords, and add the irrelevant ones as negative keywords.

Pages that finish the job

Each ad should lead to the page for its program, not the home page. That page says what the program is, who it suits, when it runs, what it costs and how to book.

For the giving season, the appeal needs its own ad group and its own page: what a gift supports, in plain terms, and a short donation form.

Test that form on a phone before the appeal begins. A donor struggling with tiny fields on a small screen may simply give up.

A worked example

A registered charity in the Shuswap runs a ropes course and outdoor programs for school groups, youth leadership camps and company team days. The team day fees help fund places for young people who could not otherwise come.

Its grant was approved in July. A volunteer built one campaign with broad keywords, team building, summer camp and outdoor education among them, every ad pointing to the home page.

By November the account had spent little. The search terms report showed few impressions, and the broad phrases were contested by event companies and camps bidding well above the ceiling.

The program coordinator rebuilt it with an ad group for each program and one for the year-end appeal. Keywords name the activity, the age group and nearby towns, and each ad leads to its own page.

She now reads the search terms report every month, on a set morning. The specific searches carry fewer paying bidders, so the grant ads have room to appear, each landing on a page that answers the search.

Knowing which ads lead somewhere

Spending the allowance is only half the question. Conversion tracking in AdWords records when a click leads to a booking request or a donation, using a small piece of code on the thank-you page.

With it in place, the monthly review shows which programs' ads lead to action, not just which are seen, and where a page needs work rather than a keyword.

One person responsible

Grant accounts are often set up once by a volunteer and then left. Programs change, a camp fills, the appeal ends, and the ads keep saying what they said in July.

Name one person who owns the account, with a monthly hour in the calendar for it. That person needs the login, the authority to change ads, and a short note of what each ad group is for.

When that person moves on, the account passes to someone named, with the note, not to whoever finds the password.

The counter-case

Some charities draw little search interest at all. A small cause with a loyal circle of donors, or programs that fill through schools and word of mouth, may find the grant matters less.

Specific keywords for what people do search, such as volunteering, events and the appeal, still cost nothing under the grant.

Setting them up properly once, with a monthly review, is a modest job that keeps the account useful through every season.

Spending the grant on purpose

1. Check the spend against the monthly allowance.
2. Read the search terms behind every impression.
3. Pause broad keywords that never show.
4. Build an ad group for each program and the appeal.
5. Write specific keywords with places, ages and seasons.
6. Send each ad to its own program page.
7. Name the person who reviews the account monthly.

Step five matters most. Specific phrases are the auctions a grant account can win, and a long list of them is how the allowance gets spent on searches that matter.

The editorial rules every ad must pass, grant or not, are explained in the earlier post on ad text that AdWords will not approve.

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