Market your nonprofit’s mission, engage new supporters, and fundraise in more ways online using Google. No matter what you are hoping to accomplish with your web presence, Google can help ensure your digital marketing strategy is a success.
Check out this FAQ for How-To’s, and Tips & Tricks on maximizing Google’s nonprofit marketing resources and becoming a fundraising rockstar!
Google Grants
A Beginner’s Guide to Setting Up Your Nonprofit’s First Google Ad Grants Campaign
At Bonterra, our goal is to help you set up your small and growing nonprofit for success and enable you to use all the tools at your disposal. Whether you are cultivating your nonprofit’s first donors or looking to grow your donor base, Google Ad Grants is a great place to start.
In the first blog in this series, we talked about what Google Ad Grants is, how to set up your account, and a few basics of the campaign structure. Now, we’ll walk you through how to set up your first campaign.
Create Your Campaign
When you’re ready to create your first campaign, navigate to the homepage of your Google Ads account and click the blue plus sign to get started.
Once you click the blue plus sign, select the “new campaign” option. You will be taken to a new page that allows you to choose your campaign objective. Review all the campaign objectives and pick the one that best aligns with your goals (please note: if you choose leads, you must have conversion tracking set up, which is a separate step).
Pick a Campaign Type
Next, choose a campaign type. We recommend starting off with a simple “search” campaign. To learn about the different campaign types, you can read this Google Help article. After selecting your campaign type, you’ll be given the option to use conversion goals for campaign performance optimization. If you do not have conversion goals set up, skip this step and click continue.
In the last part of this section, select the results you want to get from your campaign (likely Website visits) and name your campaign.
Build Out Your Ad Campaign
Google does a great job of walking you through the next steps – bidding, campaign settings, keywords and ads, extensions, budget, and review.
Bidding: Choose what you want to focus on. Pick conversions if you have tracking set up. If not, we recommend focusing on clicks.
Campaign Settings: You can include your ads in both the search network and the display network. We recommend just including the search network, as the display network can sometimes include irrelevant websites. You can also select your location, language, and audience targeting in this section. The audience section is a great way to reach more targeted individuals – browse this section to see if any relate to your nonprofit.
Keywords and ads: This is where you can start really building the meat of your campaign! In the previous blog post, we walked you through what keywords & ads are.
In this section, put that newfound knowledge to the test. If you enter your website URL or products, Google Ad Grants will populate keyword suggestions, or you can manually input them. Remember what you learned about match types!
The bottom section is where you type your ad copy. Ensure you include the URL that you want the user to go to and input as many headlines and description lines as you can. Google Ad Grants will populate a preview on the right, as well as an ad strength score to help you determine if you should make adjustments.
Extensions: While extensions are optional, we recommend including them because they’re essentially an extension of your ad! This is a great way to give your ad more real estate, meaning it takes up more space on the search engine results page. See an example of an extension below.
Budget: Enter your desired daily budget in this section. Remember, you have $10,000 to spend each month! If you are running one campaign, we recommend dividing your $10,000 evenly throughout the month.
Lastly, review your information to ensure everything is accurate and you are ready to launch your first campaign! Pat yourself on the back because this is no easy task. As for next steps, we recommend checking in on your campaign’s performance a few times a week to ensure everything is set up properly and it is performing up to par.
In the last part of this series, we will help you understand the basics of analyzing your campaign results. Stay tuned!
Pair Your Google Ad Grants Campaign with Our All-in-One Donor Management Software
Bonterra can provide your nonprofit with the resources to increase your donor base even more. Pair your free advertising efforts through Google with Bonterra’s all-in-one solution to set your nonprofit up for success! Once you gain more supporters, our donor management platform can help you address pain points such as keeping up with your donors’ information and reporting your organization’s progress to your board. Schedule for a free demo and to learn more about Bonterra!
How to Measure the Performance of Your Nonprofit’s Google Ad Grants Campaign
In the first blog in this series, we talked about what Google Ad Grants is, how to set up your account, and a few basics of the campaign structure. In the second blog in this series, we walked you through how to set up your first campaign. In the final blog of this three-part series, we’ll dive deep into how you can analyze your campaigns to ensure they are successful.
What Metrics to Review When Analyzing Your Campaign
Now that you’ve got your campaign(s) up and running, it’s time to assess whether your campaign is performing up to par. We recommend running your campaign for at least a week to get sufficient data before analyzing performance. After a week, review the following data points:
CTR (Click-Through-Rate): The CTR is the number of times your ad is clicked on after it is visible on the SERP (search engine results page). This metric is important because it can help you figure out how well your ad copy is performing!
According to Wordstream, in 2022, the average Google Ads CTR for the advocacy industry is 4.41%. You can use that benchmark to determine how well your ad copy is performing. If it’s well under 4%, you may want to tweak your ad copy!
Avg. CPC (Cost-Per-Click): This metric is a good indication of how much competition there is in your industry. If you remember from our first blog post, keywords are bid on by many companies. Your CPC is determined by the number of companies bidding on the same keyword as you. The more companies there are bidding on a specific keyword, the more expensive it will be.
This is a good metric to look out for to ensure you aren’t bidding on keywords that have a CPC that is too high. Bidding on high CPC keywords that aren’t that important to your nonprofit’s mission could eat up your $10 thousand monthly budget.
Conversions: This is one of the most important metrics to analyze if you set up conversion actions in your account. If you did not, this does not apply to you. For example, if you set up a conversion action for when someone donates to your nonprofit, you will be able to see the campaign, ad group, keyword, search term, and ad copy that led to that conversion! Pretty cool, huh?
If you continue to see conversions on one specific keyword, we recommend adding similar keywords to your campaign. Conversely, if you are spending a lot of your budget on a keyword that isn’t converting, we recommend pausing that keyword.
Cost / Conv. (Cost Per Conversion): This metric shows you how much a conversion costs. For example, if you spent $50 on a keyword and one person donates to your nonprofit, the cost per conversion is $50. If two people donate to your nonprofit on that keyword, the cost per conversion is $25.
If your cost per conversion is higher than the donations you are receiving, we recommend determining how you can lower those costs. This could mean changing your ad copy or pausing a keyword.
Conv. Rate (Conversion Rate): This metric shows you the rate at which people convert on your page after they click on your ad. According to Wordstream, the average conversion rate for the advocacy industry is 1.96%. If you have a much lower conversion rate, we recommend evaluating the page you are sending users to. Small adjustments like moving your donation button to the top of the page or including more information about your nonprofit could lead to a higher conversion rate.
Other Performance Metrics to Review
Now that you understand the most important metrics to measure success, there are a few reports you can review with those metrics in mind to make any necessary changes.
Search Keywords:
Navigate to the left side of the Google ads manager and click “Keywords.” Below Keywords, click “Search terms.”
Pick a sufficient date range and look at the query options based on the keywords you are bidding on. We recommend sorting by impressions (how many times your ads were shown) or by cost (how much you have spent on clicks). This will help you see the queries that are spending the most and the queries that are displaying your ads the most.
If you see queries that make you think “uh, that has nothing to do with my nonprofit” you’ll either want to pause your keyword or create what is called a “negative keyword.” Creating a negative keyword will ensure someone searching for cat shelters isn’t served an ad for your nonprofit dog rescue.
Tip: To create a negative keyword, you can either click the check box next to the search query and click “add as a negative keyword” or you can navigate to the “negative keywords” section above the search terms section to add it.
Ad Copy:
Navigate to the left side of the Google ads manager and click “Ads & assets.” This will take you right to the “Ads” section.
Once again, we recommend sorting by impressions or cost to see the ads that are displayed most often or the ads that are spending the most.
Check out the click through rate on those ads – are they performing up to par? If not, you should make some tweaks to the ad.
Location:
Another report that we recommend reviewing is the “Location” report.
To find this report, navigate to the left side of the Google ads manager and click “Show More” at the bottom. Once you click that, you can find the “Locations” tab.
Once you are in that tab, you can see where your ads are being displayed. If it is just the United States, you might want to add specific states or even cities that you think would be more likely to donate to or learn about your cause.
Once you have identified those specific states and/or cities, you can look at performance for them.
The same practice goes when determining how successful each location is. If the location has a low CTR or is low converting, you might want to pause that location so your budget goes into other higher performing locations.
Lastly, we recommend monitoring your campaign performance on at least a weekly basis. The more often you review and make changes as needed, the better your ads might perform!
We hope you found this blog series helpful in setting up your Google Ad Grants campaigns for success!
Google Tag Manager
Conversion Tracking with Google Tag Manager (GTM)
Be a fundraising rock star - find out how your donation page is performing across channels.
Ready to take your fundraising to the next level? To know what's working, you'll need high-quality information about conversion rates - that's how many people actually give once they click "Donate"!
You can track conversions everywhere your Network for Good donation pages appear using Google Tag Manager (GTM). Set up your free account with Google here.
Once you've created your Google Tag Manager account, here's how you make it work with Bonterra:
Go to the "Settings" tab in Fundraising Pages, and choose the "Site Settings" option, and then click Edit. Down near the bottom of the page you will see an option to add your Google Tag Manager ID. Add the ID into that space, and then save and exit. Please note that this option is only available if you are a Supervisor-level admin.
Use unique UTM-encoded URLs when you share your online campaign page. You can build the URLs using this handy Google analytics tool. Create a different URL for every channel - one for your website, another for Facebook's donate button, another for a Facebook ad. You get the idea!
What you'll get:
When a donor clicks the UTM-encoded URL and completes a donation in that same session, the corresponding UTM code will appear in their donation record. Access the donation record from your Fundraising Pages Account by clicking Reports and Donation Summary Report.
You'll also be able to see page views broken down by UTM-encoded URL in Google Tag Manager.
Good luck, and may the conversions be with you!
Conversion Tracking with Google Tag Manager (GTM)
Ready to take your fundraising to the next level? To know what's working, you'll need high-quality information about conversion rates - that's how many people actually give once they click "Donate"!
You can track conversions everywhere your Network for Good donation pages appear using Google Tag Manager (GTM). Set up your free account with Google here.
Once you've created your Google Tag Manager account, here's how you make it work with Bonterra:
Go to the "Settings" tab in Fundraising Pages, and choose the "Site Settings" option, and then click Edit. Down near the bottom of the page you will see an option to add your Google Tag Manager ID. Add the ID into that space, and then save and exit. Please note that this option is only available if you are a Supervisor-level admin.
Use unique UTM-encoded URLs when you share your online campaign page. You can build the URLs using this handy Google analytics tool. Create a different URL for every channel - one for your website, another for Facebook's donate button, another for a Facebook ad. You get the idea!
What you'll get:
When a donor clicks the UTM-encoded URL and completes a donation in that same session, the corresponding UTM code will appear in their donation record. Access the donation record from your Fundraising Pages Account by clicking Reports and Donation Summary Report.
You'll also be able to see page views broken down by UTM-encoded URL in Google Tag Manager.
Good luck, and may the conversions be with you!