FOUR ESSENTIAL STEPS TO MAXIMIZE YOUR GOOGLE AD GRANT BUDGET
updated 11/13/2023
Most nonprofits find themselves scratching their heads wondering how they can reach the max spend for their Google Ad Grant accounts. With these four essential steps, shared by Media Cause’s marketing experts, you can make the most of your ad grant budget each month and, ultimately, see more of a return on investment (ROI) for your efforts.
1. Max Your Daily Budget
Forging ahead with a few calculations—For a $10,000 Ad Grant, the maximum daily budget is $329; and, for a grandfathered, $40,000 Ad Grant Pro account, your daily budget should be $1,300. When your spend is maximized and this daily budget is implemented across all of your campaigns, you will see a significant improvement. That is because the Google algorithm is not over- or under-pacing based on costs and cost-per-click (CPC) bids.
2. Use Ad Assets
Ad Assets (also known as extensions) are one of the most important factors of a successful campaign strategy. Of the many types of Ad Assets that Google Ads offers, at the very least, Media Cause recommends having Sitelink and Callout assets either on the account or campaign level(s).
- Sitelink assets take people to specific pages on your site (for example, a specific program or donation). This not only adds more ‘real estate’ to your ad but it will also entice people to click on a link if the main ad is not exactly what they are looking for.
Note: In some ad views, the descriptions of each sitelink will also appear, usually denoting a call to action (CTA) or quick informative sentence.
- Callout assets help users get more detailed information about your organization, programs, and/or services at a quick glance.
With these two extensions activated across all your campaigns, you can easily maintain your account’s click-through-rate (CTR) and add relevancy to your ads, which helps boost the frequency in which your ads get served.
3. Increase Your Bids on Location, Device, and Ad Schedules
Ad Grant accounts don’t get priority during ad auctions; so, even with all the right settings, it’s difficult to bid for some high volume keywords. By going into your campaign settings and increasing the bids on your Locations, Devices, and Ad Schedules, you’ll be able to win more bids. Implementing this tip is best if you already have some historical CPC data to refer to, as that will inform the increased percentage you would like to implement.
As an example, this client below is only servicing New York City. For specific campaigns that have a significant amount of competition for keywords, we’ve implemented the bid adjustments according to the latest historical Average CPC for that campaign. Typically, we round up to the nearest dollar and turn that into a percentage increase we want to test. This same logic applies to Devices and Ad Schedules.
4. Link and Create Evergreen Informational Content
Primarily, the Ad Grant is an amazing channel for brand awareness and lead generation. Creating evergreen content that helps audiences learn more about your issue area, programs, past projects, and thought leadership are essential to attracting, converting, and keeping constituents. In terms of the Ad Grant, evergreen content helps fuel optimizations month-to-month with little oversight and larger ROI over time.
We recommend having at least one “always-on” campaign. Whether it’s linking to your brand-focused content, a blog, or your individual programs/services, this kind of content ensures you will keep spending your Ad Grant budget. Coupled with conversion tracking, you will be able to continue spending your budget more efficiently over time, even as other campaigns are turned on and off.
Make the Most of Nonprofit Ad Grant Accounts
While these four practices aren’t the only way to help you maximize your Google Ad Grant budget, they are good ways to work around account limitations and prevent you from missing out on using the dollars available to your nonprofit.
Remember, maximizing your budget and ROI is a marathon, not a sprint! Keep optimizing and testing. Once you’ve figured out the few key things that work for your audiences, use those insights to refine your strategy.
Whether your nonprofit is just diving into Google Ad Grants or you are interested in evolving your current practices and developing a more robust strategy, we’d be happy to partner with you to help you maximize your spend and take your account to the next level.