Maximize Your Google Ad Grant Potential
The Google Ad Grant is an incredibly powerful tool for nonprofit organizations. With $10,000 in free ads available each month, the Google Ad Grant program offers nonprofits a fantastic way to boost website traffic and increase awareness. However, managing these grants effectively can be challenging, and many organizations struggle to comply with Google’s strict policies, leading to account suspensions. It’s important not to overlook these policies, as even minor violations can result in suspension from the program. To help you avoid these pitfalls, we’ve highlighted the five most common Google Ad Grant mistakes we encounter while professionally managing accounts and how to prevent them, ensuring your nonprofit fully benefits from this generous program.
Google Ad Grant management is very different from Paid Ads management. Not only are there rules in place that do not normally apply to Paid Ads accounts, but common best practices to maximize Paid Ad performance can actually have the opposite effect in Ad Grants accounts. An expert in Paid Google Ads management may find themself struggling to see results when managing a Google Ad Grants account.
5 Common Google Ad Grant Mistakes
1. Targeting All Countries & Territories
The mistake of targeting all countries has been seen in countless ad accounts. New campaigns will default to this geo-targeting, meaning it could simply be the result of carelessness. However, in many instances, specifically with some account management companies, this is done with the intent to conflate the account stats. Targeting the entire world is an easy way to quickly get a lot of traffic to the website and spend the full grant each month. Aside from the fact that this is a violation of Google policy that could result in account suspension, this type of geo-targeting is often not relevant to most organizations.
The Consequences of Irrelevant Traffic:
For locally-based organizations, virtually all of this traffic will be irrelevant to them. For organizations that do want a larger reach, this will include countries that they may not want to target or prioritize and may result in less meaningful conversions. For example, someone in India signing up for a program that is only available to people in the United States. The conversion will still be recorded and credited to Google Ads, but the organization will have to toss out the application when processing it internally.
Best Practice:
Your ads should only target relevant locations to ensure that traffic from ads aligns with your goals.
2. Using Single-Word Keywords
Why Single-Word Keywords Are Prohibited
One of the biggest differences between Paid Ads and Grant Ads is that single-word keywords are not allowed to be used in Ad Grants accounts (with few exceptions). This is because Google wants to ensure that traffic from Grant Ads is relevant.
Impact of Broad Keywords:
These broad and generic keywords will capture a wide variety of searches, many of which will not be relevant to your organization’s mission. Single keywords are also more expensive, meaning they will easily max out the grant spend and bring in a lot of traffic every month. Spending the full grant is great, but it is not very valuable if the money is not spent on meaningful traffic.
Risk of Non-Compliance:
Account managers that only have experience with paid ads may not know that this is a violation of grant policy and will use single keywords, which can risk account suspension.
3. Failing to Track and Analyze Performance Metrics
Why Not Having Analytics Tracking Is a Critical Error
Many organizations have no way of knowing how effective their ads have been performing because they did not set up analytics tracking beyond tracking call conversions, even though this is a requirement to have for the Google Grant. Google requires that all Ad Grants accounts have at least one recorded conversion per month in order to maintain the grant.
Benefits of Accurate Conversion Tracking:
Accurate conversion tracking can help you see what key actions searchers take on your website when they visit from a Google Ad. Strong conversion tracking can also help you fine-tune your intended audience, boosting the value of each and every click you receive! This is why Nonprofit Megaphone sets up custom Analytics Tracking and assigns an Analytics Specialist to every account that we manage.
Best Practice:
Ensure that your Google Ad Account has robust analytics tracking in place to monitor performance and maintain compliance.
4. Using The Wrong Bidding Strategy
Why Maximize Clicks Isn’t Always the Best Strategy
While using the Maximize Clicks strategy may technically comply with Grant Ad Grant policy (depending on when the ads were created), it’s not a best-practice for long-term success. As the name implies, Maximize Clicks focuses on getting as many clicks to ads as possible. This bidding strategy is great for new campaigns to help expedite Google’s learning period, but the Maximize Conversions bidding strategy is ideal in the long term for trying to get these visitors to convert.
Common Mistakes:
Sometimes this bidding strategy is used because conversion tracking hasn’t been set up (although it should be, as required by the grant), and therefore Maximize Conversions isn’t an option. Other times, and often with paid account management services, this is done to cause a large increase in traffic that might not be meaningful. This will bring a high amount of clicks to the website, which will often spend more of the grant money but may result in less meaningful visits.
Best Practices
The Maximize Conversions bidding strategy prioritizes bringing meaningful traffic to the website, not just traffic in general.
5. Mishandling Disapproved Ads in Google Ad Grants
Why Pausing Disapproved Ads Isn’t the Solution
Google Ad Grant policies are fairly strict, and someone without experience in managing Google Grant Ads accounts will likely not know the ins and outs of all these policies. When taking on new accounts, we often come across paused ads that were disapproved for policies that require a certificate or special approval.
Missed Opportunities:
Inexperienced account managers will simply pause these ads in order to maintain account compliance, missing out on potential traffic and opportunities from these ads.
Best Practice:
As Google Ad Grants Certified Professionals, the Grant Managers at NPM know how to quickly and correctly contact Google Support in these situations, whether it be to apply for needed certifications, or to dispute wrongful ad disapproval.
Maximize Your Google Ad Grant with Professional Management
Hopefully, reading this article has empowered you to avoid making these common errors. This is by no means an exhaustive list of mistakes that can be made in Google Ad Grant management. Additionally, following compliance guidelines does not guarantee that your Ad Grants account will perform to the best of its capabilities. Without expertise, it can take a lot of time-consuming trial and error to find what works best for your Google Ad Grants account.
If you would like to maximize your utilization of your Google Ad Grants account with the help of experts, our team can help! Nonprofit Megaphone specializes in managing Google Ad Grants accounts according to Google policies and best practices.
Connect with us today to learn how we can help equip your nonprofit to thrive!
