to increase donations to your nonprofit using Google Ads

Google Ads is a great tool for nonprofits to drive donations, especially.

Many nonprofits restrict themselves to one Google Grants account. They are usually worried that they will not have enough budget.

This is a mistake that you can now stop.

You can learn a lot from the experience of one of our clients in advertising.

Why Google Grants alone won’t suffice

This client, like many others, started out with a Google Grants Account.

It’s wonderful if your nonprofit has a Google Grants Account and is doing well.

Google Grants may only go so far.

It is often difficult to spend a significant amount of the grant budget due to program restrictions.

This was the case with this client. They struggled with the Google Grants alone to gain traction in a market that was crowded by pharmaceutical advertisers and large nonprofit organizations.

They needed to adopt a new strategy. They agreed to create a Google Ads account that was paid, i.e. “normal”.

It turned out to have been a good decision.

We’ve spent about $5,000-$7,000 per month on Google search ads, and received $10,000 to $12,000 back in donations. This is something we could not achieve with a Google Grants Account.

Lesson Consider a paid Google Ads Program if your Google Grants application is unsuccessful (and even if it is successful).

Limits of any single approach

We are as happy with the return of our client. We didn’t want to stop there.

We decided to go with this strategy and allocated even more budget for Google text ads. We tried to increase our budget, but we didn’t see a return that was commensurate. We needed to come up with a different approach.

Lesson No matter how successful your current strategy is, adding more budget to it won’t solve the problem. At some point, you’re going to reach your limit.

Use existing content, particularly video

When we were looking for a new marketing strategy, the channel of our client caught our eye.

The video content that our client had was already excellent. These videos communicate the value of their organisation more powerfully than text ads. We decided to try video ads.

The results of the campaign were very impressive, particularly around end-of year giving.

We increased our ad budget to $15,000 in the last year. A portion of that additional budget was spent on video ads. Over $70,000 was raised in donations.

We encouraged our client to continue investing in video advertising throughout the year, to increase donations.

Lesson Use the resources that you have. You may already have the resources you need to create a low-cost, high-impact video campaign if you’ve created videos for your members and new ones over time.

Dig deep: 7 YouTube Ads Lessons you should know

Donations are not the only goal

It’s okay if these videos don’t drive donations. These campaigns will help increase brand awareness and ensure that the nonprofit can continue to do good work in the future.

The good news is that they don’t require a large budget.

We’ve achieved 100,000 impressions with a $300 video campaign. These are impressive numbers!

Lesson Not every dollar of advertising has to be tied with a dollar of donation. Brand awareness is important, even if donations are ultimately the goal. Consider a “never-ending” brand awareness program that is based on success metrics.

Unexpected clicks can be a great source of revenue

We noticed a trend with our new advertising campaign.

We sometimes receive donations from people who search for the name of another charity in the same space. They searched for the name of the competitor and then decided to donate once they viewed our client’s videos and content.

Why do we benefit from competitor searches? We don’t know, but we have some ideas.

• We don’t know if the competitor advertises on Google Grants outside their Google Grants Account. Google prioritizes paying advertisers over Google Grants advertisers, as we have learned from experience. A Google representative once confirmed this. A paid account could give us an edge.
• This competitor may need to do more in order to increase brand awareness and build trust. They might make people more inclined to donate to our client instead.

Lesson A Google Ads paid account can give you an edge over Google Grants accounts.

Stay the Course

Our client is motivated by their success to continue testing new ideas and themes.

We are big testers, so we appreciate their enthusiasm. You need to allow things to develop – or else it will be difficult to tell what works and what doesn’t.

Lesson : Be consistent and focused. You risk confusing the situation if you try to test everything at once. You should take the time to properly assess a new approach or theme.

Plan your future

We’ve already planned our next steps, given the positive impact that YouTube ads campaigns have had on this nonprofit.

We are working on a “always-on” YouTube campaign that will feature videos demonstrating our nonprofit’s worth.

You can also select other video types to be tested. We’d like to test videos such as:

• Highlight underserved groups of the population.
• Local support groups and seminars should be highlighted.
• What is it? How do you answer the question?
• Retell stories about the positive impacts of the nonprofit activities.
• Tell us about your personal experiences as a member (similar to testimonials from customers).
• How do you use the donations?
• Include a Q&A series, such as “Ask an expert”.

Lesson Create and test videos with different themes to see how well they perform.

Google Ads doesn’t only apply to for-profit companies

Google Ads does not get the attention that it deserves from nonprofits, which is a shame.

Google Ads, just like those for-profit companies, can help nonprofits achieve their goals and build brand awareness.

It’s great when it means more money to a worthy cause.

The article Google Ads: How to increase donations to your non-profit first appeared on Search Engine Land.