Google for Nonprofits Blog: November 2009

Resource round-up for November

Tuesday, November 24, 2009

Using social networking to your organization's advantagethis recent New York Times articleNTEN become a Facebook rockstarBlogging for dollarsBloganthropyGoogle Grants Webinar series'Google Grants Beginner Webinar Series: Learning to Use and Maximize Your Google GrantGoogle Grants Advanced Webinar Series: Maximizing Your Google Grant To Meet Your Organization's GoalsYouTube Video Volunteers spotlight on hungerYouTube Video Volunteers channelthis formdiscussion grouphere Posted by Jessica Vaughan, Google Grants Team

Grantee Best Practices Summary

Tuesday, November 17, 2009

Last quarter we introduced a summary of best practices from around our grantee base, and because of the ongoing requests for best practices, we've decided to continue offering these posts on a quarterly basis.
You can expect these posts to offer information, tips, strategies and case studies from other grantees about making the most of your Google Grants AdWords account.
Mind your Quality Score As you're moving budget around between campaigns and comparing click-through rates, keep in mind that your CTR affects your Quality Score - a key factor in determining how your ads perform.

One grantee notes that they're careful to cut their bid prices and tolerate lower click-through rates to "stretch the dollars", but only to a point, so that they can ensure that their Quality Score remains strong. The best way to improve your Quality Score is to optimize your account. Some tips for success can be found in this AdWords Help Center article.

Increase traffic Increasing traffic is always at the top of grantees' lists. And with good reason! You know that traffic to your site means more people are aware of your cause and message. Some things to keep in mind as you work at building your site's traffic are site coverage and tracking.
Make sure to add new campaigns to your account that drive traffic to any new content you've added to your site. Spotlight any upcoming events you're having and promote seasonal or timely content too.
As you're working on building traffic, keep an eye on your new vs returning and referral traffic - metrics you can easily view with Google Analytics. Referrals are sites that have sent traffic to your site and this information can shine some light on the online habits of your viewers. New versus returning traffic is a good way to measure the impact of your marketing strategies as you strive for awareness from broader audiences. If you see a jump in new visitors, you can view their statistics to find the source of this new traffic and confirm its relevance to any new marketing initiatives.

Improve conversions Much like increasing traffic to your site, improving conversions can be accomplished by using similar strategies.
Creating ads with targeted URLs can improve the user experience and lead to more conversions, and tracking the conversion rates while you implement a new strategy can help you see improvements or places where changes are needed. Give your campaigns time to work though - at least a few weeks- and set reasonable expectations for when you should see changes while keeping an eye on the long-term swings in your conversion numbers.

Know your audience All the budget in the world isn't going to mean a successful AdWords account if you're targeting your messages to the wrong audience. It's up to you to learn about your audience and tailor your ads and content to their needs.
One grantee has learned that their audience responds most enthusiastically (visits most often) when they have really timely ad messaging and topic promotion running in their Grants AdWords account. Being able to update ads, URLs and keywords instantly in your AdWords account gives you the power to speak relevantly to your audience at any time. Other grantees use this functionality to promote new projects and events as they happen, informing their constituency in real-time.
Another approach to learning about your audience is to host a poll or survey on your site and track the responses and submissions. The information you get can tell you how your audience feels about your content, subject matter, approach and so on, while also helping to guide new marketing initiatives, particularly those that help develop messaging around your most crucial content.
Seek expertiseSome grantees seek outside help when managing their Google Grants AdWords account, while others bring someone in-house to volunteer their expertise in editing the account and adding to the campaigns. This approach can save your org a good deal of time and improve the performance of your account, if you don't already have someone in-house to manage your account.
Check back each quarter, or better yet, add our RSS feed to your reader or Gmail inbox, to get the latest in AdWords expertise from non-profits around the globe. If you've had a recent success with AdWords or Grants that you'd like to share, please visit our discussion forum to share with other grantees right now or share the story with our team here.
Posted by Jessica Vaughan, Google Grants Team

Trending Thanksgiving: Introducing Insights for Search

Thursday, November 12, 2009

Preparing for Thanksgiving leads to a bustle of activity in stores, homes, and online. While some are focused on searching for the perfect centerpiece idea, thousands of others begin searching for ways to express thanks through non-profit work. Their searches start weeks in advance of the holiday. Google's Insights for Search provides data on search trends across a range of time periods and geographical regions, and Google Grants recipients can leverage the trends to timely advantage.

For the past four years, search traffic on the queries 'Thanksgiving donation' and 'Thanksgiving charity' spike in the weeks approaching Thanksgiving. Even more encouraging, the query 'Thanksgiving volunteer' also spikes in traffic in the weeks leading up to Thanksgiving (and has followed this pattern for years). The same is true of 'volunteer in soup kitchen.'

Particularly as Google Grants moves toward a self-service model, making use of tools to get a snapshot of search trends becomes helpful for launching successful seasonal campaigns. If your non-profit offers a Thanksgiving day event, Insights for Search can provide valuable visibility into how and when to launch campaigns. While search trends will vary from year to year on some terms, seeing the general timeframe in which traffic begins to pick up on a seasonal term can help you choose keywords and define start dates and end dates for campaigns.

Patterns in search traffic present opportunities. Using these opportunities to reach users who are searching in the non-profit space of queries can lead to a thankful response for making non-profit opportunities readily available online, and accessing a cornucopia of non-profit support.

Posted by Anita Varma, Ann Arbor AdWords Team

Share your Google Grants story

Tuesday, November 10, 2009

some Google Grantees' storiesour new webform.The Google Grants TeamGoogle Grants TestimonialPosted by Jessica Vaughan, Google Grants Team

A major change in the Google Grants process

Tuesday, November 3, 2009

Why are we doing this?

We have been working on ways to increase our program's efficiency, the level of grantee engagement, and the quality of scalable support we provide so that we can serve more non-profits. We started by creating the Account Creation Guide and the Ongoing Management Guide as well as making improvements to our online Help Center.

Now that we have built the tools you will need to succeed, we are inviting you all to roll up your sleeves and build an AdWords account that will best meet your organization's needs.

Will this be faster?

You bet it will! Previously, your application would have first gone to one queue to be reviewed and then to another queue to be built. Now, you will be notified as soon as your application has been reviewed. This will give you more control over how long it takes from there. If you want, you can build your own account within a couple of days of being notified and then submit it to us for review. Likewise, you can take more time if needed. Meanwhile, we can review accounts that have been built by grantees in less time than it would have taken us to build them ourselves. Which means that this new process should be much faster for you. Not only that, but once you have reviewed the necessary guides and your account is up and running, you will be better prepared to actively manage your account to make the most of your advertising opportunity!

How will this work?

Below is the process for a Google Grants applicant under our new system:

A non-profit visits our website, learns about the program and applies via our online application.
Their application is then reviewed in the order received. How long this takes will fluctuate given the number of applications we get.
If the application is accepted, the non-profit is invited to review the Account Creation Guide (ACG) and build their AdWords account. Each newly accepted grantee can do this at their own pace.
Once a non-profit is done building their AdWords account, they will submit it for review via the web-form provided to them in their acceptance email.
Their AdWords account will then be reviewed by a volunteer at Google. Again, all accounts are reviewed in the order they are received.
If the account passes review, it is activated and the non-profit is then invited to review the Ongoing Management Guide (OMG) and begin actively managing their account.
If the account does not pass the review process, the non-profit will be given further guidance and asked to re-submit once they had made the necessary changes to their account.

We hope you are as excited as we are about the improvements taking place within the Google Grants program. We are happy to be providing you all with a faster process and greater flexibility in the design of your accounts!

Posted by German Freiwald, The Google Grants Team

For Nonprofits Blog

Resource round-up for November

Grantee Best Practices Summary

Trending Thanksgiving: Introducing Insights for Search

Share your Google Grants story

A major change in the Google Grants process

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