Google Ad Grants sounds like such a sweet deal, offering $10,000 per month to spend on Google Search ads – with (almost) no strings attached!
We’ve spoken to many non-profit marketers who have been approved for an account, and eagerly set up campaigns, with big plans for what that level of spend will provide once its all used up each month.
However, while Google Ad Grants is a great deal, it’s always a tricky beast. Few accounts manage to spend the full budget each month, often using less than 10% after a few months.
This is a common with grant accounts. While Google presents them the same way as regular paid ads, they always appear lower down the results, or are ditched altogether for paying customers – so high-competition, bottom-of-funnel keywords rarely generate much spend.
At Splitpixel, our clients often aim to drive donations, venue bookings, or sponsorships – but these valuable keywords are dominated by paid advertisers, leaving grant ads with limited visibility.
It’s totally valid to feel burned by this, especially when you’ve invested time into a tool which isn’t producing results. If you’re not seeing much return from the time spent on Ad Grants, you might well be thinking, should I just bid on my Google Ads keywords on a paid account instead?
Always utilise your Google Ad Grant Account
It can be difficult to understand why certain keywords do quite well on a grant account, but some never see any spend. 90% of the time, it’s due to keyword competition.
To know how competitive your keywords are, simply search for them on Google. If you’re seeing for-profit organisations bid on those keywords, you’ll know for certain that your grant ads will never appear above them when their paid ads appear.
The other way to see the competition level is to see what the ‘competition’ rating is inside Google Ads keyword planner, which we explained a bit more about in our keyword research blog. While this is quite unreliable, any rating between ‘medium’ and ‘high’ would imply that the keyword has paid competition.
This opens up an issue, though – if you can’t bid on bottom-of-funnel (BOFU) keywords, what keywords should you be bidding on? That’s where we need to get creative…
Finding your Grant Ads niche
It may take some time, but you need to find keywords that have high search volume combined with low competition, which is easier said than done.
Being a specialist arts and culture web agency, we help theatres that want to rank for core terms like ‘what’s on near me’. These terms typically have ‘low’ competition, because only theatre-based companies would typically bid on these types of terms, and most cities have just a handful of these.
However, for some grant accounts, it isn’t this easy. A common strategy for accounts where their service offering is highly competitive is to go after blog-based terms, which are rarely bid by paid accounts (since they don’t contain high competition).
However, the blog terms would then point users to an answer to their questions, with that answer being the non-profit’s service offerings. So while it’s an extra step, we are able to eventually get users to the ideal page we know converts well.
An example of this type of Grant Ads strategy would be the WWF (the wildlife charity, not the wrestlers) bidding on terms like “could polar bears go extinct”? The WWF could then take users to a blog page on why polar bears are at risk, with frequent call-to-actions on the page to donate, to prevent this from happening.
This type of strategy does require more work, as you’ll need to create landing pages and page content that are centred around this type of keyword. In this aspect, grant accounts are extremely similar to an SEO strategy.
When to use a paid account
We’d suggest using a paid account when you want visibility for key terms, but there is too much paid competition for your grant account to regularly rank well. As long as cost-per-clicks aren’t ridiculously high and are affordable to your non-profit, a paid account will certainly increase your visibility on key terms.
You’ll also want to use a paid account when you want to use campaign types that aren’t accessible on a grant account. Remember, a grant account only allows you to use your budget on the search network. If you want to run display advertising, YouTube shorts, in-stream video ads or shopping ads, you’ll need to have a separate paid account.
Overall, a paid account removes the risk of your grant ad not appearing because there’s too much paid competition. It’s a safer alternative if your main focus is to drive website traffic for really important keywords.
Why you should consider running both
The most common strategies are to bid on more middle-of-funnel (MOFU) or top-of-funnel (TOFU) keywords on a Grant account, since these are typically lower in competition. Bottom-of-funnel (BOFU) keywords can also be bid on as long as the competition rating is low.
MOFU and TOFU keywords typically are searched by users less likely to be looking for an immediate service or purchase, but may be more willing to read around your products or service. They’re also typically new users, as in users who haven’t been to your website before.
Having both a paid and grant ad account can help ensure you are targeting users throughout the full funnel, from more information, question based searches at the top, to bottom of the funnel conversion led enquiries.
The other ploy here is that you could use a paid account to remarket to these users, to get them to return to your website after being part of a remarketing list (and accepting cookies, for example). You could then use display or video advertising to have your ads appear to these audiences, turning them from a cold audience into a warm or hot audience, ready to buy or enquire.
So, what do you do?
There are plenty of strategies to consider, but the general rule of them is to always try to use as much of the free grant ad spend as possible, even if it’s on quite MOFU or TOFU terms. After all, it’s free website traffic.
If it’s really important for your non-profit to regularly rank for bottom-of-funnel keywords, consider launching a paid account to bid on these terms.
However, we always advise that our clients who run a grant account consider launching a paid account. Of course, the budget can play a big role in whether a paid account is feasible, but even if you wanted to spend minimally, it could be worth trialling remarketing campaigns on a paid account, purely to stay top-of-mind on the Google network.
Need help?
Maybe you’re stuck trying to become eligible, or confused why your account is only using 10% of its monthly allocation. This could be due to competition, choice of keywords, or your conversion tracking not being set up correctly. Why not reach out to our marketing team? We’d be happy to help you troubleshoot any issues and get things running smoothly!
We work with a host of grant accounts across different non-profit organisations. Why not read how we regularly spend $10,000 for Harrogate Theatre
