Beginner’s Guide to Google Ad Grants 2017

Beginner’s Guide to Google Ad Grants 2017

Agenda For Today - 01 Introduce Google Ad Grants - What is it
Who qualifies and doesn’t? How much money do you get How to register? UK Technology Trust Keyword Research How Google AdWords works

Agenda For Today - 02 It’s going to be an information packed seminar but as with all of my talks, if any of you who would like a follow-up chat, I am happy to offer a free, no obligation, 45 minute one to one meeting with you. I am available after Monday 18th September, so please get in touch.

Attendee’s Take Aways No need to write down any web addresses … Just fill in the white forms & you will get all the URLs mentioned. You will also get a copy of this PowerPoint slideshow. Get useful notes on setting up a charity. Notes on constructing adverts … e.g. character limits for headings and narrative in your adverts. These will all be ed to you. Biggest take away …Get $10k each month in free advertising with Google.

Today’s Presenter Mike Loomey - Background in Entertainment Industry.
In about 2010, when Yellow Pages ceased to be effective, Mike realised that he badly needed a website and that website needed to rank well on Google. The slow process of turning “Mike the DJ” into “Mike the Web Designer” and later, “Mike the SEO and AdWords Guy” began.

Mike Loomey In 2012, Mike Qualified as an Adobe Certified Web Designer and began studying Search Engine Optimisation. After numerous courses elsewhere, in 2015, Mike enrolled full time at “ELATT Web Academy” for 6 months. ELATT is a UK registered charity Many of its courses are free and supported by Google Ad Grants

Mike Loomey In 2016, Mike joined 2 fellow ELATT qualified designers to form 3 in 1 Responsive Web Design. The company has grown and there are now 7 of us in total. 3 in 1 offer SEO. We design WordPress websites. We run SEO, Mobile App Design and offer Ad Grants Training.

Mike Loomey Today’s talk was put together by Mike with help from 3 in 1 colleagues Mihai on the left below and Alan on the right. I also had some invaluable help from another couple of companies, as you will see on the next screen ….

Acknowledgements - 01 In passing, I should also acknowledge another person without whom I would not have been nearly so well prepared for today’s talk She is Jo Ashbridge from Azuko Architects and she prepared all the info you will receive by about how to set your charity… the different corporate structures and everything you need to consider at the very outset.

Acknowledgements - 02 I did not know Jo personally but found her thru a fantastic FREE skill sharing company, which I can Heartily recommend. They are called Echo or Economy of Hours If you are a cash-strapped charity and need help or advice but cannot afford to pay for it, Echoes might be able to help. Check them out … Here is their link …

Enough About Us ! … How About You?
Can we have a quick show of hands if you are already have a website ? Is anyone already registered as a charity ? Anyone already registered with Ad Grants? Have you tried Google AdWords or AdWords Express ? How about SEO ? Your First Name What Line of Work Are You In? What Do You Hope to Gain From Today?

Goals for most charity websites are fairly similar - 01
Raise awareness for your cause Increase one-off donations Grow your , or telephone list. Sell goods or services on line in aid of your charity. Increase regular subscriptions Your First Name What Line of Work Are You In? What Do You Hope to Gain From Today?

Encourage people to attend, support, or take part in fund-raising events … For example sponsored walks, charity concerts, or black tie gala balls Distribute free tickets to awareness-raising events or courses. Your First Name What Line of Work Are You In? What Do You Hope to Gain From Today?

Offer advice and support to users Find staff or volunteers Impart news about past or future projects Share data & info re the charity’s core subject matter e.g. climate change. Your First Name What Line of Work Are You In? What Do You Hope to Gain From Today?

Using Google AdWords Funded by an Ad Grant Supported by a well-structured website … You will be able to drive much more traffic to very specific pages on your website. Your First Name What Line of Work Are You In? What Do You Hope to Gain From Today?

This increase in traffic and enhanced visibility will vastly improve your ability to achieve all your goals and raise more money Next question - How do you currently promote your website ? How could you improve that ? Your First Name What Line of Work Are You In? What Do You Hope to Gain From Today?

8 Ways to promote your charity website
Word of mouth (free) campaign (free) Employ annoying cold calling methods (costs) Social media campaign (mostly free) 5. Flyers / posters (costs) TV / radio / magazines / newspapers (costs) Use Google AdWords without any training ( costs a fortune! ) Use AdWords after training (still expensive)

Another Way to promote your charity website
Attend one of Mike’s almost free monthly SEO courses here at the City Business Library By having a great site and using SEO, you could slowly earn your place at the top of the google organic search rankings. Of course as a UK registered charity, you can sign up for a Google Ad Grant which is what we are here to chat about today However, don’t dismiss SEO entirely. The same techniques employed in SEO can be used to improve your Landing Page Quality Score This is something we will all be learning much more about later today. THE NEXT SLIDE IS SCREEN SHOT SHOWING THE NEXT SEO TALK IS ON TUES 26TH SEPT AT 10 AM THERE ARE TWO MORE TALKS ON OCT 11TH AND OCT 18TH.

The Very Best Way - Sign up for a Google Ad Grant
But what exactly is Google Ad Grants Is it right for you ? … Would you qualify ? How do you apply?

Who are Google Ad Grants for ?
Ad Grants is great for small & medium size non-profits & charities but large rich charities can and do apply. If your charity is struggling to make ends meet, or if you need help achieving the goals we have pinpointed, … Ad Grants could help enormously.

Google Ad Grants – Eligibility - 01
First … We will look at eligibility So, who qualifies ? …

These are some types of charities which, according to Google, would get the green light for Ad Grants … Cancer charities Women’s shelter Cat rescue charity Non-profit youth theatre Faith-based non-profit groups

Google cites these types of charities, saying that they would NOT qualify for Ad Grants. If in doubt, ask Google, or apply anyway! Government Agencies Hospitals & Medical Groups Schools & Most Academic Institutions Childcare Centres “Charities” purporting to offer financial products e.g. mortgages.

Steps to Apply for Google Ad Grants - 01
Now let’s go through the order that you have to do things before and during the application process and after you have been accepted. If you think you might be eligible for an Ad Grant, the very first I recommend is to create a free Google Gmail address and a suitable website for your charity. If you already have a personal Gmail or Googl account it would be much, much better to set up an additional one for the charity’s own exclusive use. These are my recommended steps … Download Google Chrome and set it as your browser of choice.

Log in to Google Chrome with your personal a/c and click the 3 little dots in the top right hand corner. Click “New incognito window” Create a brand new Gmail address e.g.

Please remember to go back into Incognito mode when you return at a later step in the process to apply for your Ad Grant. The reason for this is in case Google might accidentally log you back in as yourself and you will get in an awful mess.

Before you begin your Ad Grants application, you must hold current, valid provable charity status (i.e. be registered with the Charity Commission for England & Wales; and/or registered with HM Revenue & Customs as a charity for tax relief.) Setting up a charity and registering it is a complex process and well outside the scope of this short talk. I will send you some fairly detailed help notes and resources, along with a copy of this PowerPoint presentation. However, please take expert, professional legal and financial advice before you set anything up, or part with any money. This is my disclaimer.

By the time you submit the grant application, you must also have an established live website with substantial content. Most bone fide charity sites will have no problem complying with this requirement. However, if your site is brand new and you are short on ideas, look at the goals we pinpointed earlier and create a selection of separate pages for each goal that applies to you. Here are Ad Grants rules for your website …Check your site complies with them BEFORE you submit your form. Note that in some cases you may have to REMOVE rather than ADD content to the site to make it apply …

Your website cannot display AdSense Ads or Affiliate Advertising links, nor must it contain ANY pages with what Google considers “too many” external links. You also need to be seen to be providing what Google calls “Adequate” receipts to donors. As we will discover later, the Quality of your web pages and how relevant they are to your ads plays a big role in determining exactly how much you end up getting deducted from your Ad Grant for each time someone clicks on one of your ads. This will be something you will most certainly have to look at AFTER you get acceptance and as you create your first Ad Grant campaign.

Google assesses how relevant the site is to your advert in a similar fashion to the way an SEO guy would look at the site to see how well it matches a specific key phrase. Hence my suggestion that you attend one of my free SEO classes. The advice here is similar ... In SEO, Google looks at TEXT not pictures (however cute) or videos (however relevant). So, as well as pics and videos …ideally, before your ad grant submission and certainly before you create your first ad campaign, please make sure you have at least words on the most important pages.

Use the target key phrase in your narrative; your headings; sub-headings, image names etc. 3 in 1 can certainly help here if you need it. For a fuller list of the criteria on a web page that influence where it is listed in the search engine rankings, please check out the SEO PowerPoint presentation we will send to you along with the Ad Grants PowerPoint presentation.

You are allowed to sell items through your site …T-shirts; mugs; tickets etc. but you must be able to show that 100% of the profits made from these sales go exclusively to your charity. Your site must only request donations in the form of cash. You cannot encourage donors to give cars, boats, televisions etc. (even if they are intended as raffle prizes). Google needs to see that you are using the Ad Grants scheme to drive traffic solely to your OWN website and when visitors arrive there, they are not going to be sent elsewhere for nefarious purposes. This is the reason they will check your site to see how many external links there are and where they point.

As we have seen, a charity’s website can fulfil many roles. One of these may be collecting donations. The trickiest rule with which your website has to apply is (and I quote direct from Google here …) “Your system for collecting donations has to be contained within the site to which your ads point.” So there may be a potential problem if you are using “Just Giving” or similar to collect donations. There is a wealth of advice and discussion on this topic on the Google Ad Grant Forum. If this applies to you then I would not submit an Ad Grants application until you have completely satisfied yourself that you are collecting and visibly receipting donations in an acceptable fashion.

From what I have read, it would seem that you are probably ok if you can at least arrange to send donors back to a dedicated “thank you” page on your own site, once they have paid via “Just Giving.” However, please check this matter thoroughly yourself as Google’s advice on this rule is ambiguous to say the least.

Once you have a live website with substantial content which you feel meets or surpasses each of the criteria just detailed, register your charity website with the UK Technology Trust. This is essential as you need to quote your Technology Trust membership number on your Ad Grants application form. Let’s look at their HOME page and then their CATALOGUE. A brief glance will show how much is on offer to charities, apart from Ad Grants ! They co-ordinate huge discounts on a wide range of tech products from the likes of Google; Adobe; Amazon; Shopify; Go Daddy and Microsoft. Note also that many of these organisations offer discounts to STUDENTS too.

For Ad Grants, you will be offered a choice of 2 different programs If you want the fullest possible control and the ability to manage the campaign yourself as explained in today’s talk you should choose AdWords. This is the better choice … More flexibility … you can link to Google Analytics … better monitoring etc. AdWords Express is the other option. It is billed as a simple, low- maintenance campaign management tool but with it you are handing much of the control re the options to Google. So in my opinion Express is not ideally suited for Ad Grant users.

How Much Is The Basic Free Ad Grant ?
Your allowance is $10k per month … That’s $330 per day and for most people the grant is so generous that they cannot manage to spend it all. However, if you go over budget, do not worry .. your ads simply won’t appear. You are not suddenly going to be charged. The grant is on-going and not a one-off. You don’t have to re-apply Once approved, if you stick to the rules, it rolls on and on, month after month, forever. These are the most important rules to obey to stay qualified. …

Staying Qualified For Ad Grants
Log in to Ad Grants at least once a month. Make at least one change every 90 days Don’t link to any sites other than your own. Read all the rules and stick rigidly to them ! Now let’s have a look at how and where to apply for the grant in the first place …

How do I apply for Ad Grants ?
This bit is important ... you should register with “Google for Non Profits” using this form and NOT “Google Ad Grants”. “Google for Non Profits” is an umbrella platform from which you could gain access to other scheme like YouTube for Non-profits. Closely study & follow the Google account creation guide, when completing the form.

How Do AdWords Actually Work ? - 01
Once you have been accepted for your Ad Grant, you will be able to use the money to place free text adverts, using the Google AdWords system to promote your website. When someone performs a search in Google using one of your chosen key phrases, it triggers a block of text ads, hopefully including one of yours. Let’s have a look at how this works in practice by using ELATT as an example.

ELATT want to promote their FREE ENGLISH COURSES and have a $10,000 Google Ad Grant. They have created an ad and have bid (i.e. they have agreed to let Google deduct a certain amount of money from their grant) each time the ad appears in the Google search results and a visitor clicks on it. They have specified a range of key phrases which, when typed into Google, will trigger the ad’s appearance. One of these trigger phrases is ”FREE ENGLISH COURSES LONDON”. First let’s look at a screenshot of some their ads, including this one …

Next, I typed “Free English Courses London” into Google. You can see below, the ad is on PAGE ONE, in position 2. When I click it, I am taken to a very specific page …

Although Google has so far given away a massive $600m in Ad Grants, it’s main aim is still making money from paying advertisers. Naturally, therefore, it does not want charities “stealing” the lucrative top advertising slots by outbidding paying customers, using their Ad Grants. So it places a $2 maximum per key phrase on the amount of money which Ad Grant users can actually bid.

The more you are prepared to bid, up to this $2.00 maximum, the better placed the ad will appear in the search result. However, there are several factors apart from how much you are prepared to bid that affect how much you pay per click. I will explain … Although you can bid up to $2.00, your Ad Grants account is more likely than not to be debited with a different amount. I will explain with an example … The starting point for how much you pay, is your initial bid price … Let’s say, for example you bid the maximum, $2.00.

Factors Affecting How Much You Pay Per Click - 01
However, if the page you send people to, when they click the advert, perfectly matches what they are expecting to see, you will be rewarded by your cost per click going down a bit. Conversely, if you stupidly send them to a page which has nothing whatsoever to do with the ad, it will drastically go up. The page you send them to is known as the Landing Page. How well, in Google’s eyes, that page matches the searcher’s expectations, is reflected your Landing Page Quality Score.

Sending people to an average sort of page, not particularly great or bad, gets you a benchmark landing page Quality Score of 5 out of 10. You would neither be rewarded or penalised for that and would still pay your $2 bid price. A good landing page quality score of between 6 and 10 would reduce your $2.00 cost per click by as much as 50% Conversely, by sending somebody to a totally unconnected web page and getting a bad or poor quality score of between 1 to 4, you could end up paying a 400% surcharge on your bid price. Have a look at this chart …

In my experience, most advertisers, running their own campaigns, will just randomly guess the key phrases they pick to trigger their ads. They will have never heard of a landing page quality score. They will also be blissfully unaware of another factor that influences their costs per click … their advert’s CTR which stands for the Click Through Rate …

Google earns money every time a regular business’s advert is clicked, so naturally they want people to word their ads in a very tempting way, so that lots of visitors click on them. If an ad shows up 100 times and 10 people click on it, the click through rate or CTR is 10%. If an ad is re-worded and the CTR is increased to say, 25%, Google will reward the advertiser by decreasing their Cost Per Click.

You get great analytics with Ad Grants, so your should regularly monitor your ads’ Click Through Rates and tweak the wording to get that CTR as high as possible. Commercial AdWords users monitor this constantly to reduce their costs. In your case, you are doing it to make sure (1) your grant money stretches further and (2) that as many people click through to your landing page as possible. Next we will have a look at how to do some rigorous keyword research … Again we will use ELATT as an example.

Google AdWords Keyword Planner Tool - 01
The Google AdWords Keyword Planner is a tad tricky to master but after running it a few times, it becomes second nature. You can use it to find out How many searches there are per month for a particular phrase. How much competition there is from other users for that same phrase and Whether, with your $2 maximum bid, you have any chance of including it in your campaign.

I will take you through the keyword planner now, step by step, with no steps missed… Go to this page … … - Create an account and log in … Here is a screenshot of the opening page for you ..

Once you have logged in … a new screen will appear which looks like this …

Once you click … “Search for new keywords using a phrase, website or category” … the screen changes once again and you get this next page …

In the positions 1, 2 and 3 as shown on the next screenshot .. Please add the following .. 1 Enter a short, very general phrase describing the sort of keywords in which you might be interested e.g “Free English Language Courses London”. 2 Enter your target geographical area for the search e.g. “London” 3 Enter your target search language e.g. “English”. Save your preferences and Press the Get Ideas Button. Here’s a screenshot showing positions 1, 2 and 3 …

Once you click number 4 the “Get Ideas” button, the screen changes once again and you get this next page … This format gives you quite a lot of keyword research data but it is hard to read and impossible to interpret and what’s more, you probably want to save it. So click the “Download” button indicated.

Once you click “Download”, the screen changes once again and you get this next page …

Choose “Excel CSV” and hit “Download” once more … The screen changes yet again & you get this next page …

Now click “Save File” and wait … After a few moments, the screen changes and will be able to see the full Excel Spreadsheet with all your key phrase data on it … It looks something like this …

Some of the columns in the spreadsheet are surplus to our requirements. So, one at a time, click the top of each of the columns listed on the next screen to highlight them. The column will turn blue, then right-click somewhere further down within the body of that column and select “delete”.

The columns you can delete are as follows … Ad Group (C) Currency (G) Impr. Share (H) Organic impr. Share Organic avg. position (J) In account? (K) In plan? (L) Extracted From

The 4 columns you need to keep are … (B) Keyword (D) Avg. Monthly Searches (exact match only) (E) Competition (F) Suggested Bid After you have done your deletions the spreadsheet will look like this next screen. ONLY 4 COLUMNS REMAIN. You can see that I have now widened each of the remaining 4 columns making the headings and content more readable.

The next step is to click the very top of what is now column (C) – Competition. The entire column will turn blue Right-click within the blue area and select “Insert”. A brand new column will appear Label this new Column (C) “Search Level.” Your spreadsheet will now look like this …

Now click the very top of Column (B) “Average Monthly Searches”. The entire column will again turn blue. Towards the top right hand corner of the spreadsheet you will see a button labelled “ AZ Sort and Filter” … Click that “Sort A to Z“ – A pop-up appears showing the default of “Expand Selection”. Leave that default as it is and click “Sort”.

Column (B) with the “Monthly Search Quantities” in it is now in order - lowest to highest and you can easily fill in the appropriate search levels (zero to 5) in Column (C). What we are doing here is getting the entire spreadsheet into a format where we can easily colour code it, manipulate it, interpret it and make it more user friendly. The next screen shows the search level numbers that I always allocate … I suggest you use the same.

For search quantities 0 – 10 enter a search level of 0 For search quantities 10 – 100 enter a search level of 1 For search quantities 100 – 1k enter a search level of 2 For search quantities 1k – 10k enter a search level of 3 For search quantities 10k – 100k enter a search level of 4 For search quantities 100k – 1m enter a search level of 5 The spreadsheet now looks like this … I have centred the 3 columns on the right to make them easier to read.

Next, using the paint bucket icon in Excel, I colour code columns (B) and (C) with the levels as shown … Pick whatever colours you personally prefer but once you choose them, always stick to the same ones. For search level 0 = Ice Blue For search level 1 = Pink For search level 2 = Amber For search level 3 = Light Green For search level 4 = Mid Green (none this time) For search level 5 = Dark Green (none this time) The spreadsheet is now partly colour-coded looks like this … I have removed some lines in order to show you examples of all the colours on one single screen. You don’t have to do that.

We now have a pretty good idea how many people are searching for which phrases. You can see some figures for competition but you need to be able to interpret what they mean and make sense of them. Ideally, we are looking for is phrases with reasonably high search volumes but with low to medium competition .. The next stage essentially repeats the methodology we have just employed for the search levels but this time we will be looking at the competition column…

Click the top of Column (E) – “Suggested Bid” Column turns blue Right Click – Hit Insert New Column Appears Label the newly created column “Competition Level” Click the very top of Column (D) – “Competition”. Hit “Sort and Filter” – “Smallest to Largest” Leave default as “Expand the Selection” and hit “sort” again. Fill in the sort levels as before – This time they go from “0 to 4”. Use the following 2 screens to determine which sort levels are which and what colours to allocate to your paint bucket for each.

Where no data is shown or is 0 - Competition Level is 0 Where the figure is 0.01 to Competition Level is 1 Where the figure is 0.34 to Competition Level is 2 Where the figure is 0.67 to Competition Level is 3 The spreadsheet now looks like this …

Now, as previously, we are going to colour code it using this table. Competition Level 0 = Ice Blue Competition Level 1 = Mid Green Competition Level 2 = Amber Competition Level 3 = Pink The spreadsheet now looks like this …

And finally we can colour the far right hand end Column (E) – Your Suggested Bid Price These are the colours I use for that column … No data or 0.00 = Ice Blue 0.01 to 2.00 = Mid Green 2.01 and Above = Pink To tidy the spreadsheet up, I have both emboldened and used the WRAP TEXT button to clean up the headings. Here is the final version of the spreadsheet for you

Now, by clicking and sorting each column, you are in a fantastic position to quickly and easily see which key phrases would be most suitable for your campaign. As you are not actually paying for them, you can be a bit more cavalier in your choice than if you were a regular business. But essentially the same rules should apply … For monthly search volume go for greens or amber. Avoid ice blue and pink. For competition, go for green and amber, again, avoid ice blue and pink For suggested bid price – Go for green and avoid ice blue and pink. That’s it – Easy, wasn’t it !!!

Beginners’ Ad Grants Strategies - 01
You could have multiple goals and run multiple campaigns, all at the same time … This is what ambitious beginners usually attempt They get totally overwhelmed, fail miserably and rapidly give up. Especially when starting out, it is better to have just one campaign, one aim, one ad group and a manageable amount of key phrases … No more than, say, 10. This way you can see what is going on and remain in control. You can ramp things up once you have a good handle on how it all works. Common tactics later might include one Ad Group per web page or one ad group per each geographical area.

Soon after starting, you will be asked about (a) keyword matching; (b) negative keywords and all sorts of other stuff. My advice is again to start simple and go with the defaults. You are not paying cash so you can watch and learn from your mistakes. Once your ads are live, you can use the Google AdWords desktop and monitor how well the phrases are performing … which ads are driving donations or attracting volunteers etc.

We have already mentioned pointing ads to dedicated specially created, highly relevant landing pages Another great idea is to arrange it so that when someone clicks the ad and lands on that page, They only have ONE POSSIBLE COURSE OF ACTION … Donate, sign-up for newsletter etc No Alternatives whatsoever ! This tactic often produces great results. Some even remove the back button but I don’t advocate that.

Especially with charities, the one GOLDEN RULE is to create trust. Visitors can land on any of your pages, so make sure your name, address, phone number, photo and charity commission number are shown prominently on each and every page. Also, add badges / membership logos of all the reputable organisations to which you belong or are affiliated. On your website you should also include some checkable testimonials or thank you letters with accompanying success stories.

A common drastic error made by beginners is to pick key phrases which have high search volumes but with no tangible connection to the charity They arrange for an ad to pop up every time someone types in (for example) “Justin Bieber.” and when it is clicked it goes to their cat charity page. This is a very costly and totally erroneous practice that will rapidly eat into your allowance, won’t get you any donations and may well result in your ad grant account being closed, DON’T DO IT!

Consider using a pop-up asking for reader’s address, just as they are about to leave the site. They may not wish to donate right now but you can send them an informative, chatty newsletter once a month and stay in touch. Who knows … That person may eventually get involved and volunteer or at some point even donate some money.

Additional Help In the last year or so, Google seems to have put a lot more efforts into their basic Ad Grants offerings. They have withdrawn their Ad Grants Pro offer and the basic model discussed today is now staffed with regular employees from Google and not just volunteers. There is a lot more support with proper on-line help centres, plus a community forum and even a blog. There really could not be a better time to give Ad Grants a try.

And Finally … Ronnie Says … “Please neatly fill in those nice white forms on your chairs to get the notes on all you have seen and heard today and much, much more.”

Special Offers for All Seminar Attendees
You will receive a copy of this PowerPoint presentation and all the accompanying notes. Get a15% discount on our list prices for any Keyword Research, Web Design, Google Ad Grants set up, Adding Ad grants tracking, Any Ad Grants Maintenance or Tweaking or Any Landing page optimisation. You will get a formal written offer to meet without obligation to discuss you own Ad Grants campaign. Special Offers for All Seminar Attendees

Disclaimer The information contained in today’s talk is provided in good faith but Google can and does change its Ad Grants eligibility criteria AdWords methodology and SEO Algorithm without notice. Please treat today’s talk both as an introduction and hopefully also an inspiration Seek further expert qualified legal and financial advice before setting up your charity and especially before parting with any money.

Beginner’s Guide to Google Ad Grants 2017

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