 When most people think about nonprofits, they likely think of a group making a difference in their community. Maybe they think of a large organization such as Make-A-Wish, or maybe they think about a local animal shelter.
Funnel Digital Marketing is proud to partner with nonprofits so they can better serve their missions through digital advertising, and a big thing we keep in mind with these partnerships is to keep costs as low as possible so dollars are maximized to drive performance. With cost-effectiveness in mind, Funnel highly recommends nonprofits leverage Google’s grant program for Search Engine Marketing. This post summarizes what this program provides and how Funnel can help launch and manage this initiative. What Is The Google Ad Grants Program? The Google Ad Grants Program gifts free text-based ads against search queries to select 501(c)(3) nonprofit organizations. As of 2019, qualifying non-profit organizations are eligible to receive up to $10,000 per month in advertising to serve their missions and initiatives on Google.com. To qualify, nonprofits must go through the application process and meet the following organizational criteria:
Google Ad Grants are not available to the following types of organizations:
The following restrictions also apply:
Eligible nonprofit organizations can apply for Google Grants online. The approval process can take up to 10 business days. How Funnel Digital Marketing Can Help After a nonprofit is approved for the grant, many actions are required to launch ads, have them remain active, and ultimately perform. Here are some ways Funnel can help nonprofits accomplish these steps: Funnel Can Create And Manage All Assets Search Engine Marketing is a complex marketing channel. It requires building the right keywords to show against the most relevant queries, writing ad copy that drives engagement from searchers, setting the right audience targets, and much more. Across the team, Funnel has decades of experience working with paid search ads. We know from our expertise what works and doesn’t, and we stay current on the latest paid search changes and trends. We’ll be able to make the right keywords and messaging, implement the right settings, and read the data to make optimizations that will improve performance over time. Funnel Can Keep The Grant’s Account Compliant Upon receipt of a Google Grant, the grantee must follow a number of rules to remain in the program. Here are some examples:
Other grant rules require an in-depth knowledge of how the Google Ads platform works, and mistakes can lead to an account’s suspension. Here are some examples:
Funnel’s management of the grant account ensures all these rules are being followed when a campaign goes live. Additionally, Funnel also maintains a proprietary program that will automatically fix issues if a rule is inadvertently broken, and we’ll proactively address the problem before an issue arises with Google. Funnel Will Improve Your Account’s Performance Nonprofits have experienced a lot of success with the Google Grant Ads program, and Google lists many examples on their website illustrating this. Nonprofits who have worked with Funnel have experienced successes as well thanks to our management. For example, Atlanta Audubon Society is a nonprofit organization with the mission of building places where birds and people thrive. They accomplish this through conservation, education, and advocacy. When the organization started working with Funnel, we did a complete overhaul of Atlanta Audubon's Google Grant account to ensure best practices were being followed and to fully comply with Google's requirements. As a result, Atlanta Audubon's search visitors driven from Google's text ad program increased +1500% in one week in comparison to the account's previous two months. For more examples on how we’ve helped organizations, check out Funnel’s “Our Work” page. Have Questions Or Need Help? Reach out to Funnel today for a free consultation!
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 According to a new report released by SparkToro’s Rand Fishkin and Jumpshot, natural listings that appear within Google’s search result pages are becoming less effective at driving traffic. In the United States, organic’s click-thru-rate (# of clicks on the listing / # of times the listing was served) has decreased from 62.7% in 2016 to 60.4% in 2018 for desktop devices.  The rate of clicks for natural listings is significantly worse for mobile devices. The CTR has decreased from 40.1% in 2016 to 29.7% in 2018.  Click-thru-rates for natural listings are on the decline for two reasons:
Let’s take a deeper dive into these two factors: Why are more clicks going to ads? Over the years, Google has made dramatic changes to the way its paid listings are presented, and this is likely contributing to more clicks being directed away from natural listings to paid placements. For example, Google made an adjustment a few years ago that increased the number of ads that appear above natural listings. Google used to list 3 ads above natural links. Today, Google has four ads above natural links. The additional ads placed at the top of the page push natural links further down the page, and multiple eye-tracking studies (like this one from Mediative) have shown that content placed lower on the page isn’t noticed as well by searchers. The placement of ads above natural listings is particularly devastating to natural’s CTR on mobile devices. Because screen sizes are smaller, paid ads take a greater priority at the top of the page. Natural listings are pushed further down the page and require a greater effort on the searcher’s behalf to be noticed. For example, the query “men’s pants” on a large screen mobile phone only shows image & text ads. Viewing natural listings would require the searcher to scroll halfway down the result page.  Why are clicks disappearing? Google’s search pages are playing a larger role in delivering information. If the search page has the information a searcher wants, then there is no need for the searcher to click on an natural link that may contain the same information. For example, let’s say a Google searcher queries “line creek brewery”. Information like the brewery’s address, hours, phone number, upcoming events, and more are located in the page’s right-hand rail. If the searcher wants to know any of that information, a click to the natural link on top of the left-hand side of the page is not necessary.  What should businesses do?
Since answers and ads will continue to dominate Google’s search results moving forward, businesses should take the following two actions:
 When Microsoft’s CEO Steve Ballmer unveiled the Bing search engine at the All Things Digital conference in May 2009, Google was already the established king of search. Today, Bing continues to not be the most widely-used search engine, but it still offers some great marketing opportunities that can help organizations achieve their performance goals. Here are four reasons why organizations should consider appearing in Bing’s search results with paid ads: 1. The Bing Network has a respectable search engine market share These are the latest domestic search engine market share figures from Statcounter:  While these stats suggest going live on Bing would only give you the opportunity to appear on 5.86% of search engine queries, running ads from Microsoft’s Bing Ads platform actually allows you to appear on many more queries.
Microsoft has had a longstanding partnership with Yahoo!, and as of last month Bing now exclusively serves all search ads across Yahoo!’s properties. Additionally, Microsoft is responsible for delivering ads across DuckDuckGo and MSN, so Bing Ads would be responsible for powering ads across at least 11.70% of search engine queries within the United States. 2. Bing searchers are a great audience Search engine usage can vary by demographic, and Bing is commonly known as having the most affluent and oldest users. Here’s an overview of Bing’s users within the United States:
Additionally, running on Bing allows you to appear against searchers unique to its network. According to Microsoft, Bing can reach 63M searches that Google can’t, resulting in 27% of search clicks unique to Bing’s network. 3. Bing generates strong performance For example, one of Funnel’s major accounts has complete Google/Bing parity across keywords, creatives, campaigns, and so on. After completing an apples-to-apples comparison of Brand query performance, Bing came out ahead of Google. Bing had a conversion rate of 6.59% versus Google’s 4.59%, and Bing’s 15.07 ROAS beat Google’s 12.12. Additionally, we’ve noticed that Bing CPCs are typically cheaper than Google because there is less competition. These lower costs contribute to Bing’s higher return-on-ad-spend. 4. Bing has parity with Google’s search capabilities Both Bing and Google’s paid search foundations are the same. For example, they use the same account structure, creative specs, query matching capabilities, and much more. Additionally, whenever Google releases a new ad product or capability, Microsoft usually duplicated those new functionalities in a timely manner. Wrap-Up Interested in learning more about Bing or paid search in general? Reach out to us today to learn more.  When a business considers the ways it can drive more performance, Search Marketing should be the opportunity it prioritizes first. That's because Search Marketing generates awareness with consumers who are actively expressing interest in a product or service. It also drives website traffic most likely to convert by being at the right place at the right time. For example, let's say that a pizzeria wants to increase its delivery sales. To accomplish this, it gains a strong presence on Google's "pizza delivery" search result pages. By appearing in front of hungry-for-pizza searchers, it can increase awareness with its target audience and generate more sales by fulfilling the desire that sparked the consumer's query. Search result pages have two parts that are served by different practices:
 Let's take a deeper dive into these practices that serve each part of the page. Search Engine Optimization (SEO) Google and other search engines use crawlers that go across the Internet and gather information about all the content they can find. The crawlers bring all those 1s and 0s back to the search engine to build an index. That index is then fed through an algorithm that tries to match all that data with certain queries that bring value to the searcher. While the engines do not openly share how their algorithms decide what content should show on specific search queries, SEO specialists know certain actions can be taken to improve the likelihood of strong natural presence. These actions fall into two categories: on-page actions & off-page actions. Here are some example on-page actions that can improve a page's natural presence:
Here are some example off-page actions that can improve a page's natural presence:
Search Engine Marketing (SEM) Like SEO, SEM also requires both technical and creative actions to attain a strong presence within search result pages. Both require figuring out the right queries to show against, constructing a fast and responsive site (especially for mobile devices), having site content that serves the need of the searcher, and so on. However, SEM differs from SEO in some significant ways. Here are five examples:
There are a few other things to know about paid search:
What's Best For My Business? Ideally, a business should maintain a strong presence in both paid and natural search listings for several key reasons:
Conclusion While other online channels like Facebook can contribute to performance, Search Marketing is arguably more important in making a business successful. Search Marketing provides awareness and conversions like no other marketing channel can, and it plays a huge role in "closing the sale" with searchers actively looking to fulfill a want or need. As a result, SEO & SEM can provide a higher rate of return when compared to other forms of marketing.  According to 2017's Google Economic Impact Report, businesses make an average of $2 in revenue for every $1 they spend on Paid Search ads. This makes sense because you only pay for traffic from queries you strategically decide to show your ad against.
For example, if a plumbing company wants to generate new leads for "plumbing companies near me" queries, it can appear against just those queries, and it will only get charged when someone clicks the advertisement and visits the plumbing company's website. Can you think of another form of advertising where the intent to purchase is higher? Your potential customer is literally typing what they want into Google, and your advertisement will only populate on queries relevant to your business goal. Contact us to learn more! |
