(Photo by Mitchell Luo on Unsplash)

Supporting the Social Impact Ecosystem with Google Ad Grants

As the founder and director of strategy at JB Media Group — a Certified B Corporation digital marketing agency — I aim to support impact-driven companies, social enterprises, and nonprofits. When our values align, we love supporting for-profit and nonprofit organizations. However, we have honed a specialized skill set to maximize reach and qualified website traffic to our nonprofit clients.

I’m talking about the Google Ad Grants program, an often overlooked or under-utilized free advertising program at the intersection of Google’s pay-per-click advertising service and the free suite of tools offered through the Google for Nonprofits program.

Over the last 12 years, our digital marketing agency has helped dozens of nonprofit organizations launch, resurrect, and optimize their Google Ad Grants program. Our longest-running projects have unlocked over $1 million in free advertising and over 500,000 in free, highly targeted website visitors. In 2018, our team was even able to help B Lab relaunch and maximize this free advertising program.

Growing the social impact movement requires for-profit businesses and nonprofits to work closely with one another. I know many B Corps work with, volunteer for, and support amazing nonprofits, and my goal is to spread the word about this program so no one misses out on this fantastic opportunity.

What Is the Google Ad Grants Program?

The Google Ad Grants program offers $10,000 of in-kind Google Ads for eligible nonprofits. That equates to up to $120,000 yearly in free search advertising. Google Ad Grants is a powerful digital marketing opportunity that can help organizations gain exposure, boost fundraising efforts, and connect with aligned people who are likely to become supporters, program participants, members, volunteers, or donors. Our Google Ad Grants guide provides more information.

I’d like to share a few Google Ad Grants best practices and success stories below.

How the Google Ad Grants Program Can Help Nonprofits

The Google Ad Grants program is based on the traditional Google Ads pay-per-click advertising system. It can offer similar benefits that make the paid program a popular digital advertising option for many businesses.

For nonprofits, the primary uses of Google Ad Grants include:

• Promoting educational, thought leadership, and research-based content: Organizations typically produce educational or thought leadership content to share their knowledge and expertise with broader audiences. The Google Ad Grants program can help ensure that visitors find your nonprofit’s content marketing efforts for the topics and keywords on which you focus the content.
• Promoting programs: Many nonprofits offer programs or initiatives, including paid and free offerings, to attract new participants. Google Ad Grants can help nonprofits promote these programs if people search for keywords related to their offerings.
• Promoting events and seasonal promotions: If a nonprofit’s event, such as a conference or training program, is connected to a topic people are searching for, Google Ad Grants can be part of the marketing strategy.
• Growing their following: Nonprofits should give their website visitors compelling reasons to join their email list. The Google Ad Grants program is an effective tool for promoting downloadable resources that require visitors to opt-in to their email list, such as guides, research reports, free tools, free training programs, and other value-added content.
• Awareness building and fundraising: There are various ways nonprofits can build broader awareness by connecting with Google search engine audiences. While direct fundraising is not a typical use case for Google Ad Grants, the effective use of the program can build awareness, web traffic, and audience growth, which can lead potential donors to be aware of and engaged with the organization and build future fundraising momentum.

Certified B Corporations are businesses that focus on more than making a profit. Discover how B Corps are using business as a force for good by prioritizing people and planet in everything they do.

10 Best Practices for Optimizing the Google Ad Grants

Over the years, we have uncovered 10 tactics differentiating highly effective Google Ad Grants campaigns from unsuccessful ones. By integrating these methods, you’ll optimize your online presence, enhance engagement with your audience, and ultimately drive your nonprofit’s mission forward.

1. Start with comprehensive keyword and topic research: Any strong content strategy or pay-per-click advertising campaign must begin with keyword research. Keyword research can help an organization set realistic expectations and goals, guide Google Ad Grants campaign design and structure, and help inform what new content you must develop to ensure a successful campaign.
2. Set up and tune your Google Analytics account properly: Having GA4 and Google Tag Manager set up correctly is critical for success with Google Ad Grants.
3. Design user-friendly landing pages: Using appropriate calls to action and internal cross-promotion is critical to help ensure Google Ad Grants traffic takes the relevant actions on the website. Reduce the bounce rate (the percentage of people who only look at one page) with the use of user experience best practices, such as adding video and infographics whenever possible, contact forms ideally tied to downloadable resources or value-added offers over simply newsletter signups, and internal links to related content, reports, guides, and programs.
4. Develop strategic, optimized website content: Google Ad Grants uses complex quality and relevancy algorithms for keywords, ads, and website content. The content must match the keywords in the Google Ads campaign. One catch-all landing page cannot use all Google Ads groups. Creating properly optimized content adds beneficial impacts by helping the website show up higher in search engine organic results.
5. Track conversions to unlock advanced targeting: Tracking conversions is not just a nice-to-have tactic; it is necessary to enable various advanced targeting and keyword bidding options in the Google Ad Grants program.
6. Remember to factor in negative keywords: It’s easy to optimize lazy accounts with Google Ad Grants because it’s free. The most successful campaigns find it helpful to weed out low-quality traffic by adding negative keywords.
7. Use Google Ad Grants to build an audience: Google Ad Grants are extremely helpful for promoting gated content, which requires someone to join your email list before accessing the full content. Whenever possible, offer an option for people to enter their contact info (name, email, etc.) in exchange for branded digital resources.
8. Focus on traffic quality vs. quantity: Another common yet less effective optimization tactic is focusing on total traffic over quality traffic. If your traffic is low quality (has a high bounce rate, low time on the website, and low conversion rate to your internal website goals), go back to the keyword research and content development steps and refine your strategy.
9. Think creatively to uncover the best campaign opportunities: Remember to add new campaigns as your goals and priorities change. Launch new campaigns for:
   - New initiatives, programs, research/reports, new partnerships, etc.
   - Time-sensitive issues, such as mainstream news stories, politically relevant stories, seasonal events, or efforts.
10. Regularly review and adjust keywords and campaigns: Optimize the campaigns at least four times yearly. Google will pause inactive or unmanaged accounts after 90 days.

Learn more about the 10 secrets to maximizing the Google Ad Grants program.

This downloadable guide from B Lab U.S. & Canada features B Corp collaboration examples to help more businesses and organizations find ways to go beyond their own impact to support other companies, community members, and more.

Google Ad Grants Success Stories

B Lab

Since 2018, our team has managed Google Ad Grants for B Lab — a nonprofit network transforming the global economy to benefit all people, communities, and the planet. B Lab had Google Ad Grants in place but encountered challenges that led to Google deactivating its account. Uncertain of the best approach to fixing the issues, B Lab contacted JB Media for help. We solved these challenges, reinstated their Google Ad Grants account, constructed new campaigns, and set up solid conversions to chart progress. This case study lets you learn more about our work with B Lab.

B Lab wanted to track conversions across other domains, including newsletter signups, registrations, and form submissions. They were looking to grow awareness of the B Impact Assessment and promote their thought leadership on climate action, racial equity, and stakeholder capitalism.

Global Impact Investing Network (GIIN)

GIIN is a company dedicated to increasing impact investing’s scale and effectiveness worldwide. We’ve managed their Google Ad Grants for four years, driving qualified traffic to membership inquiries and white paper downloads. Our work helped strengthen the SEO work that the organization had already been doing, added meaningful conversions, and led to further brand recognition in impact investing and measurement.

The GIIN was interested in tracking white paper downloads, inquiry forms, and surveys. They wanted to promote their thought leadership on impact investing, gender lens investing, and catalytic capital.

Digital Promise

Digital Promise is a leading nonprofit organization focused on access to education, digital equity, and other topics related to equity in the education sector. Our project for Digital Promise combined SEO work with launching the Google Ad Grant to drive traffic to their priority research and thought leadership topics.

We also helped their team understand the SEO and Google Ad Grants opportunities at the intersection of AI and the education sector.

Certifying as a B Corp is a major milestone and accomplishment — but it is just one part of a company’s ongoing impact improvement journey. This downloadable guide features information for people new to or curious about the Certified B Corporation community.

Rare.org

Rare.org is a leading biodiversity conservation nonprofit focused on behavior change, innovative social finance, and related policy work in sustainable fishing, regenerative farming, and climate action. The Rare.org team already had a successful Google Ad Grants campaign, and the team at JB Media helped fully optimize the existing grant and update the organization’s long-term content and SEO strategy. Doing so helped ensure future content development efforts served organic search and Google Ad Grants opportunities.

Carolina Public Press

Carolina Public Press, an independent nonprofit news organization in North Carolina dedicated to nonpartisan, in-depth, and investigative news, contacted us for help with some Google Grant goals. These included support in going through the grant application and getting their Google Ad Grant reinstated, frequently updating high-quality critical terms based on news headlines, and growing the number of Carolina Public Press subscribers.

Regarding conversions, Carolina Public Press was interested in tracking phone calls. They wanted to support the coverage of critical regional news, including elections.

NC Arboretum

JB Media Group manages and helps optimize Google Ad Grants for the NC Arboretum, an arboretum and botanical garden located within the Bent Creek Experimental Forest of the Pisgah National Forest. We use these free advertising dollars to help maximize conversions and promote their primary focus areas, including things to do in Asheville, adult education programs, school trips, and excursions.

Regarding conversions, the NC Arboretum was interested in tracking form submissions and ticket purchases for their events and calls to their offices. They focus on promoting major fundraising events and seasonal promotions.

Could Your Favorite Nonprofits Benefit from Google Ad Grants?

Google Ad Grants can be a transformative tool for nonprofits looking to amplify their impact. JB Media Group can answer questions and assist with navigating the application or account management process.

B The Change gathers and shares the voices from within the movement of people using business as a force for good and the community of Certified B Corporations. The opinions expressed do not necessarily reflect those of the nonprofit B Lab.