This is my favorite part of the whole conversation. So that's exactly the objection we hear, you know, this sounds great. But we do not have a budget for spending money on online advertising. And the cool thing is that Google has a program which many nonprofits, but not not, as many as we would like, are familiar with. It's called the Google Ad grant. And it gives nonprofits $10,000 a month, every month, indefinitely. So into the indeterminate future, to spend on ads in Google search. – Grant Hensel

Did you know that Google has a grant available to non-profits? This means that you can get ad money for Google ads for FREE! That's right – get in front of your audience in a more meaningful way and start growing and scaling your non-profit. Grant is here to talk with us about how it works and to give you ideas for how to best maximize it.

In this episode you'll learn:

→ what Google ads are and why they can be so impactful.
→ what role content plays in creating your ads.
→ how you can get your Google ads for FREE!
→ what metrics you'll need to follow up with.
→ how to set your website up for success
→ writing ads that convert.

Want to skip ahead?  Here are some key takeaways:

[4:57] Google ads allow you to get your content you're creating to show up immediately in search. While organic search is still important, this can get you quick wins with people finding your organization. You can also then test the things that people want to know more about so you can more effective conversions on your website.
[5:44] Google's ad grant program allows non-profits to get $10,000 in ad spend each month for free. There are very few limitations as far as who can get access to these funds. In the US its mostly schools and hospitals. It's a fairly easy process to get approved and there is no limit to the grant so funds won't run out. You do have to meet certain criteria with the quality of your ads, but you'll want to do that anyway in order to have ads that convert.
[8:25] Google has compliance rules for ads that organizations need to adhere too. This is so that Google can feel confident that the information you're showing someone when they click on your ad is what they're expecting to find and valuable to them.
[10:50] People are going to be clicking from the ad to your website. That means that your website needs to be set up to appropriately receive that traffic and provide the right content to them at that time. The best way to get people to dive deeper and spend more time on your website is to create content that answers the questions they're searching for. Then with CTA's on your website you can drive them to the next step you want them to take.
[18:40] Figure out your goals with your ads and what you want to accomplish. You want to present the information to them that's going to encourage them to dive deeper into your organization and learn how you support your community. Then they'll be more likely to donate. Don't ask for marriage on the first date.
[23:03] Don't be scared to start running the ads once you've got all your content in place. Like anything you do in marketing, it's a skill you have to learn and it all starts with understanding the structure within Google Ads.

Resources

Answer the Public
SpyFu

Full Transcript

[INTRO] Hey there, Sami here with you for another episode of the digital marketing therapy podcast. And today, I am so excited to talk to you about Google Ad grants. This is an amazing resource that not a lot of organizations know is available to them. And I was lucky enough to be introduced to our guest today, Grant Hansel from a client of ours, The Guardian Group. And we just have had some lovely conversations about how holistically we can look at website marketing, for nonprofits, and you know, paid advertising and email marketing and all of the things to really maximize content creation for you guys, and make sure that the content you're creating is getting the eyeballs that it needs is getting the eyeballs that it deserves, and is more importantly helping you grow within the goals of your business.

So Grant Hensel is the founder and CEO of NonProfit Megaphone, my guest today, they are a company that focuses 100%, on the Google Ad grant, they manage the Google grant for nearly 400 nonprofit organizations more than anybody else in the world remarkably, and he has a wealth of knowledge and has so many ideas and strategies for you to keep your website moving.

Take advantage of this Google Ad grant, we're going to talk a little bit more about that in the episode, and really get more visibility for your organization in a way that maybe you never thought was possible. Okay, so I hope you take a listen, I know a lot of you are working on finalizing your strategies for 2021. And I promise you, this is one that should absolutely be a part of that.

Okay. But before we get into this episode is brought to you by our digital marketing therapy session. These are 30 minute sessions held via zoom, where we can talk through wherever you're stuck. And think after you listen to this episode, I would love to brainstorm with you topics for your content ways to generate content, how to kind of build that base up on your website so that you can get moving with us Google grants. So head on over to https://www.thefirstclick.net/officehours schedule your time with me today. And we you know, we can get some stuff done before everybody kind of shuts down for the holiday season. Okay, so https://www.thefirstclick.net/officehours, I look forward to seeing you on my calendar. But for now, let's get into the episode.

[CANNED INTRODUCTION] You're listening to the Digital Marketing Therapy Podcast. I'm your host, Sami Bedell-Mulhern. And each week, I bring you tips from myself and other experts, as well as hot seats with small business owners and entrepreneurs to demystify digital marketing and get you on your way to generating more leads and growing your business.

[SAMI BEDELL-MULHERN] So everyone, please join me in welcoming Grant Hensel to the podcast. Grant, thanks for joining us.

[GRANT HENSEL] Absolutely. Thanks for having me.

[SAMI BEDELL-MULHERN] And we are talking about Google Ads today, which I think is something that people get nervous about, don't think they can do, get scared by what is your feeling on Google ads?

[GRANT HENSEL] Absolutely. So Google ads are basically our whole world. And we in our experience, Google ads can often be one of the most powerful tools that nonprofits have at their disposal for reaching their audience or people that are searching for what they do the cool thing about, as you think about different types of online advertising, a lot of people are familiar with Facebook ads, you probably see them all the time. Those are targeted based primarily on demographic information. So I want to reach you know, 28 to 42 year old females in Chicago, for example. And that's, that's certainly powerful for specific types of advertising.

And the cool thing about Google is that it's all based on intent. So let's say you are a humane society, and you're trying to reach people who are considering adopting a pet. The cool thing about Google is that you can choose to only show your ad when someone literally types in, adopt a pet or, you know, animal shelters near me or even buy a dog. And then maybe you could sort of interrupt their intention to go and buy a dog and explain the benefits of adoption. So it's advertising based off of intent. And it lets you reach people in the moment where they're thinking about things that are relevant to what your organization does, which is extremely powerful. So we think it's a really cool tool. And we can get into it more that that's, that's sort of the big picture.

[SAMI BEDELL-MULHERN] And those ads show up right at the top of search. So you're getting that prime real estate.

[GRANT HENSEL] Exactly. someone types in, you know, adopted dog, and then your little link for your website. And the text that you've chosen to display is showing up right at the top there, whether someone's on a desktop or on a phone. And you know, you are the thing that's at the top of their screen as they're expressing that query to Google, so to speak.

[SAMI BEDELL-MULHERN] Well, and I think what I love about Google ads as well is organic search is also super powerful, but is a much longer gameplay. And Google Ads allow you to kind of see those quick wins and get up there much faster because you're paying for that space.

[GRANT HENSEL] 100% it's it's so much faster than organic searches. And that lets you just try out a lot of stuff really quickly. And you know, see what works and see what will be most impactful.

[SAMI BEDELL-MULHERN] Okay, so before we get into some strategies on how you might want to maximize that space, I can hear people saying, well, we can't afford ads like that there's no way we could compete in that space, or we couldn't compete with other for profit entities that might be going after those same keywords. So why don't you talk a little bit about the Google Ad grants program. And the amazing opportunity that's there that people might not know about?

[GRANT HENSEL] This is my favorite part of the whole conversation. So that's exactly the objection we hear, you know, this sounds great. But we do not have a budget for spending money on online advertising. And the cool thing is that Google has a program which many nonprofits, but not not, as many as we would like, are familiar with. It's called the Google Ad grant. And it gives nonprofits $10,000 a month, every month, indefinitely. So into the indeterminant future, to spend on ads in Google search.

And so essentially, what happens is, you have a Google Ads account. And you can choose the keywords that you want to target, you can choose the ads, you can write the ads that you want to display. And then when your ad shows and someone clicks on it, Normally, you would be charged real money. But with a Google Ad grant, Google pays for the click. So Google is paying itself, you know, to advertise your organization so that there's no, there's no cost for you for that click.

And it from the vast majority of nonprofits, $10,000 a month is more than they will need. It'll allow them to show ads to everyone who's searching for anything related to what they do, and reach all of those people. And there's no way for an organization to ever be charged real money at the Google Ad grant program, you never even put in a form of payment information. Google couldn't charge you if they wanted to. And it's a tremendous resource.

[SAMI BEDELL-MULHERN] I mean, can you imagine having a $10,000 ad budget, because for free? Exactly. That's crazy.

[GRANT HENSEL] And the cool thing is that the vast majority of nonprofits are eligible. So as long as you're a 501(c)3 organization, that's this is in the United States, they're sort of the analog is true for other countries as well. But as long as you're a 501(c)3 , and are not a hospital or school, those two areas have been specifically carved out. And they're not eligible for the grant. But every other type of nonprofit is eligible. And there's not a limited number of grants available. So if you apply for it, and it's a little bit of an involved process, but as long as you do it correctly, and you sort of check all the boxes, you have a decent website to send people to, you will receive the grant. So we have helped, literally hundreds of organizations get the grant. And we have 100% success rate. So it's not, it's not like a traditional grant.

[SAMI BEDELL-MULHERN] That's awesome. So okay, so now that we've got that objection aside, I kind of want to jump into some ways to think about because you don't I mean, you don't want to be like, okay, here's $10,000, I'm just going to go start running ads, like we still want because there are some requirements, right regarding the quality of the ads that you put out, and where you're driving people too. So you do want to put a little bit of thought behind it before you just start to go out and create your ads.

[GRANT HENSEL] Absolutely. There's a number of they're called compliance rules that Google's put in place. And they essentially force you to follow the best practices for advertising on Google. And the nice thing is that the best practices make sense.

So Google's essentially trying to ensure that when a searcher sees an ad for your organization, that that ad makes sense in the context of what they're looking at. So if you were if you're trying to get your ad to show if someone searched for, like tennis rackets, and your ad says adopted dog, that doesn't make sense. And Google is going to, their algorithm will actually prevent that ad from showing because it can detect the relevance between the keyword and what your ad is, and then the page you're sending people to so it's going to be like, Okay, this person is looking for tennis rackets. Your ad is about adopting dogs. And your website is the Humane Society homepage. So there's not a connection there. So we're really not going to show that ad, right. And so anyway, and there are other rules about you know, you have to maintain a certain click through rate and so forth, which we can get into if we want to, but the big picture is it forces you to make sure that you're delivering a good experience for the searcher?

[SAMI BEDELL-MULHERN] Well, I think people want to harp on Google for setting these restrictions or harp on Google for their algorithm changes. But really, at the end of the day, it is just to provide a better customer experience for people that land on your website anyway, which leads to more conversion. So they really are just trying to support you in really being the best version of yourself to get the right people because you can have 100,000 people coming to your website, but if if they're the wrong people, it doesn't matter. Right?

[GRANT HENSEL] It doesn't matter and if anything, it's you know, counterproductive. We have lots of conversations with the Google Ad grants team based out of California and a big line that Michelle, who's the head of the program has repeated a number of times as we want people to shift their focus from meaningless spends. People sometimes get it sort of wrapped up around how much of the grants are they spending or meaningless clicks? Just how many people are coming and move people towards focusing on meaningful conversions? What are the next steps? Are people watching videos, they volunteering? Are they donating, submitting forms? They signing up for things? And that's what ultimately moves the needle?

[SAMI BEDELL-MULHERN] Yeah. Okay, so let's talk a little bit about the types of ad content that you might want to create and how because you mentioned, so we want the website to be set up correctly, to be able to support the ads, the traffic and make sure that the whole the whole circle is being completed. Right. So what are some ad types that you've maybe seen some major success with? And what needed to be on the website in order to support that?

[GRANT HENSEL]  Yeah, this is really the key, you've totally sort of hit it on the head, because it like we talked about with the relevance question, to reach the people that are interested or should be interested in the organization, you have to think about what are the types of topics that those people will be searching for?

So if you're a humane society, maybe what people are researching, you know, what does it look like to adopt an animal? What is the cost of adopting an animal? What are the things that I should think about before I adopt an animal? And all these questions, you can actually get data and we can we can help people get data on, or there free tools out there that help you get data on how many people are searching for these different types of things, these specific questions, and you want to have content on your website that specifically addresses them.

So if someone is searching, you know, how much does it cost to adopt an animal? In a perfect world, you would have a page on your website that specifically answers that question goes into detail, and then has some kind of call to action, like a next step. And you know, now that you know, this, you know, set up an appointment to, to start adopting, or whatever.

And there's a great tool called answer the public, which is free, it's just https://answerthepublic.com  and you can put in, you know, if you just put in like, short phrases, or better, so like, dog adoptions, or adopt dog or something, it will give you all the questions that people are searching for. And that's great content ad, that'll be really impactful with the Google Ad grant.

[SAMI BEDELL-MULHERN]  So there's a couple of things that I love about this, because I'm always preaching, create regular and consistent content, I don't care what your business is, like, it's something that long term is going to support your business. And so this is kind of reinforcing that, but then also giving you the quick win off that content that you're creating, because now you can put an ad out towards it while it's also gaining that organic juice.

But also the question piece, like if you really think about how people are searching there, they've got their, you know, devices in their homes or their phones, and they're not typing in dog adoption, like they're typing in, where should I adopt the dog. And that's just the way that things are turning. So it's kind of pulling all of a bunch of different strategies together. And one way that can benefit your organization, short term and long term.

[GRANT HENSEL] Absolutely. And we are it sounds similar to you such fans of adding regular content to the website. And like you said, nonprofits have a unique advantage here. If you're a for profit company, you write a blog post, now you have to wait like the six months and spend a lot of time to sort of get Google to rank it high enough to like, make a difference. If you're a nonprofit, you can have Google Ad grant ads running the next day, that are immediately bringing people that new content, it's so much faster. And that just makes us excited. We think nonprofits should have more advantages, and we love that they have this one.

[SAMI BEDELL-MULHERN] No, it's it's a game changer, I think and, and the beauty of it too, is for small organizations or national large organizations it can support like across the board. So it's not like you know, the little community organizations that have you know, maybe all a whole volunteer board, they can still take advantage and help this to grow in skill and what they're doing.

[GRANT HENSEL] Absolutely. We have a client, it's also animal related. It's called Kennel to Couch and they help pitbulls get adopted specifically. And there's the I'll give you the one second background, but pitbulls oftentimes are slower to be adopted, and they can sort of take up a lot of space over time and animal shelters. So if you get this organization partners with shelters to get their longest tenured resident, adopted, which then allows the shelter to to help more animals over time. And they went from basically zero over a period of about 18 months to you know, fully utilizing the ad grant and not that spend is what matters, but they're they're maxing it out because they were so diligent and continuing to add content, do the research, figure out what people are searching for, add the content. And now it allows them to reach you know, 10s of 1000s of people every month from literally starting at zero.

It is an all volunteer, it's it's basically one guy who's incredible, who's a volunteer. And, and the organization runs on a shoestring budget. But just by adding the content, it becomes enormously impactful for them.

[SAMI BEDELL-MULHERN] So let's talk a little bit about then like, like you said, they had zero budget. And obviously, like, as you grow, and as your ad ads, expand, you can increase more of your budget. But let's talk a little bit about national versus local. So I mean, would you say people in small communities can take advantage of the ad grant just as much as national communities can?

[GRANT HENSEL] 100%, we have, you know, the majority of our clients are not national organizations, just because there are more local organizations in the world. And the thing that we think about is, how much content do you have on your website, as discussed and how many people are searching for the thing that you do, or the topics that you're involved in. If you're a local organization, but you're addressing topics that a lot of people care about, and maybe even that people care about on a regional or national basis, even if you're just local, that grant is a fantastic way to reach those people.

The only time we would say like, and maybe it's it's not the best fit for you as if you're, you know, extremely local can only serve people in like a one block radius, you know, there's only 5000 of them total, then Okay, fine, the ad grants, probably not as effective. But we have, you know, scores of clients that are very local, but very successful at the address.

[SAMI BEDELL-MULHERN] So I this kind of makes me kind of beg the question with the smaller organizations or the more hyperfocus, like is there like, there could even be an opportunity to create content on your website that's super collaborative. So maybe you're an environmental organization that only support like one river conservation project, but maybe you could partner with a bunch of other like, product projects that are small, and utilize the Google Ad grant to create like a collective bigger message to the world for people that care about river conservation.

[GRANT HENSEL] Absolutely. And I mean, if you think about if we take that sort of hypothetical example, the people that you want to get involved in protecting this one river might be all across the country, it might just be people that that care about protecting the environment and conserving natural resources. And if you can create content that's compelling for them, you can have some kind of email list where you know, you keep them up to date on the work that you're doing. And those could be ads that you run nationally, and now your local organization is is beginning to sort of galvanize a national movement, that is focused on conservation in general, and maybe that river in particular. And you know, that that's just a setting that you tweaked in Google ads, which is fantastic.

[SAMI BEDELL-MULHERN] Yeah, cuz it's super I cuz I like I want to go back to what you said at the beginning, the difference between kind of a Google ad and a Facebook ad, is if I'm intentionally searching for something and your organization shows up, I'm much more likely to dive in and engage versus if I'm just scrolling through Facebook, and I've never heard of you before. And now all of a sudden, I'm seeing this ad about, you know, the community that you serve. Right?

[GRANT HENSEL] It lets you advertise just to the people that have literally raised their hands and said, I care about x topic, because they're looking for information on it in and you know, Google is where we look for information. Mm hmm. Yeah.

[SAMI BEDELL-MULHERN] Okay. So now I want to drive home, this, this idea, because I want people to understand, like, we do not want to run ads that are like, hey, donate to insert organization, right? Like, those types of things don't convert very well, that's not make taking advantage of the dollars that you're given.

[GRANT HENSEL] Exactly. And I mean, the funny thing that we sort of joke is that very few people have ever typed into Google, I have too much money, and I need to get rid of it. Sadly, I'm very excited for when that day does come. But they do just search for things like you know, you know, what are what is the impact of, you know, fertilizers getting into water systems, and you know, causing algae bloom or whatever it is. And those people are interested in what you do, and you can reach them you can begin building a relationship and then as you build that trust, you know, you're not asking for marriage on the first date, but you are asking for a first date and say, Hey, learn more about what we're doing and and maybe eventually you'd be interested in supporting our work.

[SAMI BEDELL-MULHERN]  Okay, so I know this is separate from the ad grant but just to kind of pull everything full circle so then if I have searched for something that I'm passionate about, I land on this nonprofits blog post that has been talking about this thing that I want more information on and you know, that call to action that very specific ask for people to take the next step is super important. So do you have any ideas or thoughts that you want to share with people about what those call to actions kind of look like and how, how they can maximize them.

[GRANT HENSEL] In our perfect world, the call to action would be something that gives you the ability to continue the conversation with the donor, or sorry with the individual who maybe would hopefully become a donor. But in our perfect world, if you can somehow do something where you're capturing someone's email address and can communicate with them on an ongoing basis, it gives you a chance to build that relationship. We've seen lots of organizations be really creative on this.

So they'll have petitions, which you can sign up using your email address, or they'll have resources that you can get emailed to you using your email address. And, and that's sort of the gold standard. There are other very impactful things you could have PDFs that you could download without your email address, but maybe it's you know, something that people will, will use, or it's a helpful thing that they'll put up by their desk or, you know, whatever videos that they could watch that'll tell a really impactful and memorable and emotionally compelling story. Anything that you can do to help someone learn more about what you're doing, why it's so unique and special and starting to build that emotional bond.

[SAMI BEDELL-MULHERN] Yeah, no, I agree. Because I'm a huge fan of email marketing. And I think that's the way that you turn your, your ad like that's, that's one of the ways that you can really figure out how much is your ad spend in any paid situation? Like, how is that actually converting into ROI, right?

[GRANT HENSEL] Absolutely. And some organizations are trying to reach people who they can directly serve. So we serve a lot of organizations that provide information around rare health care conditions. And so you're trying to get information into the hands of people that can utilize it.

We have an organization called COPD foundation, works with, you know, people that have that respiratory condition, and they have a screener tool that lets you if you're wondering if you have COPD, it lets you sort of put in some of the symptoms you're experiencing, and get a sense. And that's a fantastic conversion to track. It's it's a helpful thing for the visitor gives them really valuable and potentially life changing information and starts to build that connection with the organization.

[SAMI BEDELL-MULHERN] Yeah, that no, I think that's really brilliant. Because the whole thing is, in all of your marketing, being authentic, and being true to your vision and mission and making sure all of the things that you're publishing, right, like, we also don't want to be putting out blog posts that are spammy and don't align with our organization just so we can hit a certain keyword and try to get more traffic. We want to be real with our audience.

[GRANT HENSEL] Absolutely. Yeah, we want to be valuable. Google can tell if someone clicks on your ad, and then hits the back button immediately. That impacts your ad performance. It impacts you know, will the ad show in the future. And so, yeah.

[SAMI BEDELL-MULHERN] Okay, so we've talked a lot about kind of some conceptual things. But I know I'm terrified of Google ads, like reading them, like I don't do, we don't offer that as a surface like it just scares me. So what is it like for organizations to actually once they've gotten the money, they kind of have done this back end work? Like, how hard is it
to start running ads?

[GRANT HENSEL] Yeah, I'd say that. It takes it's like any skill, you know, takes time and investment. It, we do it for clients that don't want to spend the time investment, but it's certainly not an insurmountable mountain to climb, I'd say the big thing.

The big thing that's sort of important to understand is how accounts are structured and kind of how the different pieces fit together. So essentially, within Google ads, there are a couple of main building blocks, there are campaigns. And within campaigns, you have ad groups. And with ad, within ad groups, you have keywords and ads.

So if I'm a humane society, I might have an adoption campaign, which is just all my ads about adoption. And then I might have ad groups that are adopt dogs up cats, adopt, you know, courses, or any, any other animal that's being adopted, adopt pets, because that's different. That's someone who's maybe open to a variety of animals. And then within each of those ad groups, you would have keywords, so maybe adopted pet pets for adoption, and adopted pet near me, you know, whatever those might be. And then you have ads. And what you try and do is have a really tight correspondence between the keyword, the ads and the landing page. So in a, in our, in a beautiful, perfect world, you would have, and maybe we go back to one of the questions.

So what is the process to adopt a dog, you'd have an address for that process to adopt dog keywords, you know, what is the process to adopt a dog? How do I adopt a dog? What does it look like to adopt a dog, and then all the ads would would include that language process to adopt a dog for easy steps, you know, read more now. And then people would click on that ad and it would take them to a page that's all about adopting a dog. And essentially, what you do is, as the account grows and began continues to be more robust, you're looking at all the pages on your website that would make sense to bring people to your creating ad groups and campaigns for each of them. And you're trying to figure out all the different ways that people might search for something.

So maybe some people search for humane societies near me. So you want to have an ad group for that. So maybe some people search for shelters near me, you don't have an ad group for that. And it's sort of this organic process of constantly experimenting, figuring out what people are searching for, and creating ads to try and reach those people.

[SAMI BEDELL-MULHERN] Well, the beauty of Google Ads is you don't have to have imagery. So it's just the text, which can also make it a little bit easier to kind of put all those different groups together.

[GRANT HENSEL] Absolutely no design talent needed. For me, because I don't have any of it.

[SAMI BEDELL-MULHERN] I don't either. That's for sure. Um, so how often then, so like, once you start to get these ads set up, and you start to, you know, see kind of what's working, what's not working? Like? How often do they need to be adjusted, do you need to create new ones, in even in the same groups?

[GRANT HENSEL] There's a spectrum, we do work in our client accounts at least weekly. And that's sort of a best practice, you could probably get away with, especially, you know, if you have 1000, other things on your plate, and, and accounts pretty established, you could probably get away with doing something, you know, every other week, or maybe monthly, you have to be making changes periodically and doing stuff in the account for the ad grant, it's one of the compliance rules. Because Google wants you to be, you know, actively utilizing and making the most of this program that they're giving you. And I would say, you know, if someone's, you know, starting out and really wants to, to take a lot of advantage of it, this is gonna sound like a lot, like five or 10 hours a week at the beginning is probably productive.

[SAMI BEDELL-MULHERN] So, yeah, well, it goes both ways, right? You want. If you're spending the time on these ads, you want to make sure they're actually converting into visitors, donors, customers, people, whatever.

[GRANT HENSEL] Absolutely. And that's sort of a whole nother topic of conversion tracking, we use Google Analytics and Google Tag Manager, which together essentially let you track you know, not only who's coming to your website, where are they moving around within it? But are they downloading PDFs? Are they submitting forms? are they watching videos, and all that data can be set up to flow? It's, it's not complicated to flow into Google ads that you can see, okay, in my adopted dog, ad group, within my adoption campaign, we had 15 conversions this month, it was three people watching videos, seven people, downloading our adoption guide, and five people using our book, a book an appointment to come and adopt link or whatever. And so you can see what is actually happening as a result to these people.

[SAMI BEDELL-MULHERN] Yeah, that data is so impactful, and I don't. And I don't think we utilize those tools enough. Because I know, with Google Analytics, for example, I mean, it's completely free.

You can go down crazy rabbit holes, but the amount of data that you can pull from it, if you understand how it works is insane. bottomless.

[GRANT HENSEL] Yeah, yeah, I have not plumbed the depths of Google Analytics, and I don't think I'll ever reached the bottom. It's just remarkable art getting through it, then they add more stuff to it. Like, oh, yeah, that wasn't there last week. Yeah, seriously. Yeah. And Google Tag Manager, which is another free tool works integrates nicely with Google Analytics, incredible the amount of the creative stuff you can do with that you can basically, if it's not in an iframe, which is like a projection of another person's website onto yours, you can basically track anything. It's incredible.

[SAMI BEDELL-MULHERN] It's amazing. Well, and I mean, I'm, you might have some resources for ways people can learn more about Google ads. But I know that they have a whole Academy for their analytics software that you can take, that's just a bunch of free videos, that dives deep. So you know, they do also offer a lot of free resources for you to learn. So you don't have to figure it out yourself. Absolutely. Yeah.

So we've got our blog, or content on our website set up. So we know what campaigns we're going to run. We're running our ads, we're testing and tweaking them. And we're checking the data. Is there anything else? Or do we just kind of rinse and repeat that whole thing?

[GRANT HENSEL] Yeah, it's you basically rinse and repeat that whole thing? And it starts with, you know, the keyword research again, that we talked about in the beginning figuring out what other things are people searching for what other ways could we reach them through the ads? What other ways could we entice them to take some sort of first step? When they come to the website, we have clients that have been with us for three plus years, and it's so fun to see sort of the growth that happens over those long time periods of people keep at it and just sort of keep reinvesting in that flywheel event.

It starts spinning so fast and producing such impactful results that, you know, you never could have seen that at the beginning. But if you're making it 10% better each month, 5% better whatever it is, it really snowballs.

[SAMI BEDELL-MULHERN] Well, and one thing that we talked about, and kind of one of the last questions that I had in my head was, like, the validity that it gives your organization if other people see that you have Google ads running?

[GRANT HENSEL] Absolutely, it especially it's so funny. Because in every account that we set up, we also run ads on on people's brand names. So if your organization is called, you know, XYZ humane society will run ads on that keyword. And I think that there's a subtle psychological thing that happens in people's mind when they Google your name, and they see right at the top and ad for you. And then also your homepage. It's just, there's just a sense of legitimacy. It's like, yes, people are on top of it, they know what they're doing. Right, you're taking, you're making the effort, you're getting this, you know, you're just on the same level as all these other large organizations that are running. Like, you know, my favorite retailer, right? runs Facebook, or runs Facebook. Sorry, that's Google ads. And now I'm seeing you running ads to you guys must, you know, be a legit organization? I think that's great.

[SAMI BEDELL-MULHERN] Absolutely. Any other final like tips and thoughts and ideas or think people should consider before they kind of get started?

[GRANT HENSEL] Yeah, I think it just all goes back to the website to thinking about what people are going to be searching for and creating content. around that. There's a nice tool called SpyFu, as well, which has sort of a free trial. I don't know how it works. It's just limited, I guess, which is nice for for doing keyword research Amswer the Public, which we mentioned as well.

That's the biggest thing. It's funny, the biggest thing to being successful to Google Ad grant is really the website and the foundation that you have, before you start.

[SAMI BEDELL-MULHERN] You're speaking my language. If this is the thing that gets you guys to create regular content, it will make me such a happy person.

Because, you know, now you can get some immediate wins, I preach slow and steady. But this is a way for you guys to get some immediate wins by creating amazing content and sharing the amazing stories, because that's the other thing that kills me about working with nonprofits versus like, regular organizations is like the stories and the messaging that they can be sharing on their blog, like it's an easy, no brainer.

[GRANT HENSEL] So much more impactful, right? If like some shoe company, you know, does anything, we'll all hear about it for months, but many of our nonprofit clients are doing incredible stuff. We're on calls with them and hearing about the things that they're up to. Yeah. And it's like, this is world changing. We have to get this on the website so that people can know and be excited about everything that you're doing. So yeah, after not agree more.

[SAMI BEDELL-MULHERN] Awesome. Well, Grant, I know a NonProfit Megaphone, you help a lot of organizations and, you know, take advantage of this Google Ad grants. So if people want to know more about you guys, and how you support nonprofits, how do they do that?

[GRANT HENSEL] Yeah, just probably going to our website, it's just nonprofit, megaphone calm. And reaching out through through that is perfect. My email is just grant@nonprofitmegaphone.com as well. In case I can be a resource, and yes, before you ask, everyone does make fun of me. My name is Grant. Grant, it's not my fault. But here we are. Sometimes we're just born to be who we are and what we do destined.

[SAMI BEDELL-MULHERN] Definitely. Yeah, I love it. Well, we will link up all of the all of that information in the show notes to this episode at https://www.thefirstclick.net/podcast. But I mean, I know we only scratched the surface of what Google Ad grants can do, but I don't want to completely overwhelm people. But get started, get your get your foundation in place, and then reach out to grant and his team and see how they can support you.

[GRANT HENSEL] Absolutely. Thanks so much for having us. This is a blast. Yeah, I think we'll catch up.

[CLOSING] Okay, guys, so how amazing was that? I would love for you to hit me up at the first click marketing on Facebook or Instagram and tell me what was the most amazing part about what you learned in this episode, because let me tell you, it was jam packed full of great, great stuff. All of the things that we talked about will be available in the show notes at the https://thefirstclic.net/podcast. So head on over there to grab those. And I hope that Google Ad currents will become part of your strategy going into 2021 or at least in your lineup for getting things moving at some point during the year. But for now, I'm looking forward to some more amazing interviews and content that's going to be coming your way that the rest of this year and going into next year. So make sure you subscribe so you don't miss out on a single episode and I'll see you in the next one.