Why Google Grants?

Google offers $10,000/month in Google AdWords advertising for charities who have applied through the grant program. Frontier has a 100% acceptance rate for qualified charities, so all qualified organizations should take advantage of this grant and the many benefits it can offer. Google AdWords are those little ads you see surrounding Google’s “organic” search results. With $120,000 per year in free spending, and nominal management time or cost, charities can increase ad impressions (each time an ad is displayed, it counts as one impression), traffic to their sites, and conversions (such as increased email sign-ups, donations, volunteer sign-ups, event registrations, etc.).

These are all great results, but they only scratch the surface in terms of the value of Google Grants. The single most important reason to take advantage of Google Grants is the more long-term effect: it is a rare opportunity for charities to experience and prepare for the future of marketing, which is online and data-driven. With $10,000 per month in Google Grant money, charities have a far more level playing field, when compared with for-profit marketing machines.

Many charities are understandably hesitant to spend precious marketing dollars on comparatively untested online marketing methods. As online marketing becomes more prevalent, this hesitance will become increasingly apparent.

But online marketing isn't necessarily easy to jump into. It isn't just a new category of marketing to go alongside print, TV direct mail, and radio. The difference between traditional and online advertising is as big as the difference between Webster’s and Wikipedia.

In the past, charities that bought traditional advertising (print, radio, TV) were “flying blind,” hardly able to quantify results. Google AdWords reports (or more reader-friendly Frontier reports) show precisely how many visitors come to your site from what ads in response to what keywords.

At Frontier, we connect AdWords to your site's Google Analytics, generating regular reports showing how many pages those visitors view, what those pages are, where those visitors are from, and whether those visitors click on any forms for email lists, donations, volunteer sign-ups, event registration, etc. And if a charity wants to take another step into the wild new frontier of online marketing, with a modest remarketing ad budget, we can even go on to target those visitors with your charity’s ads when they are on other sites.

Simply put, remarketing allows a charity to show their ads to people who have previously visited their website. It is an incredibly powerful way to stay engaged with a target audience and has the ability to be very specific in who is targeted (with age, gender, interests and location as some of the possible selection criteria).

Online advertising is the future of marketing and charities need to learn what to expect and work with this kind of data and online engagement. Google Grants are an unusual and generous opportunity for cost-sensitive charities to grow into this new reality.

To find out more about Google Grants, including how your charity - or a charity you support - can become involved, contact ben@frontier.io or fill out Frontier’s Google Grant form, and we’ll apply on your behalf!