You’ll actually build your first campaigns before you’re account has been signed off by Google: this is because submission of well-targeted campaigns that meet Google Grant’s criteria is a requirement for receiving The Grant.
So what key areas should I cover with my first few campaigns?
I’d advise that to start with, you should just cover a few topics, so that you can get your final application off to Google with the minimum of fuss. You need to impress the people upstairs with the first part of any marketing camapign so not spreading yourself too thinly is vital.
You could start with a campaign focussed around your brand and the main topics that your organisation is focussed upon. I would have an Ad Group and associated keywords for each of these topic, as it allows you to create specific ad variants based around that theme. Most donations that you receive from PPC traffic will be triggered by people searching these terms so it’s important to get them live and start optimising as soon as possible.
A couple of tips:
- If part of your brand name is common to other popular culture terms, ensure you use negative match keywords to stop your ad being shown unnecessarily. E.g. if your charity was called “Lost Children” and your brand campaign targeted keywords broadly similar to this you would negative match terms like “lost property”, “lost tv” etc to ensure you weren’t paying for irrelevant clicks.
- Include as many misspellings and acronym keywords for your charity as possible to your “brand terms” ad group: this will ensure you reach as many of the people searching for you as possible. Take a look at your site’s entrance keywords in Google Analytics for inspiration. (remember to filter out non brand terms to save time)
It’s also worthwhile to create another AdWords campaign for promoting specific fundraising drives or “take action” campaigns. Your ads here should try to contain a call to action; remember you can fully customise the display URL in your ad so this is a bit of extra space to incorporate messaging if you’re struggling with the 95 character limit on the ad.
So there we have it: try to focus your first campaigns on your brand, your primary issues and your current campaigns and you should have a solid platform to work off.
Next time I’ll be talking about how to track your AdWords / Google Grant activity against tangible goals such as donation, newsletter signup, form downloads etc. Add our RSS feed to your reader so you don’t miss out.