Create More Brand Awareness With Google AdWords

Let’s face it—there’s a plethora of information out in the vast cyberspace about different types of technologies available to help improve your nonprofit. It can all get a little confusing, can’t it? But it all comes down to what your nonprofit it looking to improve. Are you looking to create more brand awareness and to drive more donations? Let’s take a look at a tool out there that we’ve all heard of, but (maybe) are not taking advantage of: Google AdWords.

At the Peer-to-Peer Professional Forum Conference in March, Josh Weum, AdWords digital ambassador at Google, and Anne Baum, search and marketing analytics lead at DonorDrive, led a presentation titled “Improve Your Organization’s Reach With Google Ad Grants and AdWords,” where they shared the fundamentals of Google AdWords and tips on how nonprofits can benefit from this tool.

Let’s start with the basics. What is Google AdWords? It’s an advertising platform to help businesses (or nonprofits) virtually reach their target audiences. With AdWords, organizations can place ads on the Google Search Network, Google Display Network, YouTube and Google Search.

When a potential donor is looking for information on different types of nonprofits or which nonprofits can donate to, Google’s search option can help create brand awareness. Google AdWords provides a solution for organizations that are looking to promote their organization at the top of the search page.

“If you have a specific audience [you are trying to reach], you can literally target those types of people and the types of people who would work with those folks to make this connection,” Weum said.

These days, people don’t just go online, they live online—and that is not just limited to Millennials. Although not a Millennial himself, Weum says that he often wakes up in the morning and the first thing he does is check his phone.

“I wake up with my phone, I go to bed [with my phone] and throughout the day, I’m tethered to this device. It’s my alarm—my everything,” he said. “When it comes to the marketing side, to promoting an organization, at Google we call these a concept called ‘micro moments’. Throughout the day, we’re all connected to these micro moments where we want to act on something, and it relates to everything.”

The concept of micro moments includes the following signals:

• Immediacy of Action: Acting on any stimulus whenever we’re motivated to.
• High Expectations: For relevance and for frictionless experiences.
• Unscripted Decisions: More loyalty to the need in the moment vs. a brand.

“When you have verbage in your ads that says this is what we do and this is what we’re all about, the experience they get when they go to your website should match that. It should mirror everything that your ad said and reflected,” he said. “If it doesn’t, Google doesn’t like that, but users don’t like it either.”

While Weum shared the fundamentals of AdWords, Baum shared several examples of how nonprofit organizations have used the platform—to become more visible to donors during Google Search and more visible to volunteers who want to become more involved—what steps to take for nonprofits who want to get started with AdWords and effective tips and best practices for optimal results with AdWords.

To listen to the full presentation from these two experts, click here.