Church marketing is one of those things you know you need to do, but no one really wants to have to do it.
With so many options, it’s overwhelming. Add in the costs of marketing and it seems an insurmountable task.
The good news is Google AdWords for nonprofits helps ease much of the stress of expanding your church’s reach. While you’ll need to qualify and learn the ropes of managing your ad account, it’s well worth the time.
Looking to get started on your Google Grant? REACHRIGHT can help!
Special Program For Nonprofits
Google might seem like a tech giant that just wants to make a profit, but Google is sharing the wealth so to speak with nonprofits. Since the company is the go to for search, they want to make it easier for nonprofits to use Google marketing tools to expand their reaches.
This led to the creation of a special program called Google Ad Grants, which is part of the Google for Nonprofits program. The latter is a special program designed to help nonprofits access the tools they need to succeed without ruining their budgets.
The Google Ad Grants program provides $10,000 in advertising every month to eligible nonprofits, including churches. Think of how many people your church could reach with that type of marketing budget.
Qualifying For The Program
Google doesn’t want just anyone grabbing free ad credits or wasting their account. Instead, they have strict requirements for eligibility. Most churches will qualify and maintaining eligibility is just a matter of being diligent about maintaining your account.
We’ve went in-depth into what it takes to qualify in the past, but as a quick recap:
- Hold a valid charity status
- Accept Google’s requirements on how donations are recorded and used
- Keep an active website
- Use your full $10,000 every month (to maintain eligibility)
- Have at least a 5% click-through rate monthly (to maintain eligibility)
Utilizing Google AdWords
When you’re used to working with a much smaller budget for marketing, the $10,000 from Google AdWords for nonprofits might seem impossible to use every single month. However, it’s free money and you should make the most of it.
If you’re not sure it’s worth the time or effort to try to use those ad credits, consider that HubSpot states there are three billion searches on Google every day. While your ads won’t appear on all of those searches, they could appear in millions of searches monthly.
Think of all the people you could reach. You could help people find the perfect church for them or help someone who’s undecided about their faith finally connect with God fully.
A few ways to utilize Google ads include:
- Increase volunteers, both locally and worldwide
- Increase online giving
- Bring people to your website
- Share important information
- Increase members
Best Practices To Follow
Naturally, you don’t want to just throw up a few campaigns with boring ad copy. You’ll have a hard time maintaining that 5% CTR if no one notices your ads at all.
To make it easier to get started, Google has created a list of best practices around creating ads, choosing keywords, optimizing your ad copy, testing ads and more.
A few more things to consider include:
- Set your ads to rotate evenly to appeal to a wider audience
- Create and test multiple ads per ad group for optimal reach
- Use ad extensions
- Apply ad extensions to your entire account
- Utilize attention grabbing statistics
- Direct people to targeted pages on your site
- Use different types of copy to see what works best with your target audience
- Create different campaigns for various purposes, such as volunteer, events, membership, website traffic, etc.
While best practices are useful, it’s still important to take the time to fully explore your options and try different combinations to see works best for your church. Always look at your analytics data to see which ads perform the best. Then, use that data to create even more effective ads.
Does all this sound confusing? It’s easier than you might think. See how we can help you make the most of Google AdWords for nonprofits.
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