4 Insider Secrets to Boosting Your CTR in Google Ad Grants

What Works, What Doesn’t Work to Surpass the 5% Ad Grants CTR Requirement

Google’s Ad Grants program demands a 5% click-through rate (CTR) for your overall ad campaign. If you drop below this pretty high threshold for too long, they will suspend your account.

I personally think this is absurd. But it’s their business, and no one forces them to give away $10,000 in free ads per month to any qualified nonprofit. They’re doing it of their own free will, and that is more than admirable. So if they want to make it a little tougher to use Ad Grants, they have the right to do so.

So if your nonprofit wants to benefit from the free ads Google is willing to give away, you must figure out how to optimize Google Ads. To clarify, Google Ads is the same platform as Ad Grants, but the setup process is a little different – learn how to set up Ad Grants here.

Here’s a non-exhaustive list of 4 CTR-boosting tips and 3 CTR-busting no-no’s for nonprofits using Google’s Ad Grants program (the same tips work for businesses using Google Ads too).

4 Ad Grants CTR Boosters and Why They Work

I caution every single nonprofit I work with to not attempt Google Ad Grants until you’re ready. This is a complicated process and requires a lot of time to learn how to use it well enough to reach a 5% CTR.

But if you’re ready, or if you already have a Google Ad Grants account and need help increasing your CTR, use these four insider secrets to develop your new strategic plan.

Ad Grants CTR Secret #1: Use Long Keyphrases with Higher Search Volume

Success in Google depends on specificity and relevance. Short keywords like “poverty” and “animal abuse” are far too broad to draw in an audience that is actually looking for whatever you do that relates to that word.

In fact, Google is so opposed to this that they disallow Ad Grants accounts from using any one-word keywords. This is one requirement I agree with. Google knows from experience that hardly anyone clicks on ads based on one-word keywords.

You need to find ‘long tail’ keywords and build your content and ads around those.

Why This Works

If someone searches for ‘animal abuse,’ they could be doing that for any number of reasons. But if someone searches for ‘how do dogs end up in dogfighting rings?’, that person’s search intent is crystal clear.

They are concerned about a specific type of animal abuse – dogfighting. They want to know how the people who run them get their dogs. In other words, they want to know how this happens.

And behind that question, a simmering desire to do something to stop it exists too, and that’s what a nonprofit fighting animal abuse needs to key on in their ad text.

Longer keyphrases target the audience you really want to find your website, and enable you to write more specific ads that serve their needs.

This strategy works because it’s serving a need. Hardly anyone searches in Google to find your specific nonprofit. Some do, but we’re not focused on them here. Many more people search to learn something. They have a need. They want to know. They want to act.

A good online ad serves the needs of the people searching. A good ad answers the question in their head.

Ad Grants CTR Secret #2: Use Target Keywords at Least Twice in Ads

At least two times somewhere in your ad, the primary keywords you’re chasing should show up. It should definitely be in the headline, and possibly also in the URL and the description.

By ‘primary keyword,’ this means the one or two word core of the idea your ad is about. In the dogfighting example, the primary keyword could be ‘dogfighting,’ ‘dogfighting rings’, ‘dog abuse,’ or other related phrases.

So you’re targeting the longer phrase in your campaign. But in your specific ad, you will choose one or two primary keywords and use that text in the actual ad.

Why This Works

Two reasons. First, it helps Google know who your actual ad is for. They use keywords to send what they believe are the right ads to people based on what they search for. There are all kinds of ways people could ask a question related to dog abuse. You ads need to be relevant to that general idea.

Second, you don’t have a lot of room in your ad. The entire headline, even if you use the recently added third line, is just 90 characters. Some longer keyphrases will eat up the majority of that by themselves. So you can’t fit the longer phrases in the actual ad most of the time. You have to hone in on the core of it, the essence of the longer phrase that connects to your mission AND to their search intent.

Ad Grants CTR Secret #3: Make Sure Your Keywords Are What the Webpage is About

This is why it’s generally a horrible idea to link your ads up to your home page. Because there’s no way your home page will be about what most of your ads promise. There’s just not enough substance or text on most home pages. Home pages are not specific to one topic in most cases.

A better approach is to write ads based upon specific pages of content you’ve written. These could be blogs or key pages on your website.

A women’s shelter website, for example, should have pages on their site about how they help single mothers get jobs, arrange housing for poor mothers, provide vocational training for homeless women, and more. These would all be under an “Our Program” type of heading on the top of your website.

But each of these pages can have separate ad campaigns and ad groups with ads pointing to each of them.

Do you see how this approach capitalizes on the longer and highly targeted keyphrases people are searching for? If someone searches for ‘job training single mothers’, you have a page about that, and can write specific ads that point to it.

Why This Works

Google calls this ‘ad relevance.’ They look for a content relationship between your ad and the pages it links to. If they don’t see one, it lowers your quality score, which means your ad shows up less often.

Again, when you write highly targeted ads, which is the only way to get a 5% CTR in Ad Grants, there is simply no way your home page will be relevant to most of your ads.

When I say many nonprofits aren’t ready for Ad Grants, this is what I’m talking about. Before you sign up for Ad Grants, you need content on your website. And ‘content’ means much more than just home, about, contact, donate, and ‘why we’re cool’ pages.

Ad Grants CTR Secret #4: Break Campaigns Into Smaller Ad Groups

This one’s a little more technical, but it has to do with how you set up your Ad Grants account. For example, in any account managed by ProActive Content, we will have a Blog Campaign. Within that campaign, we will create specific ad groups linking to each specific blog.

This way, we can create ads that target the topic of each blog, and separate out the keywords for each one. If a particular article is robust enough, you might even have several ad groups pointing to the same article, but focusing on a different slice of keywords.

Why This Works

Distinct ad groups allow for more specific targeting. That means more relevant ads to what people are searching for, and therefore more clicks – assuming the ad is well-written.

3 Ad Grants CTR Killers Guaranteed to Leave You Looking Up at 5%

1. Trying to Be Clever 

This isn’t an argument against creativity. It’s a recognition that you have maybe 90 characters in your headline, which doesn’t leave a ton of room for abstract attempts at cleverness.

In those 90 characters, your unique URL and your description, you MUST accomplish several objectives:

• Identify your audience – they must know this ad is for them
• Use targeted keywords
• Make an offer or a promise of what will happen when the reader clicks
• Establish credibility and/or trust

If you can hit all four of those objectives while also using creativity, then go for it. But be advised – creativity can be risky. Sometimes what we think means one thing means something else to other people. Humor is risky, and it often doesn’t translate well across cultures.

People aren’t searching for humor. They’re searching to get a need met or a question answered. That’s what matters most in your ad.

2. Using Too Many Keywords in Each Ad Group

Experts suggest no more than 20 – 30 keywords or so in a group. Some suggest fewer than five. Some accounts I’ve seen have hundreds. You’ll never reach the 5% Ad Grants CTR requirement with 150 keywords in a group.

3. Being Boring

More respectfully, this means don’t be generic, broad, or bland. And don’t be bureaucratic or obsessed with using exact and branded language that ‘appropriately expresses our mission in ways that reflect our values and…’ see? You’re bored just reading that.

You have just seconds, if that, to get someone’s attention on Google Ads. Think about your own search behavior. When the search results come up, you’re in ‘skim city.’ You look at search results and ads very quickly, pick the ones you want, and ignore the rest.

No one’s going to read your thoughtfully expressive and all-inclusive headline and description, and think about what it means to them. And hardly anyone will click on bland and incentive-free calls to action like “Come to our auction” and “Donate today”. Why should we come? Why should we donate?

What’s the Best Use of Google Ad Grants?

I believe the best use of Ad Grants that also has the best chance of staying above the 5% CTR requirement is to use it to build your email list.

Getting total strangers to donate online is… really hard. Getting 5% of them to do so is basically impossible.

But getting people to click on ads that satisfy the searcher’s need for answers, like the examples given earlier – that’s not hard at all. It just requires good content and quality ads. Build out the rest of your email list building funnel, and you’ll start adding new subscribers to your list.

Get a complete 5-step list building funnel

View List Building Infographic

Want more content? Get weekly nonprofit fundraising and copywriting tips, strategies, and motivations in the ProActive Insights newsletter.