Boost your nonprofit's reach with search-based targeting

What is your nonprofit’s strategy for reaching new people with your mission? Are you building bigger and beefier email lists? Or are you finding new audiences with digital retargeting ads? 

One of the best (and often overlooked) opportunities nonprofits have is leveraging search-based advertising, especially through Google Ad Grants.

Google Ad Grants is $10,000 every single month to spend in Google Ads. And the only catch is that you have to spend it or it goes away. But it’s absolutely free if you’re a 501(c)(3) — and also aren’t in education or healthcare (check all the eligibility requirements here).

But there are other ways to leverage search-based marketing at your nonprofit. When people are looking for exactly what you do, it’s an opportune time to have your message land!

What does search-based marketing for nonprofits look like?

Search-based marketing is simply using someone’s search habits to gain an idea of what they’re looking for, and then making sure they hear your message first (or at least early on).

When you’re doing more traditional marketing in print or on a billboard, you don’t know anything about the intent of your audience. They may have an incredibly deep interest in your event, or none at all.

Search-based marketing, along with a lot of digital strategies, is the exact opposite. You can spell out exactly who you want to serve your message to.

You may not have considered it this way, but you, as a person, have search intent all the time. Maybe you typed “5-ingredient recipes” last week or “what time does the city pool open” into Google or Bing. You were hunting for something specific. And your audiences are composed of people much like yourself. 

But how do you gather your potential audiences’ search intent? There are two key ways: in the search platform itself (for example Google Ads), or in a marketing platform that serves display ads to people who recently searched for your keywords in any search engine.

An inside job

Using Google Ads for nonprofits or Microsoft Advertising is the most straightforward way of gaining visibility with people who are searching for your nonprofit (even if they don’t know they’re searching for you yet!)

Microsoft has previously had a social ad grant available, but more recently they’re allowing nonprofits to try out Copilot, their AI software, for a discounted price.

But what that means for us is that we’re going to focus exclusively on Google Ad Grants for now, which offers you $10,000 to spend on Google Ads every single month.

Google Ad Grants is the exact same thing as Google Ads, but as a nonprofit you have a $10,000 credit every month to spend. 

Because a lot of nonprofits are doing the same thing as you, bids for ad placements often run higher for nonprofit keywords. You may end up needing to spend more to get the results you want — but it’s worth it if you’re getting your cause in front of more people who are looking for it!

If you aren’t currently running ads with Google Ad Grants, we recommend starting as soon as possible. We’ve even built a comprehensive guide on Google Ad Grants for nonprofits who are looking to take the next step.

Thinking outside the box

What if you could use the information from the search engines, but promote your cause on whatever sites people are browsing instead of just the search results page?

By using a platform that has access to that same search data, you can serve display ads to people, lowering the cost per impression, and getting in front of even more people. One of the unique values with display ads compared to Google Ads is that people are coming in contact with your visual branding instead of only text.

A couple things to keep in mind with this tactic. You will need a marketing platform that offers keyword search campaigns (also known as search retargeting), and you’ll need to build the budget to launch these campaigns.

But they are often much cheaper as they serve across the entire web, which is a less competitive atmosphere than keywords in Google around the nonprofit space.

You’ve probably had the experience of searching for something, and then noticing those display ads follow you across the internet. This is exactly what your nonprofit can do by leveraging intent-based targeting to reach new supporters.

The key to building keywords

Keywords are the building blocks of successful search-based advertising campaigns. But the best keywords are built by putting the person first.

As with any marketing endeavor, identifying your audience is step one. Who are you hoping to attract? Where do they live? What phase of life are they in? Do you have specific demographics in mind? 

Once you’ve determined who your audience is, you’ll be able to understand their context and intent, which is crucial for creating effective keywords (and ultimately ads!).

Put yourself in the mindset of your ideal audience. What are they likely to search for? Type it into a search engine, and see what kind of results you get. Don’t be so general that any old nonprofit pops up, but try to find people who are searching for what your nonprofit offers. And be sure to pay attention to what Google suggests you type as you begin the phrase.

Google also offers its own Keyword Planner inside their platform to help. You can follow their suggested keywords. But always be thoughtful about what you think best serves your nonprofit. There are algorithms and technology in the background, but you’re ultimately connecting with a person that’s looking for you, so your intuition matters.

If you really get into keyword planning and want to take your search marketing to the next level, there are tools like Semrush and Ahrefs that give a lot of information on what people are looking for online.

And once you have those keywords in Google, or if you built them on your own, you can now drop them into your Feathr ad campaigns as well as into your Google Ads account. It’s as simple as copying and pasting them.

That's exactly what I was looking for

Search engines may seem technical and detached, but like any marketing channel, they’re a tool for connection. And they are one of the bigger pieces for nonprofits like yours as you build a multichannel marketing strategy to find and engage with your growing community.

If you’re searching for the answers for your nonprofit’s marketing strategy, and you think search-based targeting campaigns may be the next step, reach out to us today! We love partnering with nonprofits of all stripes, who are making the world better every single day.