Prioritizing Traffic Quality: A Cause Inspired Case Study
Dynamic ads on the Google Ads platform create headlines and landing pages using content from your website, which can help fill in the gaps in keywords and saves time. These ads ensure the nonprofit has ads for all relevant searches, but dynamic ads should act as a back-up for a nonprofit’s strategy-built campaigns. When Cause Inspired took over Google Ad Grant management for this client, a larger, national organization, the account had only dynamic ads.
On the initial strategy call, it was clear that the client felt they did not need to put emphasis on restructuring their Google Ad Grant account, as it was performing well and spending the allotted grant. However, upon the first audit, our Cause Inspired team of experts determined their account was not optimized to receive the most valuable traffic but instead to receive the most amount of clicks. The nonprofit was close to maxing out their $40,000/month ad spend of their Pro Ad Grant (a now grandfathered Google Ad Grant designation for larger nonprofits) prior to joining our services, but their conversion rate was low and most of their traffic was for their brand name. Although it had high traffic, the account needed to refocus on quality over quantity, and being well known, brand recognition was not a priority.
Originally, the account’s highest performing ad group was a dynamic ad group for all web pages. A dynamic ad group is an easy way to receive traffic as long as there is a substantial amount of searchable content on the site. Although this strategy can improve clicks, it is imperative that advertisers narrow in that target audience to the traffic most likely to convert. The Cause Inspired team’s strategy was to use this dynamic ad group as a research tool to help map out the campaigns the team would create. From there, they would make keyword lists and targeted ad copy to better reflect the desired action for users to take.
Using the dynamic ads as a base, the team used the highest performing search terms as an influence for the new keyword lists. Once the keywords were mapped out, the team placed the list in the applicable ad group, while ensuring the inclusion of keyword modifiers so the target audience precisely matched the user’s intent. Along with a tight-knit group of keywords, the team also ensured the ad copy included a call to action so the user knew their next step, as well as the highest-performing keyword in the ad to improve our ad rank.
A big concern for this organization was losing traffic once this shift was made. However, the account continued to receive the same amount of traffic with an increase in completed conversions. The team also wanted to boost donation conversions in this account, so they created a campaign that targeted users searching to donate to the client’s cause, as well as an ad group for virtual walks.
The organization’s client team also wanted to start advertising their Spanish pages. The team knew this organization was well known within the industry, however, they wanted to expand the reach for their Spanish resources to support the Spanish community. Spanish ads were included in the account before Cause Inspired began management, but our team has expanded on this, creating a campaign and ad extensions targeting Spanish speaking users wanting to know more about the organization’s cause. As we’ve seen from previous strategies, advertising in Spanish is often more cost-effective since Spanish keywords are not as competitive, so we saw a nominal increase in clicks without limiting the growth in traffic from other campaigns.
In 2020 the account saw a 30.2% increase in overall Google Grant Ad Spend compared to 2019. Unfortunately, the client did not have transactions set up as conversions before Cause Inspired took over management, therefore, we are unable to compare. Even so, the account has gained more than 220 donations attributed to the Google Ad Grant totaling around $19,000. Although traffic was not the overall goal, there was a 29% increase in clicks from 2019 to 2020, as well.
