With a rainy week in Boston and a little time off, this has turned out to be a great week to do some work for The Art Connection, a not-for-profit I'm involved with. Yesterday, I headed up to the North Shore Community College to watch a volunteer committee select orginal artwork donated by Boston artists for some of the walls at the college. Today, I'm spending time selecting Google AdWords to drive traffic to The Art Connection website through a special program provided at no charge to us from Google.
The Google Grants Program
The Google Grants program is helping over 4,000 organizations achieve their missions by promoting their websites on Google. The program leverages Google's advertising program which pops up various ads when users search for certain terms on Google. Depending on their size, organizations are awarded an in-kind online advertising account which can be used it in a variety of ways including general outreach, fundraising activities, and recruitment of volunteers.
Google's Advertising Program
Google Grants provides organizations like ours with an advertising grant for the Google AdWords™ program. This is an online, self-managed advertising program where you manage your ad campaign by creating and monitoring text ads that run on Google through natural search terms. While a typical Google Grantee receives just over $300/month of advertising, the overall value of the advertising really depends on the performance of your ads. So, it's in your best interest to follow which of your keywords are driving traffic to your site and hone in on what's working to maximize future success.
Interested in Learning More?
The best place to go to learn more is on Google. If your organization qualifies for the program, you'll be sent an e-mail letting you know that you're in the program; what your ad allowance per month will be; and given a 30-day deadline to sign-up for the program. You'll also get a 35-page document teaching you how to select keywords for natural search and how to write an online ad. For more information, there's a Google Grants blog, webinars, and a workshop coming up in August.
Thanks, Google!
On behalf of The Art Connection, thank you, Google, for this program. It will be my job over the next few months to see how I did selecting natural search terms and writing ad copy. This should be fun!
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