First Google Grants Workshop in Dublin

A month and a half ago we had the pleasure of hosting 80 participants from 53 Irish charitable organizations for a full day Google Grants Workshop in Google’s European Headquarters in Dublin.

The day started with some refreshments and mingling amongst the Grantees before heading to an introductory session. Stephen Flanagan, Senior Product Specialist at Google, gave a presentation on Online Advertising and why it’s important to our Grantees, and this was followed by a thought provoking panel where four of our Grantees shared their experiences, tips and best practices with the group.

Even before deciding to host this event, we knew that we not only wanted to help our Grantees make the most of their AdWords Grants accounts, but also let them know about all the other Google products that they could be using to raise awareness and operate effectively. This is why before and after lunch we had two very informative fast-paced sessions, where we covered how to best use YouTube and Google Apps, and how to improve organic traffic with tips from Webmaster Central. On top of this, we held a session on communication goals using some of our free products and this was split into sharing, engaging, listening and asking. Below you can find the Google products covered in the four different areas:

• Sharing: Blogger, Picasa, Google Earth, Google Places
• Engaging: Google Groups, Google Translate, My Maps
• Listening: Google Alerts, Google Reader
• Asking: Google Moderator, Google Docs Forms & Surveys

Then it was time for the main part of the workshop. The 80 participants were split into four break-out sessions (Beginners and Advanced) where AdWords Specialists covered AdWords fundamentals, optimization tips and information on how to best improve account performance, analytics and other useful tools and reports. From there each organisation was paired up with their own individual AdWords Specialist for an hour long one-to-one session, where participants could go over their own Grants accounts, ask any burning questions and even optimize right there on the spot! Needless to say, this was the highlight of the day for both our Grantees and our over 50 Google volunteers.

It has now been more than a month since the Google Grants Dublin Workshop took place, and we are delighted to say that it was a major success. Not only have we seen an 13% increase in the spend in this month and a half of those organizations that participated, but also 95% of participants said they were satisfied or very satisfied with the workshop, and 90% said that they can apply what they learnt on the day directly to their jobs.

A few comments from our Grantees:
“Thanks I attended the course and it was really useful and I am about to do my very own first ever Google ad as a result - plus we have posted a video on YouTube which has had 210,000 views in one week and is in the top ten of most viewed NGO/charity ads in Ireland Mexico and Spain.”

“It was a very helpful, practical exercise. Also, the users panel was very useful - to hear how Google Adwords has worked for them."

“Overall the day inspired me to continue plugging away with our AdWords (despite limited resources!) and to look at the future possibilities of combining other Google apps into our overall digital marketing strategy. Thanks!”

We were delighted with how this first workshop and hope to be able to do more in the future!

Posted by Geraldine Sherrard, Google Grants Team