As you may have read on our blog or on the NTEN website, we are currently hosting a webinar series for Google Grants beginners called "Learning to Use and Maximize Your Google Grant". We kicked this series off on Thursday, May 14th with an introductory session titled "Setting Your Organization Up for Success with Your Google Grant". AnnMarie from the Google Grants team covered the details of a Google Grant, how it is different from a standard paid AdWords account, how to identify goals for your account, how to navigate your campaigns, and more. Common questions and the importance of active account management were also discussed. You can view slides from this session here and purchase the recording here.

Our second session, titled "Learning How to Use Your Google Grant", was held Thursday, May 21, and was led by Mahin, an AdWords specialist and long-time Google Grants volunteer. In this webinar, Mahin discussed account management processes, including how to make basic changes to your ads, keywords, and campaign settings. She also reviewed several AdWords tools that all Google Grants participants should be utilizing to make the most of their accounts. The majority of the session detailed how to effectively evaluate campaign performance, whether through reviewing your account statistics, running reports in the Reports Center, or using a more advanced tool like Google Analytics. If you are interested in these topics, you can view the slides from Mahin's session here and purchase the recording here.

I'd like to share three major takeways from these valuable introductory sessions below:

• Log in! Get familiar with your account and become comfortable navigating it
• Identify your goals! Knowing what your ultimate goals are (increasing donations, recruiting volunteers, etc.) will help you structure and effectively manage your account
• Evaluate your performance! Use AdWords features, including reports, tools, and more to track and assess how well your ads and keywords are performing; also, consider using Google Analytics to get even more valuable data about how users interact with your site

If you have attended these webinars and want to discuss your takeaways with others, please share your thoughts on the Google Grants Help Forum.

If you would like to attend the final session in the Beginners series, titled "Maximizing Your Google Grant to Attain Your Advertising Goals", you can find info and register here. For information about our upcoming four-part Advanced webinar series, please visit NTEN's site for more details.

Posted by Kristie Ferketich, Google Grants Team

In the final webinar of our 5-part series with NTEN, we discussed evaluating your AdWords performance. Jessica from our team led the session and spoke about the importance of monitoring and evaluating your account to fully maximize it. The majority of the session focused on Google Analytics, a tool that can be extremely helpful in evaluating your performance and identifying how best to optimize your campaigns. A few highlights from this great session:

• Use AdWords data to monitor keyword and ad activity on a regular basis
• Installing Google Analytics and linking it to your AdWords account is easy and can provide valuable information
• Setting goals in Analytics helps you understand how to make your site more successful with your visitors 
  
• Analytics reports can help you make informed decisions about your site and marketing initiatives
• Analytics can help you recognize important trends with your visitors and your site 

The session also covered Google Analytics installation, goal setting, interpreting reports, troubleshooting, and more. Check out the slides from the session here and purchase the audio recording on NTEN's site if you are interested in learning more.

Posted by Kristie, Google Grants Team

In last week's NTEN webinar, we discussed managing multiple campaigns in your Grants account. One of our knowledgeable Google volunteers, Lisa, shared valuable information on this topic; such as solid account structure, when to use one campaign versus multiple ones, setting up new campaigns, managing multiple campaigns, and managing a paid AdWords account with a Grants account. This last point was new information for many of you, as some mistakenly thought that non-profits cannot have both a Grants account and a paid AdWords account. In fact, we have a handful of organizations that have both types.

The majority of the presentation centered on why an organization may want to have multiple AdWords campaigns in their Google Grants AdWords account. For example, you may want to have:

• Campaigns for different purposes or goals
• Campaigns for various regions
• Campaigns targeting different languages
• Campaigns for various times and days and/or
• Seasonal campaigns

We discussed details about these types of campaigns, including examples and benefits of multiple campaigns for each reason.

If you missed the session, you can view slides here and also purchase the webinar recording on NTEN's site. The final session in our 5-part series is this Friday, October 17, from 11 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. Pacific time. We'll focus on evaluating AdWords performance through your Grants account and Google Analytics.

To find out more about the series and register for this final session, please visit NTEN's site. And if you're in the San Francisco Bay Area this weekend and you'd like to speak with a Grants representative, visit our booth at the Craigslist Foundation Bootcamp this Saturday, October 18.

Posted by Kristie, Google Grants Team

Our resource round-up for October features Google news, training webinars and a third-party perspective on applying for a Google Grant. 

• Google's Project 10^100 ("10 to the 100th"): a call for ideas to change the world by helping as many people as possible

• Webinar wrap-ups & upcoming webinars: 
• Part 1: Setting yourself up for success 
• Part 2: Optimizing keywords in AdWords 
• Part 3: Optimizing your ad text 
• Part 4: Managing Multiple Campaigns (10/10) Sign up here 
• Part 5: Evaluating AdWords Performance (10/17) Sign up here 

• NetSquared's perspective on applying for a Grant, with some case study information 

If you come across resources that would be useful to the greater non-profit community, feel free to post it to the appropriate topic in our Help Group so that everyone can benefit. If there are some resources you'd like to see featured in these round-ups, let us know. If you'd like to review previous round-ups, just search for "Resource round-up" from the search box at the top right of the page.

Posted by Jessica, Google Grants Team

The most recent webinar in our 5-part series with NTEN focused on optimizing ad text and featured Beth, a Googler who volunteers her time with Grants recipients. Beth presented an overview of the components of and goals for your AdWords ads. We covered simple processes for creating and editing ads and discussed ad serving and performance. Most of the session dove into best practices and proven strategies for ads, which I'll highlight briefly:

• Include keywords in your ads, especially in the headline
• Use a "call to action" such as 'donate,' 'sign up,' or 'get involved.' It tells people what you want them to do!
• Include targeted, relevant information about your organization, program, or service
• Link to the most relevant section of your site, not necessarily to your homepage
• Create multiple ads for each Ad Group and test what works
  

Using these best practices, especially testing and monitoring ad performance, can have a huge effect on your AdWords account: drawing in more interested visitors through your ads will likely contribute to more conversions (volunteers, donations, and so on) on your site. If you couldn't attend last Friday's webinar, you can view Beth's slides here and buy the audio recording from NTEN.

We'll be taking a short break from the webinar series this week, with our next installment on Friday, October 10, from 11 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. Pacific Time. In this session, we'll discuss managing multiple campaigns in your Grants account, why that may be a good option for your organization, and best practices for optimum performance. We'll also cover how to manage both a Grants account and a paid AdWords account, should your organization have the need to run both. Hope you can join us!

To register for or learn more about our 5-part webinar series, please visit NTEN.

Posted by Kristie, Google Grants Team

In last week's NTEN webinar, AnnMarie and German from our Grants team discussed the heart of AdWords advertising: keywords. We covered basic optimization techniques and why optimization is so crucial to the success of your Grants account. And we shared tips and best practices for creating and maintaining effective keyword lists. The Q&A portion of the session was especially helpful for attendees, who raised tons of great questions.

In thinking about this session, I took away these major points:

• Optimizing is simply modifying your account to improve its performance. Optimizing can take many shapes and can involve just a few minor tweaks or mass changes.
  
• Before optimizing, take some time to define your optimization goals - improving account quality, site traffic, conversions (donations, volunteer sign-ups), account manageability, etc.
  
• Use these best practices to optimize your keywords: steer clear of very general keywords; include negative keywords; avoid duplication of keywords across Ad Groups; and include all variations and common misspellings of your keywords.
• Once you've optimized, you're not entirely done! Be sure to monitor performance after two weeks and refine your campaign based on analysis of what is and isn't working.
  

You can view slides from our webinar here and purchase the recording of the session on NTEN's site. And on Friday, Sept. 26, we'll be discussing ad text and best practices for optimizing ads in your account. Join us from 11am to 12:30pm Pacific if you'd like to learn about this topic in-depth.

To register for or learn more about our webinar series, including the next three sessions, please visit NTEN's site.

Posted by Kristie, Google Grants Team

As you may have read, we're holding a 5-part webinar series during this month and next with the Nonprofit Technology Network (NTEN). In this series, we'll discuss Google Grants and how to maximize its effectiveness for your organization. This past Thursday, we held the first session, which focused on setting yourself up for success with AdWords and the details of the Grants program.

We wanted to share some lessons from the first session:

• Grants can help qualifying organizations achieve their missions through free ads on Google.com
• Grants AdWords accounts must be managed by an active contact at your organization
• Details on the program and eligibility are all online
• Learning AdWords is key to ensuring your account is effective – and we have resources to help you!
  

If you missed the session, you can still view the slides we covered. And a recording of the session is available for purchase on the NTEN website.

Feel free to check out NTEN's site for more information about this ongoing series and to sign up if you're interested in joining us. You can still register for the whole series and access a free recording of the first session.

Next Friday, September 19, we'll hold the second session of the series, which will cover best practices for optimizing keywords in AdWords. Hope you join us then.

Posted by Kristie, Google Grants Team

Last week we presented a TechSoup webinar (online seminar) that covered the basics of the Google Grants program, how to create effective Grants AdWords accounts and resources for managing your Grant.

It was a fairly quick presentation (less than 1 hour) with some lively discussion about topics ranging from managing your quality score and submitting a successful application to installing Google Checkout on your site and how to qualify for additional budget.

In addition to the Google Grants information covered during the webinar, Kevin Lee at Didit.com presented some valuable SEM (search engine marketing) resources and guidance that would be helpful to any non-profit working on online marketing initiatives.

If you missed the webinar but are interested in maximizing your Google Grant, check out the resources now available online:

• View the recorded webinar
• Download the PowerPoint slideshow
• Read the Q&A from the online discussion
• Read the Q&A from the webinar
  
• Download the Beginner's Guide
• Review event and SEM materials
  

If you'd like to be alerted about upcoming Google Grants webinars, you can subscribe to our RSS feed for future webinar announcements.

Posted by Jessica, Google Grants Team