Tips for success with Google Ad Grants

Top tips

1. Structure your account

When someone searches on Google.com and scans the results, your ad can stand out more if it’s more relevant to what they were looking for.  To do this, you select keywords you’d like to show an ad for and cluster them into themed ad groups so you can show ads related to those keywords.  You can also separate your ad groups into campaigns to allocate your budget to the topics that are most important to you.  

Let’s say your organization gives free books to kids. You probably don’t want to run only one campaign about “Books.“ Instead, your campaigns might look like this:

• Campaign: Books for Babies
• Campaign: Books for Preschoolers
• Campaign: Books for Teens
• Campaign: Volunteer
• Campaign: Donate 

Then, your ad groups would reflect how a person might search on Google.com so you can offer ads that are very relevant to their search. For example, ad groups within a campaign called "Volunteer" might include:

1. Volunteer with babies
2. Volunteer with kids
3. Volunteer in education
4. Volunteer for literacy
5. Volunteer to teach kids to read

2. Create effective ads

Responsive search ads  let you create an ad that adapts to show more relevant messages to your customers. Enter multiple headlines and descriptions when creating a responsive search ad, and over time, Google Ads tests different combinations and learns which combinations perform best. By adapting your ad’s content to more closely match potential users’ search terms, responsive search ads may improve your campaign’s performance.

Short, non-repetitive sentences work best. Avoid uncommon acronyms and abbreviations.  Identify the unique aspects of your organization and service, such as "Check our free book database to find books your preschooler will love" or "Volunteer to read to kids in your community today."

• Assets can be shown in any order, so make sure they make sense individually or in combinations, and don't violate our policies.
• It’s recommended to have one responsive search ad per ad group with at least 'Good' or 'Excellent'  Ad Strength . There’s a limit of 3 enabled responsive search ads per ad group.
• If you have text that should appear in every ad, you must pin the text to either Headline position 1, Headline position 2, or Description position 1.
• Learn more about  Creating effective Search ads .

3. Choose the right keywords

Ask yourself which keywords – word combinations and phrases – you would type into the Google search box to find your organization's programs and services. Then, use the Keyword Planner to find related keywords and group them together in ad groups if you’d want to show the same ad for them.  

If you add a keyword without any formatting, the Google Ads program keyword default is broad match.  For example, if your keyword were breast cancer, your ad would show when a Google search includes the keyword breast cancer, regardless of other search terms used or the order in which a user typed them. Your ads will also automatically show for expanded matches, including plurals and relevant variations like: 

• breast cancer information
• cancer of the breast in men
• support groups breast cancer
• breast cancer symptoms
• self breast exam to detect cancer

All of the queries above are related to breast cancer and are relevant. We recommend including enough keywords to ensure your Ad Grants ads are reaching people who are searching in a variety of ways.  Let’s say your organization is devoted to saving endangered bears.  Here are search queries that might display an ad targeted to the broad match keyword bears:

• chicago bears
• berenstain bears video
• collectible teddy bears
• bad news bears dvd

None of the searches listed above are relevant to the organization, yet they all include the keyword bear. Keywords such as protect bears and endangered bears would be a better option.

4. Track actions people take after clicking on your ads