Google Ads is a great platform for reaching people, especially for non-profits
May 12, 2021
Google Ads is a great platform for reaching people, especially for non-profits
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Overall Satisfaction with Google Ads (formerly AdWords)
As a non-profit organization, we use Google Ads through the Google Ads Grant and as such have setup numerous search ads to help people discover our organization or to promote big searchable events. Currently, it is only used within our communications/marketing team, but we plan to expand usage to create targeted ads for each individual area of interest within our organization, as well as to eventually run ads targeting questions people frequently ask about Christianity and religion that would link back to an in-depth article about the subject in question.
Google Ads helps address the problem of getting our organization in front of potentially interested people, and has helped boost us ahead of other larger organizations that currently rank ahead of us in terms of SEO.
Google Ads helps address the problem of getting our organization in front of potentially interested people, and has helped boost us ahead of other larger organizations that currently rank ahead of us in terms of SEO.
- Keyword Research - Google Ads has a handy built in tool that helps determine important keywords to target both for Ads & SEO
- Intuitive Analytics Dashboad - Google Ads makes it fairly simple to see and analyze important metrics on how your ads are running week after week
- Intuitive Setup - Google Ads makes it easy to figure out how to run ads with little to no training (although training is highly recommended to run effective ads), as their interface is clean and easy to figure out (unlike competing products).
- Google Ads allows you to make and manage multiple ads accounts; the downfall being that if you ever click "New Ads Account", that accidental account can seemingly never be deleted/removed from your login page.
- Google Ads offers two separate dashboard views - "Summary" and "Detailed". Both are useful, however summary seemingly removes 3/4 of the features I frequently use. This only became an issue however when Google Ads first decided to change me to "Summary" view without asking my permission or informing me how to return to the "Detailed" view.
- No matter what kind of Ads account you setup (using the non-profit grant or not), you get the exact same Google Ads account - with all the features. For non-profits under the grant, this means you have to be careful not to test that cool new feature Google is promoting that will immediately disqualify you from the grant.
- Google Ads tries to make things simple by giving you suggestions, and will sometimes penalize you if you ignore their suggestions. The issue is when their suggestion is to add misspelled words and improper grammar into your ads - which, if you ignore, decreases your optimization score, and comes back no matter how many times it is reported.
- Keyword Research
- Non-Profit Ad Grant
- Analytics
- Negative Keywords
- Increased Visibility Online
- Increased Traffic to Our Location
- Zero Investment Required (past time) due to Ad Grant
Whereas I was able to figure out the basics of Google Ads without any training (note - I highly recommend getting professional training in using Ads properly), Facebook's Ad Manager is a disorganized mess that requires extra work to understand and run. I leave Facebook Ads to other team members who have more training in that area.
Do you think Google Ads delivers good value for the price?
Yes
Are you happy with Google Ads's feature set?
Yes
Did Google Ads live up to sales and marketing promises?
Yes
Did implementation of Google Ads go as expected?
Yes
Would you buy Google Ads again?
Yes