No love for Google?

I was checking out Sean Triner’s blog yesterday as he was blogging live from a digital integration session he was helping to facilitate with Ted Hart in Sydney.

Of the 30 odd organizations represented there, only two had applied for and were using their Google Grants. Staggering.

Google are giving away free advertising space (helped by volunteers) and charities just aren’t using it. Yes, there are some restrictions. Yes, it requires time to manage, but it’s worth it.

I’ve talked about this before in Google AdWords learning’s for charities, but I still find it disappointing that we aren’t taking advantage of a wonderful opportunity.

Take the Haiti disaster for example. Look at this screen shot below, I typed in Haiti Help and whilst there were paid searches, its obvious many organizations fundraising for Haiti aren't using this as a vehicle to drive traffic.



Regardless of whether AdWords drive donations (emergencies are one area where they can drive significant $), we need to be doing this. Here are three reasons why you must:

1 Provides great learning for proposition development. Here's what people are actually searching for, online.

2 Great for traffic (not donation) building. If you have a program in place that is focused on building a decent email file (with the intention to cultivate and ask), well thought through ads can rock this.

3 If you're not running campaigns, someone else is.

Of course, there are many things to think through, in particular ensuring you have someone responsible it.

Click here for some earlier learning's. We're running more campaigns now, so watch this space for further insights.

Jonathon