Help wit AdWords campaign

so I represent a 501c3 nonprofit (charity),
we have a grant that covers $10,000/month, with some limits
I am pretty much spending the amount now, but would like to optimize the campaign fully.

of course the campaign is supposed to benefit the charity and not be used for profit or other purposes.

what is the best way to start?
-d

I would start by doing keyword research and finding out which keywords you should add as negative to your campaign. If you start off with the wrong keywords, you will burn through that money rather quickly.

Just to chime in (not related to your adwords campaign)- Sponsor some non-profit charity events or other events related to your cause in your locality and get back a mention from their site for your charity. The sites you target should be reputable in Google'e eye. So you end up with some good links for organic growth. Try to sponsor 1-2 charity events per month.

[FONT=arial, helvetica, sans-serif]I just checked, and we only used 9500 of the 10k allotment last month.
CTR is pitiful 1.93% , with 0.79 cpc

-d


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Actually you are doing better than most other charities with a Google Ad Grant. Most of the charities without Adwords managemetn don't even use 1k out of the 10k budget. The CTR and CPC doesn't look too shabby either (it seems you don't have to battle too many competitors). Of course, I don't know what your charity is all about, so it also depends on the charity niche and your competition. And of course it is important to see whether spending the 10k gets you any returns (new volunteers, donations etc.). If you bid on keywords that do not make any sense you can spend those 10k easily but the return will be low. On the other hand, if you spend only 5k out of 10k but have very targetted keywords, you might get more donations, volunteers etc. I do specialise in Google Ad Grant accounts and manage a couple of Ad Grant accounts, so if you need any help let me know. I can do a quick check of your account and give you some suggestions.

add me on skype ... tarp.man ... i am in the same field now with the same program, as everyone already said here -- you are doing pretty well...

look up google grants pro, you can potentially get 40K...(we have this status and always spend the max.. )

and finally be aware you don't have the benefit (if you can call it that..) of showing on the google search network with the program. also the program puts you in a second auction.

google sez you should use it on "mission" oriented keywords and not rely on it for "fundraising".. not sure what your NPO does..

however, you may want to experiment with buying your "brand" terms because you should have the highest quality score possible for your "brand" and that should bump out competitors even if they rank higher than you in the first auction ... do people search your "brand"/npo's name in order to donate? do you maintain a separate/paid adwords account explicitly for fundraising?

also are you setting your default bid at $2? ... i'm assuming not if your cpc is .79 (unless your account is already just brand terms, in that case the cpc will be very low) ... higher bids = higher positions = higher CTR

i'd really love to skype cuz i got a lot of knowledge on this prog and , of course, am interested in what other orgs are doing

Nobody will run your adwords campaign for free. You shouldn't do adwords if you don't know what you're doing, it's so easy to lose tons of money. I bet you could hire someone to do it for a small fee and you would get much better results.