Google has recently changed methods making its ad grant program less effective for pregnancy centers. Now is the time to consider adding paid Google ads to your marketing and advertising strategy.
According to Jacob Barr, president, and founder of iRapture.com, the “free” ads allowed through the grants can no longer use important key phrases. “The Google Grants used to work really well, spending every grant dollar available,” said Barr. “But today the grants are not allowed access to phrases such as abortion clinic, abortion pill and other key phrases we want to target.”
For more than a decade iRapture.com has helped women’s pregnancy centers apply for and effectively manage Google Grants to promote the centers’ missions. After months of research, the iRapture.com team now recommends adding paid Google ads to supplement the exposure from the grants.
“The cash accounts are allowed access to these important key phrases,” said Barr. “The competition level on these words is between 90 to 100 percent so it makes business sense for Google to say we are going to do cash only on these words.”
Google grants should remain an important part of your marketing strategy. “The Google grants are less effective because of certain words being pulled out, but at the same time, through creativity and lots of other words that are still good to reach the client they still work,” said Barr. “They’re still good. They’re just not as good.”
iRapture.com is working on an intense keyword collection process, collecting all the keywords abortion clinics use. They have about 980,000 thousand phrases collected and organized into smaller ad groups.
“There’s a lot of phrases out there beyond the few everyone thinks about,” said Barr. “We can reach someone before they search on the word abortion, as well as during and after. We want to reach people in all three of those places, not just when they’re searching on the word abortion.”
Now is a very important time to consider buying Google ads to supplement your Google grant. “I would call it critical,” said Barr. “You need to have a cash account with Google and a grant account with Google and let the cash account take on any phrase the grant account is unable to take on.”
Jacob Barr and his team at iRapture.com are uniquely qualified to help you with your exposure on Google. The iRapture.com team has been working with Google grant program since nearly its inception in 2003. One member of the iRapture.com team is a former employee of Google, and another has been named a top Google ad user. “He is really good at thinking outside the box and increasing the quality scores to a new level, to the point where he was identified by Google as being one of the top performing account managers in the country,” said Barr.
“According to Care Net, a pregnancy clinic should have a marketing and advertising budget,” Barr continued. “A small clinic should budget at least 10% of its annual revenue for marketing and advertising.”
The free money from Google grants combined with a strategic purchase of Google ads is now more important than ever. “This is the jet fuel that allows us to reach your client,” said Barr. “It allows us to reach your mission and save lives and so it’s absolutely critical, it’s as critical as prayer, it’s as critical as having volunteers it’s as critical as having churches partner with you.”
If you would like more information about how to manage your Google Grant along with strategic Google ad buys contact iRapture.com. “It’s important to spend advertising dollars to get people to come in and get free and confidential services,” said Barr. “Because lives are saved.”