If you hold charitable status and could benefit from driving traffic to your website, then Google Ad Grants might be for you. The scheme offers up to US$10,000 per month of free advertising on its search pages which can be particularly beneficial if you are running a fundraising campaign or offer your charitable services to the public. Just getting the grant in the first place was quite difficult for me but that was a number of years ago and I think that the process has moved on since then. It must be said, though, that taking on AdWords is quite a commitment if you don’t have someone that is already familiar with them. There is lots to know by way of tactics in choosing your keywords; making your ads effective in drawing traffic to your website. Just choosing lots of keywords and accepting those that are offered as suggestions is likely to get you much less traffic than a considered approach based on learning how the system works and giving plenty of time to making your strategy work.
You can find out about the Google Ad Grants programme at google.ie. If you do decide to apply for the grant and receive it, I recommend the Ultimate Guide to Google AdWords by Perry Marshall as your in-house training (do make sure to get the latest edition as things change fast). There is also low-cost training available for using AdWords – just Google ‘Google Grants Training’ to find out what’s available.