Google Ads Grant Case Study: $50,000 Spent With Google Ads Grant
InterTeam has been working with this client since 2023. We managed their marketing and ad campaigns, helping them get more eyes on their brand and maximize their ROIs.
Objective
They had been approved for the Google Ad Grants account but needed somebody to help them setup and run the account. They wanted to leverage the subsidy to promote the programs they were running for their clients.
Results snapshot
Over 50k spent and 13.5k in traffic to their website and educational guides.
Challenge #1: learning the nuances of the Google Ads Grant
$10,000 dollars in free ad spending just seems too good to be true—and Indeed, it is. Rather than tailoring the settings to save money, the challenge was actually spending it.
Here are just a few conditions that need to be met:
- A click-through rate (CTR) above 5%
- Must have 3 ads active in each ad group at all times and 2 site links active with different URLs
- Can’t exclude IP addresses or add audiences
- Must maintain a quality score (relevancy) of 2/10 or more
- Only get a maximum of 10% of the impression share on a keyword
- No generic keywords (single keywords)
- Can only spend a max CPC of $2
These requirements significantly restrict what you can do in the ad account. For instance, running B2B ads can easily be over $25 per click, so a $2 Max CPC limits you to targeting very low-intent keywords. What’s more, failing to meet these requirements, could lead to your Google Ads Grant account shut down.
Challenge #2: landing page experience
Another key requirement was having a keyword quality score of 2/10 or greater. 30% of the keyword quality score is determined by your landing page experience, aka how fast your page loads and how relevant it is to your ads and keywords you are targeting. The client had development-related issues with their site and, therefore was not clear in its mission or service offering and had a 0/10 on the landing page experience for every keyword.
While the obvious solution would’ve been to clarify and optimize the landing pages, the client was in the process of launching a new website. So, we had to fine-tune the ads as best as possible.
Challenge #3: defying the odds
The campaigns started really slow. It actually took us around a month to be able to spend more than 5 dollars a day and an extra two months of dealing with recurring issues for us to start spending consistently in the account.
Regardless of our minor successes, we were stuck. So, we hired an Ads Grant Account specialist to see if there was something we were missing. The audit couldn’t have gone worse. The specialist ultimately reported that given the circumstances, the account likely wouldn’t surpass 25 dollars of ad spend per day.
Results from the Google Ads Grant campaign
Despite the requirements and limitations, landing pages problems, and experts telling us the campaigns were destined to fail, we endured and developed creative strategies that were highly successful.
Since we weren’t going to get strong landing page experience scores, we focused instead on maxing out our ad relevancy scores with super-tailor ad copy for every single keyword. We were able to overcome the max 10% keyword impression share restriction by adding over 44,000 keywords in broad match, phrase match, exact match types, and even figured out how to go over the $2 CPC limit! Ultimately, InterTeam maxed out the daily ad spending at $329 per day within a month of being told it wasn’t going to happen and brought in over 13.5k in traffic to the client's site and their educational guides.
