Case Study on the Charity Organization - Dogpatrolrostov

Intro

In 2017, we were lucky to combine our professional work with charitable activities. Our client was the non-profit organization ‘Dog Patrol’ 🐶, which works on the problem of homeless dogs through spaying, neutering and vaccination. In 2017, the center was just starting up in Rostov-on-Don, and they needed to raise funds to launch and establish the project.

Initial Data

• Client’s website – dogpatrolrostov.ru;
• Google Ads advertising system as part of the Google Ad Grants program.

The work was carried out step by step 🐾 as below:

In a meeting with the client, we discussed the project’s goals, filled out the brief, and offered to use the Google Ad Grants program, which provides $10,000 per month ($329/day) for advertising on the search engine. In accordance with the main condition of the program, we proposed a strategy for launching and maintaining search campaigns, divided into ad groups for relevant keywords related to charity and helping animals.

Objectives

To set up search advertising with Google Ads within the stipulation of Google Ad Grants specifically:

• to limit the budget of $329/day
• to use only text advertising
• to maintain a CTR of at least 5% at the account level
• to exclude queries with a quality ranking of 1 and 2
• to ensure the cost per click is no more than 2 USD
• to exclude one or two-syllable key phrases and instead use targeted queries (like ‘donate to dogs’)

In fact, we were faced with the task of using 10,000 USD in resources within strict limits and getting the most out of an advertising campaign.

Plan of Action

In order to reach as many users as possible within the established budget, we decided to broadcast ads all over the world 🌎. To do this, we first had to solve 2 problems:

1. Translating the site into English
2. Meeting the requirements of Google Ad Grants and not targeting the whole world. For this reason, separate ad campaigns were created for different countries.

Implementation

Preparing for Advertising

Work began with an application to Google for a grant 💵. We studied the legal and technical requirements in advance, sent in a request, and, after getting a positive decision, we got down to work.

Then we followed the established action plan by:

1. Setting up search campaigns targeting different countries.
2. Adding negative keywords related to the PAW Patrol cartoon of the same name. By doing this, we cut out a huge section of non-targeted traffic and kept the CTR to the required level.
3. Setting the conversion for clicks on the requisites block. Since the site has a large number of donation services that don’t return to the site after transferring funds, the conversion for the fact of the donation was not established.
4. Once a week, we carried out an audit of PPC advertising to check and eliminate possible rule violations of Google Ad Grants.

Problems and their Solutions

The main difficulty was maintaining a high CTR (5% or more) with a low cost per click (2 USD or less). For example, for impressions in the first positions in Europe, the USA, and Canada, we needed more expensive queries. With the cap at $2, the ad was displayed at the bottom of the SERP, which led to fewer clicks and a correspondingly low CTR.

The problem was like a vicious circle 🔄 and demanded an immediate but clever solution in order to attract an audience without getting banned. After talking with Google’s technical support, we got the idea to connect a smart CPA strategy.

• First, this isn’t prohibited by the rules.
• Secondly, we already had configured conversions.

As a result, we managed to bypass the $2 limit, increase the cost of clicks to an average of $4-5, and for some requests to 10 USD (like for the animal charity). This allowed us to increase the CTR and the effectiveness of the campaign as a whole 📈.

Results

The sterilization center was launched on September 17, 2018. The organization managed to raise 2.5 million rubles before opening. Since the site has many options for transferring funds, it’s impossible to track how many contributions after advertising was set up. But as a result of the campaign, we managed to attract a huge number of people who wanted to help homeless animals, which is proved by transitions to the site and clicks on contacts (over the entire period of our work, they went to the contacts page more than 4850 times).

Conclusion

The project with dogpatrolrostov.ru not only provided an opportunity to contribute to helping animals but also motivated us to think flexibly in following the rules set out by Google Ad Grants and at the same time going beyond the limits. The careful selection of search queries, elimination of negative keywords, competent geotargeting, smart CPA strategy, and constantly monitoring indicators all allowed us to achieve impressive indicators.

✔ The Dog Patrol organization is successfully operating today, continues to attract sponsorship funds, performs set-out tasks, and shares the results of its activities on the website.

At the moment, the English version of the site has lost its relevance, so in the near future, we’ll be setting up advertising only for the Russian-speaking audience with geo-targeting campaigns to CIS countries. We plan to attract an equally active audience ready to join in helping animals.