Google Ads - Fast action in times of crisis

Our many years of NGO experience have shown us time and again: in times of crisis, charitable organizations have to react quickly. Especially in digital fundraising, NGOs must not miss the right moment - when are people ready to donate? To recognize this moment, they must always be up to date with the latest world events.

01. The nature of communication

This challenge means that a special type of communication needs to be taken into account. It is the responsibility of organizations to communicate respectfully, empathetically and authentically in urgent situations. When things have to happen quickly, things can often get tricky.

02. The budget

Another aspect: the budget. This is because media pressure increases during crises. For example, certain crisis-relevant keywords in Google searches are expensive due to their news value. It is therefore worth thinking about what the goal of the campaign is, which channels should be used to ask for donations and which keywords are the right ones to get relevant traffic to your own site.

03. Technical challenges

There are also technical challenges, such as Google's constantly changing guidelines. In the context of the coronavirus pandemic, for example, Google introduced two-factor authentication for Google Ads, which ensures greater account security.

There is also a great need for information in times of crisis. To protect the veracity of this information, Google often blocks certain keywords to prevent the spread of fake news. This was also the case with the keyword "Corona". These changes appear to be minor. But only those who stay on the ball can avoid unpleasant consequences such as account blocking, loss of donation income or the complete failure of the emergency campaign.

To be prepared for an unexpected, rapidly changing situation, organizations need a plan of action. Think of an emergency backpack that contains everything needed to react quickly and appropriately. The basic equipment should include Google ads in both the search and display networks. Ads in the meta-network (Facebook, Instagram, etc.) and native ads that are placed semantically in news portals (e.g. via Outbrain or Taboola) can also be relevant. Depending on the campaign objective and your own options, ads can also be placed via Google Ads or Google Ad Grants.
To generate attention and increase the motivation of emergency donors to donate, banners in the Google Display Network or native ads are worthwhile. Website visitors who have not yet been fully convinced can be motivated to make a donation via a retargeting campaign. A display banner set created in advance makes it possible to react quickly to a crisis and continuously adapt the ads as the crisis progresses:

Phase 1: Without naming the crisis, with an appeal for donations.

To ensure that your organization is visible in the event of a crisis, we develop generic banner and ad sets that do not name the specific crisis but contain an appeal for donations. Through semantic targeting with keywords related to the crisis, the generic banners appear in the context of the crisis. This allows the first wave of donors to be reached in good time.

Phase 2: With specific naming of the crisis.

As the crisis progresses, the ads are supplemented with contextual information such as the name of the crisis or disaster and the location of the event. Here we pay particular attention to the wording in order to communicate authentically and deal with the situation respectfully.

Phase 3: Context-bound, with a strong connection to the crisis and the organization

The organization is in action. Now it needs organization-related, human ads with a strong reference to how its own organization reacts in times of crisis. The ads should motivate people to click through the appropriate visual incentive and lead potential donors to a landing page that provides more information about the crisis response. On the ads and landing page, it is possible to include images of the organization's mission and place a specific appeal for donations.

For us at getunik, keeping up to date with world events and important changes that are relevant to our customers is part of our daily routine. This constant contact makes it easy for us to recognize needs more quickly. If it makes sense to place ads for a specific situation, we advise on the appropriate approach. The implementation of the appropriate strategy depends heavily on the capabilities of your organization and the objectives of your campaign.

Step 01 - Setting up the ads

If you are running ads via Google and have two accounts, we will design a clear strategy between your Google Grants and Google Ads account for optimal performance: Campaigns that are in both accounts will not necessarily be active at the same time. We carry out tests to find out in which account the keywords perform better. However, you may also want to consider ads via other channels such as Facebook, Instagram, native or programmatic ads. We can help here too. First, we check which campaigns you already have running and how these can be combined with ads related to the current crisis topic. For example, if you have a display campaign that is already generating awareness and traffic, it may be worth running a retargeting campaign in parallel. This way, campaigns with different goals can run in parallel and even complement each other.

Step 02 - Emergency landing page

The corresponding emergency landing page, which provides information about the purpose of the donations as well as background information, is also important in any case. If this already exists, we analyze it in order to optimize the placement of the calls-to-actions and determine whether the visitors can be better picked up with the information and led to the donation. If an emergency landing page does not yet exist, we will help you create one.

Step 03 - Analysis

Following the analysis or landing page setup, we provide feedback and adjust the campaigns if necessary. In this way, we ensure that there is a high level of relevance between the ad, the keywords booked and the corresponding landing page.

Being well prepared for a crisis increases the chance of responding appropriately and thus ensuring better deployment in line with the values of your own organization. Introducing proven measures can save time and ensure success. We have already created the corresponding Google ads and digital fundraising campaigns for some of our clients in a crisis context and have been successful with them:

Further results from various emergency campaigns:

We created a search ad campaign for Pro Asyl via the Google Ad Grants account. The donations were collected for a project to educate people about entry requirements into the EU and applying for the right to stay for Ukrainians. With this campaign, we achieved a year-on-year traffic increase of over 140% in the Paid Ads segment and a 440% increase in traffic to the overall website in the period from February 20 to April 30, 2022.

We created new and updated Google Search Ad Groups for Ärzte der Welt within two days at the start of the war in Ukraine. This enabled us to achieve a click-through rate of 7.65%. In the course of the increased website traffic, we also relaunched an existing retargeting campaign with Ukraine-related content. We achieved an average CTR of 5.2% for all Ukraine-related ads. In the period from 20.02. to 30.04.2022, Ärzte der Welt was able to achieve an almost tenfold increase in online donation income compared to the same period in the previous year thanks to the activation of various online and offline measures and the high level of solidarity of donors with the Ukrainians. This situation has clearly shown us how important a rapid response and a digital emergency backpack are, especially in a crisis. This can ensure high visibility and achieve a significant increase in donations.

We were also able to place search ads with Amnesty International Germany via the paid Google Ads account during the war in Ukraine. The aim was to collect donations for the research project that Amnesty is using to investigate human rights violations in Ukraine. By booking appropriate keywords, we achieved a significant increase in the click rate to a value of 5.02% within a very short time. Almost EUR 57,000 in donations were collected for the research project within the campaign period of 6 weeks, around 31.6 percent of which can be attributed to the Google ads, among other things  

It is clear to see - being well prepared for a crisis increases the chance of reacting accordingly and thus ensuring a better response in line with the values of your own organization. Introducing tried and tested measures can save time and ensure success