We have a Google Grant, but none of us has the marketing expertise to set up an effective campaign (ineffective we are pretty good at).
We have unsuccessfully tried to recruit SEM's as volunteers through Craiglist, Volunteer Match, and contacting local marketing professors (we don't have the money to hire anyone).
Does anyone have any suggestions how we can get help with this?
I'd recruit someone that is learning SEM, and just let them have a blast with your account (it is free, right?). It is hard to learn SEM without an account, and the only way to create an effective campaign is to spend a lot of time and try many different things.
IMO, for most organizations Google Grants is a waste of time. SEM is a useless tool for building "awareness", which is what most organizations try to achieve with Google Grants.
I used to work for adCenter support and you can always call them up to help you with some basics of PPC and running a good advertising campaign. Google now has a phone number so I hear, so they also might be of some assistance. Also, if your monthly budget is $500 or more you can get an 'optimization specialist' (buzzwords I never cared for) to work with you for up to 45 days on getting a campaign up and running (it's a free service).
Unfortunately all that won't help you much with finding an SEM, but if need be it'll allow you to effectively self-manage.
My recommendation is to go on LinkedIn and search for people you might be connected to who are working at a large advertising agency. Most of the large agencies pick a few non-profits to work with pro-bono in a consultative role. If you have a grant to provide the media budget, hopefully you can solicit some manpower from someone with a connection to your cause. If you want to, send me a DM on Twitter (see my profile) about your organization, and I'll see if I it makes sense to put it in the hands of someone in my org.
Hey something on HN I can actually help with haha. Now I won't build entire campaigns for you, but if you have specific questions, send me a pm or email and i'll try to help. I've been working in SEM for almost two years now since college, so I feel like I have a pretty good handle on it.
Hi vaughanhedges,
If you still need some help, let me know. My agency works with several Google Grant clients and we also offer discounted rates for nonprofits. http://www.kinseystreet.com
One thing not mentioned here is that exact matches will have a higher quality score than broad matches, so don't just rely on broad match keywords - include some exact match keywords for common variations.
There's actually quite a lot of little details that get speculated on in SEM. The fact is, until you test it yourself, you won't know for sure. One interesting thing about QS for phrase and broad is that the QS you see is not the real QS; it is only the QS for queries that match exactly to your keyword. The real QS is weighted appropriately, based on impression distribution.
I also doubt that quality score takes only integral values.
QS as reported in the interface is a bit like tool bar page rank; it can tell you if you're doing really well or really badly but at the end of the day your competitors probably have a load of 7's too
We have a Google Grant, but none of us has the marketing expertise to set up an effective campaign (ineffective we are pretty good at).
We have unsuccessfully tried to recruit SEM's as volunteers through Craiglist, Volunteer Match, and contacting local marketing professors (we don't have the money to hire anyone).
Does anyone have any suggestions how we can get help with this?