Ad Grants

At a Glance

Location: USA www.cancer.org

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Mission

The American Cancer Society is on a mission to free the world from cancer. The organisation funds and conducts research, shares expert information, supports patients and spreads the word about prevention. All so people can live longer – and better. The organisation works at a national level across the United States, and there are local offices across the country.

Marketing Goals

The American Cancer Society’s marketing efforts are focused on driving revenue to fund mission research and raise brand awareness to ultimately reach more patients and caregivers through their support programs.

'ACS is attacking cancer from every angle and the digital marketing team is a part of that fight. Our goal is to connect and engage with patients, donors, caregivers and volunteers where they are online,' says Nija Clark, Search Marketing Analyst at The American Cancer Society.

The Approach

The organisation invests in Google Ad Grants and paid Google Ads to grow revenue to support their mission. Both accounts are managed by Tinuiti, a digital marketing agency. The Google Ad Grants account allows The American Cancer Society to test strategies around engaging people searching for cancer-related keywords such as signs, symptoms and treatment options – and attracting people who are not directly looking to donate at the time of their search.

The objective of their paid Google Ads account is to directly engage those who are looking to donate. The organisation targets branded keywords and competitive donation-centric non-branded keywords that are often single-word keywords that they cannot bid on in their Ad Grants account. The paid account empowers the organisation to efficiently drive revenue from people that are ready to take action and have an intention to donate. The organisation also leverages display ads and remarketing in their paid account to achieve their goals at scale.

Lastly, The American Cancer Society is developing more robust attribution modelling to better answer and understand the cause and effect of their offline and online efforts.

Impact of Google Ads

The American Cancer Society uses Google Analytics to measure the impact of their Ad Grants and paid Google Ads accounts. Specifically, the organisation tracks where their ad traffic is coming from, the click-through rates of their ads, and how much donation and online revenue their ads generate.

Investing time and budget in the accounts has significantly increased their brand exposure to those looking to make a meaningful donation or those interested in finding out more about cancer. Ultimately, the ads help drive donations and online revenue at scale, which directly fund cancer research and support for victims of cancer. In fact, their paid Google Ads account generates 25% of total online donations for the organisation.

'We recommend that Ad Grantees invest in a paid Google Ads account. Ad Grantees can test campaign strategies in their Ad Grants accounts, then expand and mirror their successes in a paid Google Ads account. This allows them to scale and drive revenue using strategies that they know work,' says Nija Clark, Search Marketing Analyst, The American Cancer Society. The organisation leverages historical data from their Ad Grants account to build out scaled strategies in their paid Google Ads account that they know work, lessening the risk of financial investment.