Episode Transcript
Speaker 0 00:00:00 A lot of churches ask us about the Google grant for churches. They hear about it, and they hear about $10,000 a month in free ads for churches that are eligible in today's episode. We're gonna walk you through how your church can apply, get the grant and actually use it. We hope this conversation helps your church reach more people and grow. This is the reach right podcast. You're listening to the reach, right podcast, the show dedicated to helping pastors and church leaders reach people the right way, hosted by me, Thomas Costello. And with me as always as my co-host Ian Hyatt, we're here to help your church see more visitors and grow well. Hey guys, welcome to the reach right. Podcast episode number 113. I am your host Thomas Costello, and with me as always as my co-host
Speaker 3 00:01:07 Ian Hyatt. Hey Thomas.
Speaker 0 00:01:08 Hey man. How's it going?
Speaker 3 00:01:10 Going good. Going good. How's your day been going?
Speaker 0 00:01:13 It's going good. Have a good conversation. I think today we're be talking about Google grants and we're gonna give a full Google grants guide today in this conversation and give people some, uh, steps on how you can set up free ads with Google that, um, I'm sure you hear this all the time from people that you talk to, but is, is this for real, the Google grants thing that I keep hearing about? Yeah,
Speaker 3 00:01:34 There must be some sort of catch or what is this all about 10,000 from, from Google what's going on? Yep.
Speaker 0 00:01:41 <laugh> well, tell us about it. What, what is the Google grant for those that maybe haven't heard, or maybe they've heard rumblings of it or don't know about it? Yeah. What are we talking about?
Speaker 3 00:01:49 You know, I'm still surprised how many churches and nonprofits aren't aware of the Google grant, but you know, it isn't something that I, I don't, I know Google puts it out there, but it's not like heavily advertised. So, uh, I know we, we get the word out there to churches, cuz it's such a great opportunity for 'em, but what it is is if you're a 5 0 1 C three, which most churches are, uh, I come across some churches that are still not right, but if you are a 5 0 1 C three, you will qualify for, um, $10,000 a month of Google ads. So Google advertising. So it's not, unfortunately it's not a check for 10,000 a month from Google, even as wealthy as they are. I'm pretty sure that would break their piggy bank so to speak. So yeah, but no, it's still a very generous grant. Uh, this is Google's way of giving back and um, and, and possibly a really nice tax write off for them. I don't know. But, uh, I just know that, uh, it is something that, well, your church that you've pastored previously saw amazing results from, from the Google grant as far as reaching visitors, but these are online ads. We know, uh, everyone is Googling everything these days from their phones and uh, and from other devices and uh, you want to be visible there and uh, reach people where they're looking.
Speaker 0 00:03:07 Yeah, that's exactly right. Yeah, no, you were mentioning the church that I pastored. I was pastoring most recently at church in, in Madison, Wisconsin. Uh, and we, we were a tiny little church and we started using the Google grant and we were very early kind of trailblazers in this whole thing. I just heard rumblings about it and this, we probably applied for it back in like 2013, 14. Uh, and it's a very different opportunity today than it was then. I don't know that it's better or worse. I'm not saying that it's not, you know, the it's still super valuable to churches right now, but in those days there might have been a few, uh, it might have been a little easier to take advantage of the grant or we might have been able just to kind of throw things out there. It was easier to spend the money. It didn't take as much work back then to do it. Yeah. But my goodness, by the time, after a few years of chugging along, we were seeing 10, 15 visitors every weekend that we could trace back to people that saw us through one of our ads that we put out there through the Google grant. So yeah, it was just, and I think you
Speaker 3 00:04:09 Said, correct me if I'm wrong, but I think you said before that, that you guys were maybe, and I know it was kind of a restart smaller church, but uh, maybe only seeing like a family a month and went up to like 10 visitors a week, right?
Speaker 0 00:04:22 Yeah. We saw when I took over the church and started pastoring, there were, you know, basically zero visitors. It was one of those churches. Yeah. I'll tell this story that I remember the first time we had a visitor, when I was pastoring this church, it was a young church, but just nobody wound up coming in. So this couple came and there were a handful of couples in our church. And I remember very distinctly like, like paras everybody in our church surrounded this couple. And I heard them personally get invited to like six different, uh, small groups during that week to come out. Never heard from 'em again. Right. So that's, that was the culture at our church back then, but we had to get used to it because we started to see this influx of 10, 15 visitors every single weekend. And so we had to build systems around that and we have many podcast episodes dedicated to some of those things.
Speaker 0 00:05:10 Um, but in today's episode, we want to talk about the, the first step in that process is how do we get them in the door? So, um, now I will say this too, that I, I think you were talking about how it, isn't a cash, uh, Google, doesn't give you cash. And I wanna just totally dispel that like once and for all. Yeah. Because we still still do get people. We, we get people that actually pay us for our service or try to pay us for our service, thinking that they're gonna be getting checks from Google still. And we have to like refund them until no, you, you misunderstand what all this is. Yeah. And try as we might. Yeah. This is $10,000 a month for ads. So you get a $10,000 every month credit on your ad account $329 a day basically is how you set it up.
Speaker 0 00:05:54 Yeah. So that's how much money you have to spend in ads to attract people and connect them with your church and do those kinds of things there. So yeah. Uh, today we want to talk AF now that we've dispelled, is it true? Is it for real or not? We wanna talk a little bit about what it does and how you can use it to how it benefits churches and how you can get started in applying for it. So, yeah. Um, I don't know. I'll, I'll let you kind of tackle the, the question of benefits. So you, because you, yeah. You talk to churches all the time. I know I told my story a little bit about how we did with it, but what kind of benefits are you hearing from churches? What are they getting, uh, as a result of running this Google grant?
Speaker 3 00:06:32 Yeah. So you, you know, we did touch on one of the benefits already. This is obviously reaching first time, visitors, new visitors, people that, uh, and, and not just people that, that will walk in the door, but maybe someone a that start following you online and watching your messages, um, you know, that, but it reaches new visitors and mm-hmm, <affirmative> with your message, uh, at your church, your vision, your mission, cool thing about these ads is their text based. And it's not just gonna say your church's name that they click on. There's a little bit more detail in there. And we'll, we'll talk more about that, but right. Um, but yeah, it can actually get some of your church's unique content and message out there. Um, so, so that's, that's definitely one benefit there. Um, another one is that you can promote your church's events.
Speaker 3 00:07:17 Yeah. Um, I know you'd mentioned and getting back to your, and we see a lot of churches getting results this way, but getting back to the church you pastored, I know that a lot of people would look for things to do in Madison, Wisconsin over the weekend that's and your church's event would pop up. I tell churches all the time, Hey, we're going into the fall right now. Do you do a fall festival? Do you do when Halloween comes, do you, do you do trunk or treat well, Hey, these can promote those, uh, those types of events. Um, mm-hmm <affirmative> yeah. In addition to that, I think one of
Speaker 0 00:07:46 The things, yeah. Yeah. One of the things that go ahead, I, one of the things that I think people miss a lot about the grant is that if you think I'm gonna get the grant and we're gonna make an ad for people looking for churches that will work, but you will only get a very small subset of people. And the reason for that is there aren't enough people in your local area looking for local churches to visit this weekend for you to spend $10,000, unless maybe if you live in New York city or Los Angeles or Chicago, and even then that won't get it, that won't spend $10,000. So what has to happen is we have to actually broaden our search topics, a little bit of things that people might be looking for. Now, it can't just be totally off the wall type things. Right. Uh, so we had one pastor come to us and say, Hey, you know, wouldn't it be great if instead of when someone went looking for a porn site on Google, that instead they got, they wound up on our church's website.
Speaker 0 00:08:41 Wouldn't that be awesome? Well, you know, Google, their algorithm is really smart. And if they notice that a lot of times, people that are looking for something don't get what they want. They're gonna recognize that this site isn't doing a good job. It's a bad ad probably right. To be showing for people that are looking for porn related topics in this case. Right. Right. I totally get it now again, that would be amazing if that would work. And that's kind of what I was talking about back in the, in the early days you could do that kind of stuff. Yeah. We had an ad. We I've heard of ads for divorce, attorney, people searching for that and winding up on church websites and those things. But unfortunately those days have kind of come to an end unless you actually have content on your website that is relevant to someone looking for divorce attorneys.
Speaker 0 00:09:25 Yeah. Uh, so, um, and that they would have a track record of staying on there. So yeah. All that to say, I think that things like events in your community, that's one that we did really well with. And I remember always having to play dumb when people would come into our church, they'd say things like, you know, so weird. I just put in things to do in Madison this weekend, your church popped up and I felt like it was just a total, uh, a total God thing. And I believe that it was a God thing. Yeah. But I do think that this had a little bit of, I had a hand in it because we, we were very intentional about making ads for people that are looking for events in Madison there. So yeah, I think that there's a huge opportunity, but it's important to have to understand that you're gonna have to broaden your reach.
Speaker 0 00:10:05 And what that means in a lot of cases is making more website content that goes along with that. So if you don't have a good event page on your website for your church services, or for events that happen at your church, then they probably Google probably won't show that ad because you need to have good content that kind of matches it there. So, yeah, that's a key that is a benefit though, I think is you can really reach people, not just those looking for churches, uh, but people looking for, uh, things for kids and things for their youth and, uh, for celebrate recovery and for financial piece university, we've done really well with that ad too. We ran financial piece university, Dave Ramsey's program. And yeah, we put out ads through the Google grant and saw lots and lots of people get connected with us. Some of them wind up joining financial piece and doing those things. So it's really a broad opportunity and that's a huge benefit benefit. I think the church is, you're not just capturing people that are looking today to go to church. You're looking for people that would be blessed by anything that your church has to offer there.
Speaker 3 00:11:08 Right. Yeah. That's good. Yeah. And in addition to those things, you know, it's obviously gonna steer more traffic to your website. Mm-hmm <affirmative> so that's a good thing too. So someone goes to your website, you know, like you said, if they're looking for, uh, you know, things to do, they're gonna end up maybe on your events page, but then they're also gonna be able to scroll on over to your about page or check out a sermon, you know, if they're on your site, um, in addition to that, this builds your brand as a church. You know, this is, um, the way we kind of phrase it is look at this as a, uh, a branding and visibility, uh, online visibility play for your church, you know, because it's gonna, when people are gonna be searching, like you said, maybe it's a, uh, churches with great kids programs or, or youth programs, you know, an ad comes up, you know, verse Baptist church, a church for the entire family or a church that loves the next generation, you know, that type of thing. So it, it begins to put you top of mind, uh, for people searching online. So a lot of benefits.
Speaker 0 00:12:08 Yeah. Good stuff. Well, let me tackle a little bit, cuz I think the next question that people have, it's like, it's gonna work well for us. I'm you know, what do I do next? What is my next step? Yeah. So, um, I wanna go over a little bit about how someone would sign up. I'm not gonna give you the link. That's gonna be wherever you're watching this or listening. If you're a lot of people watch on our website and we have a whole post that goes along with this episode here that has a link in it. If you're watching on YouTube or places, you'll see a link down in the description below there. So, um, we have actually built the easiest way to see if you're gonna be eligible or not is we've built an eligibility checker that basically asks you a handful of questions.
Speaker 0 00:12:45 And then we kind of spit out a result as to whether you're qualified or you need to do a couple of things to be qualified for the grant. But I wanna go over, I guess, a couple of them and just kind of give you a high level view of what someone needs to do to be eligible. So the biggest one you kind of mentioned in the beginning is you have to have a 5 0 1 C three, or you have to be under a parent organization that has a 5 0 1 C three, and they can send a letter that basically designates you as a subsidiary of that organization. So yeah, I say all that because I'd say about a third of our clients that we help with this, they actually are not set up as a 5 0 1 C three themselves, but they're part of a denomination. So for instance, I pastor a Foursquare church, uh, yeah.
Speaker 0 00:13:31 Or I did pastor a four square church and we had a letter from Foursquare saying we are a organization in good standing under their parent 5 0 1 C three. So a lot of just to kind of save on, uh, legal costs and those things, a lot of denominations will set up their, uh, their, uh, their churches that way. So yeah, you are eligible. So even if you're thinking of this, say I don't have a 5 0 1 C, they were part of a denomination. You're still eligible in that case there, what doesn't work a lot of times, uh, some churches are set up as a nonprofit and the only paperwork they actually need for that is state paperwork. Uh, so I know in a lot of, uh, states, like I know in Texas is one of them, people will sometimes send us Texas statements that say, Hey, this is a registered nonprofit, but they don't have a federal one that is not something that could work.
Speaker 0 00:14:20 Uh, so right. That's just kind of a little disclaimer on that. It probably makes sense. It's probably worth it to go through the paperwork of getting a 5 0 1 <inaudible>, uh, because the savings on this is so amazing with this grant, but so that's probably the biggest hurdle for most, uh, churches to get over is just being legally set up the way that you're supposed to be set up to get this grant. There's a few other qualifications. Like you can't be a school. Uh, so sometimes schools are 5 0 1 C <inaudible>. I think most churches don't fall into this category, but sometimes we've run into a couple where they were a school first and then they started a church after that and they were legally set up primarily as a school. Uh that's right. In those cases, there can be some hiccups in getting qualified for the grant. That's pretty rare, uh, beyond that, uh, you also need to, uh, have an SSL certificate on your website.
Speaker 0 00:15:11 So they're looking for a secure website, uh, it's 2022. So your website should already be this way already. Uh, but if it's not, it's something that you do need to address before that, uh, it's not something that should be expensive. Any reputable host should be able to help you with that. It shouldn't cost you more than a hundred dollars for the certificate. Uh, and then you can get through that kind of process there. So that's really a no brainer, something that you can do. And that's really, uh, that's basically it, I think if you kind of, uh, have those things in order, you can again use the eligibility checker that we set up that will like make sure that we'll, we'll kind of get into the details and you can read the specifics about what they're looking for, but once you're past those hurdles, uh, you're eligible, uh, and then you can go on over.
Speaker 0 00:15:54 There's a process that you go through, you start off by proving that you're a nonprofit to an organization, right? Another nonprofit called tech soup. Uh, and that's the one that handles the kind of Google outsources, all of their nonprofit management stuff to this company, tech soup, uh, and they will be the ones that do the verifications. Uh, we help so many churches through this process that we have them on, on speed dial. Basically. I don't know what the 2022 version of speed dial is, but we have our own rep there that kind of helps us through these things. But, uh, so we, we know a lot of, some of the things that work and don't work with tech soup, but you'll get approved with Techup, but then you go through some process, Google wants to make sure that you actually know how to make ads. You're gonna make ads. They go to good sites, they go to good landing pages. Some of those things, that's all part of the setup process of things there. Yeah. But yeah, that's how you, uh, kind of you sign up and get going on things.
Speaker 3 00:16:45 Yeah, absolutely. And the next thing you want to do is then use it. So once you're, uh, approved for it, you want to get it going. And so there's gonna be, Google does give some schooling and training on this. Uh, you know, cuz I, I would say the average pastor ministry leader out there, uh, does not have experience creating, uh, a campaign of ads, but that's the first step you're gonna wanna do is create a campaign. You wanna create an ad and keywords that tie to that, that there is some work to be done with this. Uh, there, there is some, it is time consuming. It's one of the reasons why we help churches with this. Yeah. Um, but you do want to use it once you get it and, and it's worth the work, you know, and if you're, if your church has someone, if you, if you're so fortunate to have a Google ads expert on staff or, and they can dedicate hours and hours in a given month, cuz it, it does once you get this going, it takes some management and some work on going, um, to, to be testing the ads and, and there's some technical specifics to it.
Speaker 3 00:17:47 Again, Google does give some schooling and if you have someone that's ready to dive into that and learn it and, and dedicate the time that's, that's what the next step would be. So you want to use it, you know, it's a, it's a use it or lose it type thing too, cuz uh, it is probably worth saying Google will make sure that a grant to, to award this grant on a monthly basis and to give you the 10,000 each month in ads, they do want to see it actively managed. So. Yep.
Speaker 0 00:18:15 Yeah.
Speaker 3 00:18:15 So there's you do have to kind of count the cost.
Speaker 0 00:18:17 Yeah. That's a good point. Yeah. So Google will flag your account if you are not making monthly changes to your ads. So it is something that they're very strict about. It needs to have active management. That's another one of those changes over the last nine years of that I've been running grants for our church and for churches. Uh, that's one of those big changes we've seen, but yeah, you do need to actively manage it. You do need to have, uh, one of the other big things is you need to maintain, uh, over 5% click through ratios.
Speaker 3 00:18:48 That's right.
Speaker 0 00:18:48 Which, um, 5% sounds like a small number, but it's actually pretty challenging to do that. Let me explain what that is a little bit. So a click through ratio that's every time Google shows your ad, people need to click on it 5% of the time. Uh, so if they're not clicking on it, 5% of the time, then you're in violation and you'll have to basically rewrite your ad and rewrite your content and change your keywords so that people will go over that 5% click through ratio. So that's something they do to make sure people don't just spam junk ads all over because they say, Hey, it's free money. Why not? I'll just put whatever I want out there. They want you to really think about these kinds of things. So all that to say, this is all stuff that can be learned. I, I think it's not like, um, it, it's not, it it's not necessarily easy.
Speaker 0 00:19:34 I wouldn't go out there and say that, you know, anybody can do it. But if someone has some technical acumen, uh, you can go out there and learn this. Google does have a certification course for Google ads that they offer. It's about a 40 hour course. Uh, it's something that we put all of our team through. When we go through, when we bring new people onto our Google grants team, we send them through Google's course. We do some additional training on top of that. So it is something that churches on their own can do. I think you're right though. You do have to count the cost. I don't know if that's the best use of a church's time to be learning these things that probably not for most lead pastors. I think in most cases it'll be a, a volunteer or someone at the church that could help you with these kinds of things. But yeah, that's why it is a service. Again, we don't do this episode to, uh, to plug our own stuff necessarily. Yeah. But, uh, it is something, if you wanna look into that, feel free to do that. Uh, but um, we want you to know that it is something that you can learn. If you are looking for help, we'd be happy to have a conversation with you and see how we can do that. We've laid out all the details on how we churches on our site there. Uh, so yeah.
Speaker 3 00:20:34 Yeah. That's good. Yeah. The next thing maybe to, and, and that's a good segue into the next point. I know you were gonna cover as far as, you know, when creating these ads, there's some specifics, right?
Speaker 0 00:20:46 Yeah. What, what we're looking for, like what Google's looking for specifically in the ads you're saying. Right,
Speaker 0 00:20:50 Right. Yeah. So you know, it, there, it really, you have a pretty broad, um, creative, uh, ability with this here. So there's not, there's not any kind of a limit in what you can do creatively with your ads, but yeah, I think what Google is looking for you to do is to kind of stay within some of those parameters that we were talking about, um, that it's something that you need to have high clickthrough ratios and they need to be good quality ads. They need to go to really good quality landing pages. I gotta tell you having helped lots of churches with this. This is something that that's probably the hardest part of the Google grant, uh, is making sure that we have really good places to send people that are looking for that kind of content. Like I was saying before, if you need to broaden your horizon and not just look for people, looking for churches, you wanna be looking for people that are looking for all kinds of life issues or challenges or things that they're facing.
Speaker 0 00:21:40 But the secret is, is you need to have good content on your site that they will actually like, and they'll click around and they'll stay on there for a few minutes. They'll read it, they'll do that kind of stuff. That's Google's way of knowing that this was a good ad. Let's show this to more and more people that way. So I think that really is the big thing is, is landing pages. Uh, you ask our team like what is their biggest challenge? They could do all the ads they can make. 'em great. But if we don't have a great landing page to send people to, it's really hard to get Google, to keep sending those ads there. So you do need to put a lot of focus into what are we saying to people that click on the ad? Are we doing something? Are we giving them something that they can take a step with? Can they, is there a call to action for them? Are they, are we targeting the right kinds of people they're gonna actually show up on a Sunday or their kids will come to our youth ministry? Are we targeting and using the right keywords in that way? So all of those things kind of lead into what makes and what doesn't make a good ad.
Speaker 3 00:22:37 Yep. That's good stuff, man.
Speaker 0 00:22:38 Awesome. Good. Uh, anything else that I guess kind of to add as we kind of close up here today, Ian, anything, uh, you think our, our audience should know about the grant or how it might help them or what they
Speaker 3 00:22:48 Do next. It's there for the taking, uh, it's out there for taking, like we said, we, we didn't do this podcast to try to just, you know, promote our service for it. Um, it's out there for the taking I, one of the things that I consult churches with on a daily basis when talking about this is that, Hey, it is there for the taking, but you know, you gotta count the cost. Are you, are you willing to put the work in, um, to manage it? So that's, that's the thing to consider. It's not, and the way I put it is it's not hard to get the grant, but it can be hard to utilize it or get results from it. So I think that's what the next step would be for you as a church leader, you as a pastor out there hearing this, is that, okay, this is a great opportunity for church growth.
Speaker 3 00:23:29 And it is, it's something that we believe every church should take advantage of. Yeah, no, because it is free money and it's something that'll help you reach visitors. No problem. And no doubt. Um, no problem, no doubt. It'll help you reach <laugh>. Um, uh, the problem could be that you may, may not have enough expertise and time, um, to, to dive into it. So that's what I would say. Sit down, consider that. Yeah. Um, you know, be thinking of, do we have someone on our staff, do we have a V do we have a Google ads person in our church that wants to serve this way? And if not, then, Hey, this is again what we do day in and day out. And we would love to help if, if we could.
Speaker 0 00:24:09 So yeah, no, we, we set it up in a way that it's, um, a great value for churches. It's, you know, you pay a small fraction of the $10,000 that you get every month from Google for someone to actively manage it. So it's a, yeah, it really is the biggest, no brainer in my view, as far as where you should be putting the first bit of your church's marketing budget is to, if you could pay a little bit to get 10,000 extra dollars in your marketing budget, that's kind of a no brainer, I would say. So. Absolutely. I would say the first step for most churches is to check your eligibility. You know, that's, it's no sense of going much further and until you know what you have to do and, and whatnot's kind of like getting preapproved before you go to look at houses, right?
Speaker 0 00:24:47 If you that's right. If you can't, if you can't buy a house, there's no sense in, uh, in going to look at houses, right. So take a look, uh, use our eligibility checker. Um, that's the easiest way to do it again. We'll have a link down below. You can take a look there and, uh, we'll give you some specific details on what you're missing if you, uh, if you aren't eligible. Uh, so yeah, please do check out that there, uh, that's a free tool, no cost at all to use no obligation at all. Uh, so yeah, use that, get that Google grant and, uh, yeah, I hope it's, uh, hope it's something that helps your church there. If this has been helpful to you, uh, we'd love to know, let us know in the comments. Also, if you have any questions about this, if you have things we love to answer any kind of questions people may have about the Google grant, uh, you can let us know down there in the comments, wherever on any platform you're watching. If you're watching this as part of a short on Instagram, or you're watching this on YouTube, wherever you're seeing this, uh, let us know in the comments we do respond to all comments. Uh, almost all comments. We get some pretty crazy ones sometimes. Yeah, but we respond to all those that are worth responding to. So if you have a good question, I'm sure we'll respond and we wanna thank you guys so much for being a part of our reach, right family. Uh, we hope to catch you next week.
Speaker 3 00:25:56 See you.
Speaker 0 00:25:59 Thanks for listening to the reach right podcast. We hope this episode will help you reach people the right way, looking for more resources for your church. Check us out online at reach, write studios.com. If this episode has been helpful to you, it would mean the world to us. If you would rate, review and subscribe on iTunes for wherever you get your podcasts. Thanks again for listening. And we'll see you next week.
Speaker 1 00:26:26 Ready to get ready to get you.
