Save the Children NZ

Save the Children is a not-for-profit organisation supporting children affected by war and natural disaster. They create lasting change by making sure children are healthy, protected, and have the opportunity to learn.

Save the Children began in 1920 and the New Zealand branch was established in 1947. There are 30 member organisations around the world delivering change in over 125 countries. They save children’s lives, protect their rights and provide children with the opportunity to live healthy, successful lives and achieve their full potential.

The problem:

Although Save the Children are a worldwide organisation, each branch is responsible for their own marketing efforts. Save the Children NZ came to us to help them make better use of the free $10,000USD per month in click spend that they are allowed as part of the Google Ad Grants program.

All not-for-profits have access to this program, although many have difficulties making full use of the free spend. The restrictions on how Google Ad Grants campaigns can be run make it difficult for charities to effectively execute a campaign by themselves without advanced knowledge of Google AdWords.

Like a lot of charities, Save the Children NZ were driving traffic from their AdWords campaign to their website, but this traffic wasn’t converting into donations.

They were also at risk of having their Google Ad Grants account suspended as the click-through rate in the account was not above the new required minimum of 5%. This is one of the new rules in the Google Ad Grants program, click-through rates in the account must remain above 5% or the account can be suspended.

The solution:

We took over the project, tightened up existing campaigns and built out new campaigns to attract more targeted traffic that was more likely to convert into donations. We focused on targeting users further along in the buying cycle and ready to take action, as well as those looking for information.

We also implemented a remarketing campaign and strategic paid search for campaigns that didn't fit within the Google Grants restrictions but were driving donations.

The result:

Within 3 months of working on the campaign, we were able to increase their Google Ad Grants spend (free spend) by 641% making better use of the free $10,000USD per month from Google. This targeted traffic resulted in a consistent flow of new ongoing donors, our main measure of success.

The number of new ongoing donors that were directly attributed to Google AdWords traffic in this period was 19x higher than the same period last year.

We've loved helping such a great cause efficiently grow their ongoing donors and look forward to helping them grow even further as we move into new digital strategies to support this.