Latest / The Nonprofit Podcast / Ep 220| Navigating AI search & Google Ad Grants for nonprofits with Jessica King

Transcript

Ep 220| Navigating AI search & Google Ad Grants for nonprofits with Jessica King · The Nonprofit Podcast

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_02: AI and search automation are standard parts of our daily routines now, but as digital search evolves, a lot of nonprofits are left trying to figure out what actually works to get their organization found online.
• 0:13
  SPEAKER_02: In the rush to adapt to new search features, it's easy to lose focus on the fundamentals.
• 0:20
  SPEAKER_02: So today we are breaking down what is working right now, what core marketing habits small teams should keep protecting, and how to build real digital authority without feeling overwhelmed.
• 0:31
  SPEAKER_02: The Nonprofit Podcast, powered by DonorBucks.
• 0:35
  SPEAKER_02: Welcome to the Nonprofit Podcast.
• 0:37
  SPEAKER_02: I'm Jenna Lynch, Head of Community Engagement here at DonorBox.
• 0:41
  SPEAKER_02: Each week we bring you practical strategies, clear insights, and inspiration to help you raise more, reach further, and take your nonprofit to the next level.
• 0:51
  SPEAKER_02: Today we are taking a close look at search visibility and digital marketing in an AI-driven world.
• 0:58
  SPEAKER_02: Here on the show, we've always taught that reaching more supporters starts with building a solid digital foundation.
• 1:06
  SPEAKER_02: But with Google overviews, automated search results, and constant algorithm shifts, I think that many nonprofit leaders are asking if classic websites and search strategies still carry the same weight.
• 1:19
  SPEAKER_02: So today we are getting practical about what it takes to stay discoverable.
• 1:24
  SPEAKER_02: And I am thrilled to be joined by Jessica King from Getting Attention, an organization that specializes in helping nonprofits maximize their Google ad grants and build real lasting search authority.
• 1:38
  SPEAKER_02: Hey Jessica, thanks for joining us on the show.
• 1:40
  SPEAKER_02: Hi, Jenna.
• 1:41
  SPEAKER_02: I'm looking forward to chatting with you.
• 1:43
  SPEAKER_02: It's so great to have you here.
• 1:45
  SPEAKER_02: You work with all sorts of organizations every day to help them get seen online.
• 1:52
  SPEAKER_02: And uh, we've talked about this a bit already with AI tools, all these search algorithm updates, new features rolling out constantly.
• 2:01
  SPEAKER_02: You know that the digital landscape feels pretty fast moving.
• 2:05
  SPEAKER_02: I'm sure a lot of your clients come to you at first and go, whoa, what do I do?
• 2:10
  SPEAKER_02: Right.
• 2:10
  SPEAKER_02: So so when you look at the nonprofit sector today, what do you think is actually happening when it comes to how organizations get found online as teams navigate all these AI changes?
• 2:24
  SPEAKER_01: So I think there's multiple ways to look at that question.
• 2:28
  SPEAKER_01: I think from the digital marketing side, what I'm seeing, increasingly AI is becoming a source of traffic.
• 2:35
  SPEAKER_01: So if we were to peek under the hood of the analytics of any given nonprofit's website, it's very likely that you're going to start seeing Chat GBT, Claude, Gemini as sources of referral traffic, meaning AI is sending folks to your website.
• 2:49
  SPEAKER_01: At the same time, we're seeing that traditional organic search, so think traffic that just comes in from people looking for relevant topics on Google, seeing that decline.
• 2:58
  SPEAKER_01: So with that, some things to kind of be chewing on with it is that AI is not exactly making up the gap.
• 3:06
  SPEAKER_01: There is some level of, I will just call it loss or attrition that is happening.
• 3:11
  SPEAKER_01: But the traffic that does come through from AI sources is usually a lot closer to action because the ways that people are using AI is kind of as the vetting and doing your homework ahead of time portion of this journey.
• 3:24
  SPEAKER_01: So we're seeing a lot more people kind of asking the questions, getting their short list of nonprofits to check out for various reasons, whether that's donating, volunteering, et cetera, kind of ahead of time.
• 3:35
  SPEAKER_01: And so by the time they arrive at your website, they're that much closer to action.
• 3:38
  SPEAKER_01: And then with AI overviews and some of the things that Google's rolling out, we see a little bit of a hit to that organic traffic, which I think what that means in more practical terms is that's going to have a bigger impact on organizations that maybe like haven't really sat down and thought more comprehensively, like what is our digital strategy?
• 3:58
  SPEAKER_01: And where do we have true expertise?
• 4:02
  SPEAKER_01: And where do we have maybe very well-meaning volunteers doing this in their spare time?
• 4:06
  SPEAKER_01: Or we have, you know, one marketing team member whose background is actually in this one area, who's also trying to cover these six other marketing areas.
• 4:15
  SPEAKER_01: So I think as the web gets more crowded, another thing to think about, in addition to just the stat build, I suppose, of the traffic coming into your website, is that AI-generated content, like written content, and then also AI generated websites are making that barrier to entry lower than ever.
• 4:34
  SPEAKER_01: There's probably positive pieces of that.
• 4:36
  SPEAKER_01: It probably means that people who may have been held back from furthering their cause because they're like, I don't know how to build a website, they're able to be in the mix.
• 4:43
  SPEAKER_01: But it also means that marketplace, if you will, is a lot louder and a lot more crowded than it used to be.
• 4:49
  SPEAKER_01: So organizations are going to want to think about how are you actually standing up?
• 4:53
  SPEAKER_01: Because, like, the way to kind of think about this is like if you have a volunteer in Claude, like a small and mighty team that could produce something, what's making you different than all of these other organizations who have a volunteer in Claude?
• 5:05
  SPEAKER_01: You know, there is this um sort of level of saturation that you want to be thinking through.
• 5:09
  SPEAKER_01: Like, what is the thing about your organization and your approach, your view of the world, your way of sort of serving your mission that others can't replicate?
• 5:20
  SPEAKER_01: So that's kind of the digital marketing side.
• 5:23
  SPEAKER_01: And I think the other thing I'm seeing that's interesting and maybe a slightly more tangential question is organizations starting to explore like incorporating AI into their operations.
• 5:33
  SPEAKER_01: So organizations asking, what are the data privacy repercussions of using AI?
• 5:38
  SPEAKER_01: What are the environmental repercussions?
• 5:40
  SPEAKER_01: Do our donors expect us to use AI to increase efficiency, or do our donors expect us to stay away from AI due to ethical concerns, right?
• 5:48
  SPEAKER_01: So there's this visibility marketing element, and then there's this operations element.
• 5:53
  SPEAKER_01: And I think there is in both cases just a lot of dramatics going on in both sides, either from people who are like, AI is here to save us and lead us into a glorious new future, and then also people who are like, AI is going to bring about the end of the world in two weeks.
• 6:08
  SPEAKER_01: So I think the take that I probably come to this with is that we are definitely seeing some ripples.
• 6:13
  SPEAKER_01: I think that the folks who are sort of just ignoring it and pretending it's gonna go away, that's probably not the right approach.
• 6:19
  SPEAKER_01: But I also think it is gonna truly take a while to see how things shake out.
• 6:24
  SPEAKER_01: And so I think that experimenting and future-proofing is probably not a bad idea for basically anybody.
• 6:29
  SPEAKER_01: But I don't think I'm ready to like throw the baby out with the bathwater, so to speak, and totally go all in on something that's so brand new.
• 6:38
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 6:38
  SPEAKER_02: And and I really appreciate that you're showing us both sides of the coin here.
• 6:43
  SPEAKER_02: And uh I'm glad that you had mentioned um the operations piece too.
• 6:48
  SPEAKER_02: Just a few weeks ago, we put out an episode um and we looked at why using AI blindly for like donor communications, for example, um, can create this like 50-point trust gap.
• 7:01
  SPEAKER_02: It's pretty uh epically concerning, actually.
• 7:05
  SPEAKER_02: Um, so like you said, there's the balance of this where um there's certainly room to incorporate it and experiment.
• 7:13
  SPEAKER_02: And now, especially, let's see, this episode will be published in late August.
• 7:17
  SPEAKER_02: Uh, so we are moving slowly into giving season already.
• 7:22
  SPEAKER_02: And uh now is the time to kind of think about what your digital footprint looks like, how you can optimize what it means for you if you've even thought about it at all, right?
• 7:32
  SPEAKER_02: Um, and on that same note, thinking about that digital marketing side, I think that it can be easy to be pulled away when there's a lot of buzz around something, right?
• 7:43
  SPEAKER_02: AEO, AIO, um and AIO, all the acronyms, right?
• 7:50
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 7:51
  SPEAKER_02: And sometimes that means losing focus on your core systems.
• 7:56
  SPEAKER_02: And just because there are new things in place that can certainly optimize and make things better doesn't mean that your tried and true best practices in digital marketing should go away, right?
• 8:06
  SPEAKER_02: Um, and I do think I've seen a lot of organizations step away from basic search engine optimization, their clean site structure.
• 8:15
  SPEAKER_02: And most of all, you said this consistent but high quality and unique content that makes you stand out from the rest of the noise.
• 8:23
  SPEAKER_02: So, in your experience, are there any foundational marketing practices that you've seen being abandoned more and more right now?
• 8:33
  SPEAKER_02: And do you think that's a good thing?
• 8:34
  SPEAKER_01: Or I think to your point that some of the foundational stuff, we'll use SEO as sort of the classic one acronym that we're used to saying, and two um the sort of foundations for basically marketing a website in the digital era.
• 8:51
  SPEAKER_01: One of the things that is increasingly coming out, both from Google and from even like third-party AI tools like ChatGPT, Claude, what have you, are that those fundamental SEO practices are really the basis for AEO.
• 9:06
  SPEAKER_01: And the other thing that I think is really worth keeping in mind for nonprofit marketers, there are a lot of gurus out there, but the technology is so new that I think it's worth keeping in mind that there's only so much more expertise some of these folks can have than what you already have.
• 9:23
  SPEAKER_01: I think a lot of the AEO piece is basically building on SEO, you know, doing some deep research about how exactly AI understands content, just so you can make sure that that same really great content is also accessible to those new tools.
• 9:37
  SPEAKER_01: But, you know, we don't want to throw that away.
• 9:39
  SPEAKER_01: And I think one thing, if I were to zoom out even from the SEO world just a little bit, I think a fundamental thing that you want to have in mind is that you don't want to set up a single source of failure in any system that you're building.
• 9:53
  SPEAKER_01: And marketing is also a system.
• 9:55
  SPEAKER_01: And so I've seen a lot of nonprofits get caught with like very limited options and limited resiliency to bounce back if the rules of a platform change.
• 10:04
  SPEAKER_01: So I think if you're like, we're just gonna disregard all this, we're gonna go all in on how you know Claude reads a website today, that could change in six months, and then where will you be?
• 10:14
  SPEAKER_01: So there's this element of not abandoning what works.
• 10:16
  SPEAKER_01: And this isn't the first time that we've seen stuff like this.
• 10:19
  SPEAKER_01: I think there are a ton of nonprofits that went really, really, really heavy on social media.
• 10:24
  SPEAKER_01: Meta has changed a lot of rules and a lot of um guidelines on how it shows content, whose content it shows.
• 10:31
  SPEAKER_01: X famously kind of had a big change.
• 10:34
  SPEAKER_01: And so I think there is this piece where you want to be setting up multiple channels.
• 10:40
  SPEAKER_01: Ideally, I think you should be setting up at least one or two that you own that's not going to be subject to arbitrary rules from a big tech company.
• 10:49
  SPEAKER_01: But then also you do want to make sure you're still including those.
• 10:52
  SPEAKER_01: And then the key is figuring out how we feed those things into each other.
• 10:56
  SPEAKER_01: So, you know, we want multiple ways to reach both new supporters and existing supporters.
• 11:02
  SPEAKER_01: So, like, I'll take, you know, where I kind of sit day to day with the Google Ad Grant.
• 11:06
  SPEAKER_01: Like, I'm a huge fan of it.
• 11:07
  SPEAKER_01: I think most organizations should be using it, but I would never recommend that an organization go all in on just the Google Ad Grant for their marketing because it's super brittle.
• 11:16
  SPEAKER_01: If Google's preferences change, if the program were ever to go away, then your organization is left without a paddle.
• 11:22
  SPEAKER_01: So I think the foundational marketing that I would recommend for most organizations is gonna be on-site content for your website because you own that.
• 11:30
  SPEAKER_01: Probably some level of email marketing because you also own your email list and it's a fairly easy platform to get out there.
• 11:38
  SPEAKER_01: Google Ad Grant because it's free, maybe throw in some paid or organic or both social media.
• 11:44
  SPEAKER_01: That's gonna be a very well-rounded marketing mix for most organizations, and then you can kind of get fancy above and beyond that.
• 11:50
  SPEAKER_01: But you have few opportunities to sort of leverage the massive tech companies' audiences, you have few opportunities to own your own audience, own your own narrative.
• 11:59
  SPEAKER_01: And then the idea is how do we make sure all of these things are kind of working together?
• 12:04
  SPEAKER_02: That's such a critical point.
• 12:06
  SPEAKER_02: If your systems are broken, um, there's no tool in the world that's going to fix it.
• 12:13
  SPEAKER_02: So having the variety of tactics is certainly something that we would encourage as well.
• 12:19
  SPEAKER_02: And multi-channel campaigns and marketing across is really um what will get you found now.
• 12:25
  SPEAKER_02: You know, speaking of search, Google looks completely different than it did even probably six months ago, to be honest, a year ago.
• 12:32
  SPEAKER_02: Especially with AI overviews, taking up prime real estate at the top of these page results, being able to have multiple avenues that are talking to those overviews and making that more comprehensive really makes sense.
• 12:47
  SPEAKER_02: Um, and like you said, nonprofits have relied on that monthly Google ad grant for years to drive free traffic.
• 12:55
  SPEAKER_02: And there's still a lot of value there, especially now leveraging it even more with all these extra AI tools.
• 13:01
  SPEAKER_02: Um, so from your perspective at getting attention, um, how do you talk to clients about this?
• 13:06
  SPEAKER_02: You know, the search evolution, the AI overviews, um, how has it impacted the power of Google Ad Grant?
• 13:14
  SPEAKER_02: And how do you convey the value?
• 13:17
  SPEAKER_02: Certainly there's a certain level of rolling up your sleeves and setting it up.
• 13:22
  SPEAKER_02: Um, but I mean, I will advocate for it all day long.
• 13:25
  SPEAKER_01: For sure.
• 13:26
  SPEAKER_01: I think with Google search, there is uh again, and I keep kind of splitting the middle here with these answers, but there is a little bit of yes, some things have changed, and then there's a little bit of like there's nothing new under the sun.
• 13:38
  SPEAKER_01: Where if we think about optimizing the on-site content to appear in the AI overview, people who work in the SEO world were already doing that with Google's previous version of this, which was a featured snippet.
• 13:50
  SPEAKER_01: So you may remember in the ye oldy days of 2023 that sometimes you would search for something and like a basic definition or something like that would just pop up preventing the click, which from a marketing standpoint, what you want is people to click off of Google onto your website.
• 14:06
  SPEAKER_01: What Google wants is for nobody to ever leave Google.
• 14:08
  SPEAKER_01: So you're always in this kind of tension with the platform, right?
• 14:13
  SPEAKER_01: So so some of this already existed.
• 14:15
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 14:15
  SPEAKER_01: For the Google Ad Grant specifically.
• 14:18
  SPEAKER_01: When AI overviews first got rolled out, that was super bad for the Google Ad Grant, actually, because the kind of traditional playbook that you would run to overcome some of the limitations within the ad grant account would be to advertise on these more informational keywords that most paid advertisers weren't really looking at.
• 14:37
  SPEAKER_01: Because, you know, if you're Nike, you're not necessarily trying to market on like what is the history of running?
• 14:44
  SPEAKER_01: So what we had to do for a lot of organizations, um, first of all, as far as impact, what we saw was the folks who kind of had their ad grant on autopilot and kind of had it set up, it was running, it was doing its thing, um, that stopped working and that became difficult to recover.
• 15:02
  SPEAKER_01: For folks who were paying attention and experimenting, trying different things, we were able to implement some different strategies, and that kind of did help those results recover.
• 15:10
  SPEAKER_01: So there was like a dip.
• 15:12
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and the way we were able to recover, and I think the way that people should probably be thinking about the ad grant generally is the ad grant is like a small offshoot of Google's core ads product.
• 15:28
  SPEAKER_01: So if you kind of get in the mind of Google as a business and like as an organization, and you're thinking, okay, what are Google's incentives?
• 15:34
  SPEAKER_01: You get on board with that, you're gonna get much better results than if you're kind of trying to constantly swim upstream.
• 15:40
  SPEAKER_01: So shortly after AI overviews got rolled out, Google rolled out a new type of advertising campaign that had been available to paid advertisers for a long time, but they rolled it out in an ad grant account called Performance Max or PMAX for short, which is an AI-powered ad type.
• 15:56
  SPEAKER_01: So what we found is the organizations who said, okay, the direction Google is going is very AI forward.
• 16:02
  SPEAKER_01: We'll go ahead and get on board.
• 16:04
  SPEAKER_01: We were able to use PMAX to adapt, and we were able to use PMAX to recover the traffic.
• 16:09
  SPEAKER_01: In some places, break through into traffic that we're previously not able to access very well.
• 16:14
  SPEAKER_01: So this was actually a benefit for some of them.
• 16:16
  SPEAKER_01: And what we're seeing as time goes on is the organizations who are a lot more resistant to rolling that out, they are the ones who are maybe getting a little bit less traffic to their site every month.
• 16:25
  SPEAKER_01: So I think if it's this question of like, is it still worth it?
• 16:28
  SPEAKER_01: You know, that gets asked all the time.
• 16:30
  SPEAKER_01: I would still say yes.
• 16:32
  SPEAKER_01: I think the ad grant is kind of a misunderstood and maybe uh unfairly maligned marketing tool because it does, it does require pretty specific expertise.
• 16:41
  SPEAKER_01: Um, unfortunately, what I see a lot is folks who maybe they have like a little paid ads expertise from a different life, and then they get kind of frustrated because the ad grant doesn't perform for them.
• 16:51
  SPEAKER_01: You kind of just need to think about it as its own tool.
• 16:54
  SPEAKER_01: Um but you know, the trade-off of that, some of the frustration and some of the limitations, is you get$120,000 of advertising for free.
• 17:03
  SPEAKER_01: And the other thing that I think is worth keeping in mind, going back to that whole incentives thing I was talking about, if you look at Google's SEC filings, about 75%, give or take it, fluctuates from quarter to quarter.
• 17:16
  SPEAKER_01: But a huge portion of Google's revenue comes from ads, their ad product.
• 17:21
  SPEAKER_01: So by being in the mix, there's this question of like, is organic search going away?
• 17:26
  SPEAKER_01: Is AI replacing organic search?
• 17:28
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 17:29
  SPEAKER_01: I think we can't sit in Google's boardroom like it might be.
• 17:33
  SPEAKER_01: I don't know.
• 17:34
  SPEAKER_01: But what I do know is that Google makes 75% of their money from ads.
• 17:38
  SPEAKER_01: They are highly incentivized to make sure ads are still effective.
• 17:42
  SPEAKER_01: And so as an ad grant user, you get the benefit of Google sort of protecting that major source of revenue for them.
• 17:51
  SPEAKER_01: So there are frustrations with the program.
• 17:52
  SPEAKER_01: I share these frustrations and I really don't blame organizations for being frustrated by it, but I think it is cool, partially because it is a very, very generous gift that we don't really see anywhere else in the nonprofit world.
• 18:03
  SPEAKER_01: And because this is like one of the few places where your incentives as a nonprofit are being protected by this large tech company, which doesn't always happen.
• 18:13
  SPEAKER_02: Exactly.
• 18:14
  SPEAKER_02: I'm so glad that you cleared that up too.
• 18:16
  SPEAKER_02: I hear people question the value now just of search ads because of the way that things are changing.
• 18:23
  SPEAKER_02: I'm like, you guys, it's free money.
• 18:26
  SPEAKER_02: Thousands of dollars of free money.
• 18:28
  SPEAKER_02: Well, certainly you can apply for a grant to get this type of money to do your own type of marketing.
• 18:34
  SPEAKER_02: And so another question for you too is we have heard a lot of leaders asking about traditional websites and SEO, like if it even matters anymore, right?
• 18:44
  SPEAKER_02: Because folks are getting their answers directly from AI search tools.
• 18:49
  SPEAKER_02: So talk to me more about like how Chat GPT or Claude actually pull their information, where they're getting it from, but also why you would still be an advocate for like the classic traditional website SEO.
• 19:05
  SPEAKER_01: I think kind of ironically enough, this is like a slight simplification, but if you look under the hood about how most AI tools start to answer a question, they start with a Google search, which uh what they're really doing is they query Google or Bing's API.
• 19:21
  SPEAKER_01: So there is this element of like if the AI is kind of taking a shortcut rather than reading everything and just to saying, does Google have the answer?
• 19:29
  SPEAKER_01: Then you kind of still want to make sure that Google has the answer.
• 19:32
  SPEAKER_01: Um but what it also means is kind of even though organic clicks are down, that kind of classic search engine optimization is not really dead.
• 19:41
  SPEAKER_01: Um one thing that I think is kind of cool about it though, is the Google organic algorithm is relatively entrenched.
• 19:50
  SPEAKER_01: They modify it, they make tweaks, they change it.
• 19:53
  SPEAKER_01: But generally speaking, the formula has been really great content that's very readable to Google, plus backlinks, which are basically other websites linking to you, plus time, right?
• 20:03
  SPEAKER_01: Your content needs to age like a fine wine, um, but also be kept up to date because Google makes you jump through a lot of hoops.
• 20:08
  SPEAKER_01: So what that means is like you get certain types of organizations that have been around forever, are well known in the space, they get linked to by like the New York Times and what have you, that tend to kind of dominate those organic search results for certain types of missions.
• 20:21
  SPEAKER_01: So you can think um, as an example, if you're looking for like humanitarian aid, the odds that Doctors Without Borders is going to pop up is gonna be really, really high.
• 20:29
  SPEAKER_01: What's cool about AI is that they have a slightly different criteria for what information to surface.
• 20:37
  SPEAKER_01: And so what that means, it's it tends to be based a little bit more contextually, like in the conversation with the user.
• 20:43
  SPEAKER_01: Basically, if I type in humanitarian organization, Google does build a profile on you.
• 20:47
  SPEAKER_01: But generally speaking, those top 10 blue links are gonna look really similar between me and you and you know, some other user in some other state.
• 20:57
  SPEAKER_01: With AI tools, though, it's thinking through everything it knows about you, everything you talked about in the conversation previously, and it's trying to surface um relevant results there as long as it can read.
• 21:06
  SPEAKER_01: So, what I think that means is that like newer organizations, organizations with smaller budgets, et cetera, kind of have a slightly more level playing field.
• 21:16
  SPEAKER_01: Like I think there is a little bit more of a reward for being a little wily, being a little clever in the AI world, because you can get surfaced alongside some of these bigger organizations, and you might even be able to find that donor who would be kind of the perfect fit for you.
• 21:30
  SPEAKER_01: So when it comes to taking advantage of that, those core fundamentals are really the same.
• 21:36
  SPEAKER_01: You want to ensure that your website and your web content are full of very high quality content.
• 21:41
  SPEAKER_01: And something that I have observed is a lot of uh organizations don't explain who they are, what they do, who they're for, what results they get in as much depth as maybe they think they do.
• 21:52
  SPEAKER_01: There's this like curse of knowledge thing going on where it's like, well, we know we're awesome, so we're awesome.
• 21:57
  SPEAKER_01: Where it's like you you have to explain why you're awesome.
• 21:59
  SPEAKER_01: Um Assuming you have that, the next thing is also just making sure it's structured in ways that both AI and Google can parse.
• 22:06
  SPEAKER_01: I think it's very easy.
• 22:08
  SPEAKER_01: This is a thing I used to talk about a ton in the world of SEO and the world of the kind of ad grant pre-AI.
• 22:13
  SPEAKER_01: And then I think AI just added a different layer to it.
• 22:15
  SPEAKER_01: But like when Google looks at a web page, it does not look at it through the same eyes that you and I, as like a human, look at a web page with.
• 22:22
  SPEAKER_01: So if all your information is contained in an image, for example, Google, just the classic kind of Google search bot, is not very good at reading that.
• 22:30
  SPEAKER_01: So it's not going to know what's in there.
• 22:32
  SPEAKER_01: It's just going to see, hey, there's a picture, but it's not going to see what the picture has.
• 22:35
  SPEAKER_01: And similarly, there are things like this with AI as well.
• 22:38
  SPEAKER_01: There's certain ways you can structure your content.
• 22:39
  SPEAKER_01: There's certain things you can put into your code on the back end of the website that gives AI the information it needs right up front.
• 22:44
  SPEAKER_01: I think a core difference to keep in mind, AI is a little lazy.
• 22:47
  SPEAKER_01: So it'll start scanning.
• 22:49
  SPEAKER_01: And if it doesn't get the answer it's looking for, it just moves on.
• 22:51
  SPEAKER_01: So making sure your information is structured up front.
• 22:53
  SPEAKER_01: Like these are all kind of basic best practices that you can do, but it can kind of put you in the mix in a way that would be more difficult with classic SEO because of that backlink component.
• 23:04
  SPEAKER_02: And I think for a lot of folks, this is almost like a plot twist, right?
• 23:09
  SPEAKER_02: So like, oh shoot, these are these are things that you have to have set up because, like you said, AI can be quite lazy.
• 23:16
  SPEAKER_02: It doesn't read text on hero images.
• 23:18
  SPEAKER_02: It really kind of picks and chooses what it's scraping from your site.
• 23:23
  SPEAKER_02: So having your case for support at the top, above the fold, as they say, makes a difference.
• 23:28
  SPEAKER_02: I want to bring this down for small teams.
• 23:31
  SPEAKER_02: I think organizations of all sizes rely on Google Ad grants.
• 23:35
  SPEAKER_02: A lot of the workers I work with, they are smaller teams and it makes a huge difference for them.
• 23:40
  SPEAKER_02: Um, you know, most of those marketing departments are tiny.
• 23:43
  SPEAKER_02: Uh, they do not have time to test every new digital strategy.
• 23:48
  SPEAKER_02: So as we're heading into ideally what's going to be a high traffic time and a time of a lot of generosity for nonprofits, if a small team only has a couple of hours a week or a month to dedicate to their online visibility right now, what would you say are the top two or three absolute non-negotiables as we're heading into giving season?
• 24:11
  SPEAKER_01: I think that the fundamental thing, you know, that old like marketing saying content is king still applies in this scenario.
• 24:21
  SPEAKER_01: So I think if we were to break that down into a couple of habits or a couple of like ways that you should be approaching this, there's a couple of things to keep in mind.
• 24:29
  SPEAKER_01: One is making sure your content is actually really informative and actually really helpful.
• 24:34
  SPEAKER_01: I think something that I see a lot and I understand how you get there, there's a almost a feeling of like, trust me, bro, um, in the nonprofit space where you have these very knowledgeable people, and it's like that it's very obvious that these esteemed experts sit on your board of directors, but somebody approaching your mission and just learning about it for the first time has no idea who these people are or what their expertise is.
• 24:55
  SPEAKER_01: They're judging how much you help in your cause area by what they can see on your website.
• 24:59
  SPEAKER_01: And so I would encourage them as a habit to focus more on like fewer, higher quality, rich pieces of content.
• 25:06
  SPEAKER_01: I see nonprofits get stuck on what I would argue are the wrong things.
• 25:09
  SPEAKER_01: So they're like very worried about the metadata and tagging blog content.
• 25:13
  SPEAKER_01: And that can be helpful, but I would say that's like 5% of the value.
• 25:17
  SPEAKER_01: The 80% of the value, 90% of the value is going to be how high quality and rich is the text on your page.
• 25:25
  SPEAKER_01: So a couple of things.
• 25:27
  SPEAKER_01: I would recommend taking a look at your key website pages and comparing them to organizations who are a bit further along than you, who are a bit bigger, who are a bit more sophisticated.
• 25:38
  SPEAKER_01: Where are the gaps between what you've got and what they've got?
• 25:41
  SPEAKER_01: How can you bridge those gaps?
• 25:43
  SPEAKER_01: There's a uh, for for those of you who like to read, there's a great book by Austin Cleon called Steal Like an Artist.
• 25:49
  SPEAKER_01: The basically this idea that you can look at what other people are doing and replicate it, and that's not bad.
• 25:55
  SPEAKER_01: You don't have to come up with the first original idea.
• 25:57
  SPEAKER_01: You obviously shouldn't do something like copy-paste somebody else's website.
• 26:00
  SPEAKER_01: But if you go, oh hey, look at that, they've got four donor stories.
• 26:04
  SPEAKER_01: You could also have four or five donor stories on your site.
• 26:07
  SPEAKER_01: So sort of looking at those, comparing, I think the easiest way to surface those are going to be look for the types of terms that people are searching to find you.
• 26:15
  SPEAKER_01: So is that donate to refugees?
• 26:17
  SPEAKER_01: Is it adopt a dog?
• 26:18
  SPEAKER_01: Go on incognito mode so that your browsing habits don't influence the results.
• 26:22
  SPEAKER_01: But then just take a look.
• 26:23
  SPEAKER_01: Like, what is Google surfacing?
• 26:24
  SPEAKER_01: What does Google see as highest quality and where are the gaps between that content and yours?
• 26:29
  SPEAKER_01: And then just work on kind of improving that.
• 26:32
  SPEAKER_01: Start with your existing pages because those are going to be your most important and those are already known to Google.
• 26:35
  SPEAKER_01: So you're going to see those results a little faster.
• 26:38
  SPEAKER_01: And then also take a look at like where are there gaps?
• 26:40
  SPEAKER_01: Are there places where you're like, oh, you know what?
• 26:43
  SPEAKER_01: We deal with childhood hunger.
• 26:46
  SPEAKER_01: And weirdly, we don't have a single blog talking about what happens to kids during winter break, for example.
• 26:52
  SPEAKER_01: Like, how do kids who are in in need get food during that time?
• 26:56
  SPEAKER_01: Like, that's a great topic to write and would probably help when people are asking these questions around the space.
• 27:01
  SPEAKER_01: So the richer your website is, the more AI, Google, and by extension, all of the users who are getting sent to your website through AI and through Google, the more authoritative they are going to see you.
• 27:13
  SPEAKER_01: And in the nonprofit world, I think that expertise and that authority is super, super important to getting that ongoing support.
• 27:22
  SPEAKER_02: Those are doable.
• 27:23
  SPEAKER_02: It really uh comes down to consistency more so than complexity.
• 27:28
  SPEAKER_02: And having that thousand-foot view, like you said, we can be so close to our missions that it's really hard to know what we're missing.
• 27:34
  SPEAKER_02: Um, and I really like your piece about checking out other organizations that may be serving similar causes.
• 27:41
  SPEAKER_02: That can be really helpful.
• 27:42
  SPEAKER_02: Um, okay, so as we wrap up, where can our listeners connect with you online, learn more about getting attention, and get help with their digital presence?
• 27:53
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 27:53
  SPEAKER_01: So a couple of different ways you can connect.
• 27:56
  SPEAKER_01: If you go to gettingattention.org, that is our website.
• 27:58
  SPEAKER_01: We have a lot of different free resources.
• 28:01
  SPEAKER_01: We put out a lot of free downloadable guides and templates to kind of help you with your Google Ads journey.
• 28:07
  SPEAKER_01: We also do free webinars every week on a lot of really hands-on tactical topics.
• 28:11
  SPEAKER_01: So if you kind of liked hearing me talk about it at a high level, you might also enjoy hearing my team talk about it in a slightly more practical way.
• 28:18
  SPEAKER_01: And then, you know, we also do free audits of the Google Ad Grant setup.
• 28:22
  SPEAKER_01: We can tell you what's working and maybe where you can improve what you've got.
• 28:26
  SPEAKER_01: And then if you're more of a video person, we are also on YouTube.
• 28:30
  SPEAKER_01: So we do some shorter form content on marketing as well.
• 28:33
  SPEAKER_01: So that's another great place to check us out.
• 28:35
  SPEAKER_02: Fantastic.
• 28:36
  SPEAKER_02: Well, we'll make sure we drop all those links in the show notes or listeners can find you and reach out to you directly.
• 28:42
  SPEAKER_02: And I would say the biggest takeaway from today, um, first of all, lockotime on your calendar and start with those small pieces.
• 28:50
  SPEAKER_02: Um, uh, but you do not need to panic here.
• 28:53
  SPEAKER_02: You do not need to put all your eggs in the basket.
• 28:55
  SPEAKER_02: You do not need to reinvent the wheel every time something AI has shifted, right?
• 29:01
  SPEAKER_02: It's going to continue to grow and change.
• 29:04
  SPEAKER_02: Our digital tools, they evolve.
• 29:06
  SPEAKER_02: But I think the core objective still remains the same, right?
• 29:09
  SPEAKER_02: You want to create that clear, trustworthy content that serves your community, that is just straightforward about what you're doing, what your purpose is, and just keep your foundational systems clean so that people and AI alike can find you.
• 29:25
  unknown: Yeah.
• 29:25
  SPEAKER_02: So, Jessica, thank you so much for joining us and uh just sharing such grounded practical advice today.
• 29:32
  SPEAKER_02: It's been a pleasure having you.
• 29:34
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, thanks, Jenna.
• 29:34
  SPEAKER_02: This was a ton of fun.
• 29:36
  SPEAKER_02: And thank you to everyone tuning in to the Nonprofit Podcast.
• 29:40
  SPEAKER_02: Your work matters, and we are honored to support it.
• 29:43
  SPEAKER_02: If you enjoyed this conversation, share it with a teammate.
• 29:47
  SPEAKER_02: Leave us a review or subscribe on YouTube or on your favorite podcast app.
• 29:51
  SPEAKER_02: Until next time, take that first step and stay inspired.
• 29:55
  SPEAKER_00: That warm feeling when you help someone, it's not just happiness, it's fulfillment.
• 30:00
  SPEAKER_00: And we believe it should be available to everyone.
• 30:03
  SPEAKER_00: From frontline heroes to first time fundraisers.
• 30:07
  SPEAKER_00: Our tools empower you to help others.
• 30:09
  SPEAKER_00: This is our mission.
• 30:11
  SPEAKER_00: This is Donorbox, helping you help others.