Latest / We Are For Good Podcast - The Podcast for Nonprofits / 146. How to Leverage Google Grants to Find New Donors - Chris Barlow

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146. How to Leverage Google Grants to Find New Donors - Chris Barlow · We Are For Good Podcast - The Podcast for Nonprofits

• 0:01
  Jonathan McCoy: Hey, I'm john.
• 0:02
  Becky Endicott: And I'm Becky.
• 0:03
  Jonathan McCoy: And this is the we are for good podcast.
• 0:06
  Becky Endicott: nonprofits are faced with more challenges to accomplish their missions and the growing pressure to do more, raise more and be more for the causes that improve our world.
• 0:15
  Jonathan McCoy: We're here to learn with you from some of the best in the industry, bringing the most innovative ideas, inspirational stories, all to create an impact uprising.
• 0:23
  Becky Endicott: So welcome to the good community, where nonprofit professionals, philanthropist, world changers and rabid fans who are striving to bring a little more goodness into the world.
• 0:34
  Jonathan McCoy: So let's get started. Hey, Becky,
• 0:37
  Becky Endicott: welcome, everybody. So glad you're here.
• 0:40
  Becky Endicott: And so excited to introduce you to our Colorado friend today.
• 0:43
  Jonathan McCoy: He is our dear friend. And you know, we've got the we're for good community.
• 0:46
  Jonathan McCoy: And Chris is one of those guys.
• 0:49
  Jonathan McCoy: That's so encouraging. So so my gosh, hangs out loves on people and gives great advice in the community. And that's what I think today's conversation is going to be all about, too. So we're excited to introduce you to Chris Barlow, he, you know, has this really interesting story that he, his parents were from New Orleans. He was born in Fort Collins went to Pepperdine has kind of moved all over the place lived in LA for a while.
• 1:11
  Jonathan McCoy: But it's really found his roots through this kind of journey of being in the for profit world that he actually really enjoyed, but figured out that you know, coming back to service coming back to amplifying and helping nonprofits really understand what they're doing and understanding how to activate donors, and get them in the door in the first place, which is a conversation we've not really had a lot on the podcast is how do you actually acquire somebody that's completely out of our world of even understanding and recognizing that Chris has put a stake in the ground and started Beeline? Gosh, it's been what, five or six years ago, I believe. And Beeline marketing really just serves people in that very specific space of using the power of Google, Google Grants to attract and find donors to your mission. And then ultimately making sure that your fundraising is aligned with your mission, which is hilarious, we have to have that conversation. But you all know who you are, where your fundraising starts to veer away from what you're really trying to accomplish. So Chris is just one of the greatest people he is a family guy. And their family is so welcoming and inviting to always hosting people in their home. So he is just a warm individual. And I can't wait for you to spend time with him today. So Chris, welcome to the podcast. Thank you guys. Great to be here. Well, hey, would you kind of just give us a little bit of your story? What led you to launching Beeline kind of fill in some of the gaps that I left out?
• 2:28
  Chris Barlow: Yeah. So my wife and I have been married for almost 15 years. Lydia, she's from Germany, originally, I grew up like you guys said in Fort Collins, we have six kids, and we're trying to raise them bilingual. A real challenge, but it's good. And so in 2015, I started trying to do digital marketing for companies. And I didn't actually start with the plan of working with nonprofits.
• 2:50
  Chris Barlow: I just volunteered with a local nonprofit, because I was like, I can help you guys out, I want to get some experience and build my portfolio. And that turned into referrals into new clients. And I just feel really blessed because I feel like over this last five years, I've come full circle and returned to those desires that I had as a teenager to to do something that serves a greater purpose. And yet, with that new passion or excitement that came from experience, learning that I actually I love business, and I see business as something that can really change the world too. So
• 3:26
  Becky Endicott: there's nothing very few things in life that bring me more joy than when people are working in, they're going to their job doing their job enjoying it. And they just somehow just jump in and leap for grabbing that feeling over and over. And I just think the great leaps of faith by entrepreneurs like yourself, are the things that are lifting the nonprofit sector, we need people that are in for profit, that are creative, that are innovators that are taking these skills in these mindset shifts and applying them in a way that in to your point Chris makes you feel really good and amplifies the the organizations that you're trying to serve?
• 4:13
  Jonathan McCoy: Well, Chris, I remember the first time we chatted, it was really around the topic. How do we acquire donors in this digital age? It is this attention generation right? Where there's everybody's competing for your attention all the time? How do people actually leverage search engine? How do we leverage Google? You're such an expert in this space. I think it's because you've put your flag in the ground on this many years ago and you've just learned and grown so much that I think you have so much to offer the community here today of how can we get donors from you know, somebody that's flying by wouldn't know us to in the front door either on our email list or to make a first gift What does that look like? And how can you use the power of Google Grants and all of that kind of good stuff?
• 4:56
  Chris Barlow: Sure thing, so yeah, you start with those those coins Questions? What is our expertise? What do our donors need? And where do these two overlap? And then you think that when you find that area of overlap, the area of opportunity, I like to call, then you say, Okay, what are people searching for? What are our potential donors searching for we've area, we've identified some potential things that we could create to help them. And you start with the the end in mind, which is, you know, a new subscriber or a first time donor. And then you work your way backwards, you know, people who could be our brand new to organization have never heard of you aren't looking for you, they're not on Google or on social media, for that matter, looking for you are looking for to donate to someone, and you just hope you you show up at the top of the results when they're looking for someone to support.
• 5:50
  Chris Barlow: If you're an arts nonprofit, I know of one day, they really try to uplift women and give them a chance to to perform and and to grow into to be seen in their theater. You know, they want to both encourage and teach and challenge and give opportunities on the performing side. And then they want to bring in people to watch the shows. And so obviously, they can use Google ads to advertise their shows.
• 6:14
  Chris Barlow: But what if they create a resource on a bit like live video series on how to prepare for your next audition, or how to memorize more effectively, or you know how to learn a specific kind of acting. And then they create a guide. And they put the effort into creating a one time one and done evergreen guide that can be used over and over again. And then they put that out there with Google app. And again, there's a lot of different ideas that, you know, different nonprofits could create, like, if you're an animal sanctuary, you could create an ebook on how to deal with pet loss, and how to donate in memory of a pet or encourage that. So take that put it into something digital, because that's it a requires the upfront effort of creating it, and then it's ready. And you can use it over and over again. And meet people where they're at. People go to Google with questions, they go to Google with problems, or maybe they go to Google for entertainment. So I have a bunch of different ideas, like 20 different ideas on a guy that I can we can you guys can put in the show notes or whatever awesome thank you can access and nonprofit stuff be lined up marketing is where you can get it. But before you create a guide, before you create something that you advertise through an ad and get people to opt in, it's really important to to make sure and validate that that's something that people actually want. And so I recommend two things. And the first one is to do a donor survey, send an email to your current donors with a survey and say, Hey, we're thinking about creating this resource, this digital resource to help people with one of these problems, can you just select ones that that really speak to you? Or would it be really helpful to you? And then follow that up with? And if we create this, do you want us to send it to you? That's the real validation piece. Because if you get people saying, Yes, I want that, you know that potential donors will want it too. And then of course, on your first question, leave it leave a box for other to let people give you ideas, you know, you'll get maybe you'll get some better ideas than the ones you came up with. That's the first one. And then the second way to validate is inside Google itself, you can create it if you don't have the Google Ad grant. Or if you don't have a Google Ad account, you can create a free one@ads.google.com. And there's a tool in there called the keyword planner. And you can just type in keywords inside the keyword planner, and look up what past search volume were for those keywords. And so between getting that validation from voice of your donors, and seeing how many people are actually searching for this, you can find, okay, these are these keywords, there's a lot of search volume, and one of these resources address what would be a natural response to that search. With a social media ad, you're coming in and interrupting someone, they're they're doing their own thing.
• 9:00
  Chris Barlow: They're not. They're not looking for you at all, and you have to get their attention with a Google ad. It's a lot more like a conversation. If you come in and meet that person where they're at. And the question they asked in Google search, then they're gonna say this is really relevant, like, your ad is going to really speak to them and then depending on what you say, on the on the page that they come to and, and the guide and how you explain what you know, they'll they'll decide whether that's what they're looking for. But that that conversation element is a great way to kind of frame
• 9:31
  Becky Endicott: Hey friends, we wanted to take a moment to thank our amazing sponsor gift butter, the world's fastest growing online giving platform powering more than 35,000 causes. One of these is family reach a national nonprofit dedicated to eradicating the financial barriers that accompany a cancer diagnosis. Like many of us, they were unsure how they were going to replace their critical in person fundraising events during COVID. Family reach put gift butters virtual fundraising tools to use by hosting a super fun and engaging celebrity chef cookie challenge where they raise more than $350,000. And if you think this was a one off success think again, they just did it again and raise more than$600,000 family reach raves about give butters ability to livestream video alongside their real time supporter feed, and saw how the threaded comments engage their audience beyond what was possible on other platforms. It's buttery goodness at its finest. Don't miss the full success story in our show notes, ready to explore how gift butter could help your organization take your online fundraising to the next level?
• 10:28
  Becky Endicott: Check them out at gift buttered.com. Correct me
• 10:36
  Jonathan McCoy: if I'm wrong, I'm not an SEO expert. But at the end of the day, Google is trying to serve up results that answer the person's question in the best way that it has. Once people click through, they stay there they like it, you know, all those sorts of things. So I've got to think that if you're refining this approach, you're actually helping somebody with this PDF or this giveaway, or whatever it is, even if the ad goes away long term, you figured out what is that solution that can help drive traffic long term, right? Yes, however you put it on your site. So I'm
• 11:06
  Becky Endicott: just geeking out over this incredibly simple strategy that you've just offered here, which is do a donor survey, like automatically, you invite your community, the people who already know you that are already bought in to your mission, you're asking them to come and kind of come in, as you're in that research phase of like, okay, where do we need to target? What do we need to do?
• 11:30
  Becky Endicott: It's like, let them give you all of the answers, because they are the exact target that you're trying to go find. And then all of a sudden, when they say, Oh, I do want, you know, this plan for how I can help animals or whatever it is. It's like leverage that after you get information. I mean, I thought that was a really good tip that says, oh, would you like this?
• 11:50
  Becky Endicott: Do you want it now? It's like, Okay, if they want it, let's just not email it to him. At least that's not what I'm thinking. I'm thinking, let's share it in our social and post, you know, tag them in it and let them talk about it. Let him share it with their network. And then all of a sudden, it's like ripple, ripple, ripple ripple.
• 12:07
  Becky Endicott: So I just think that was a really good hack. And I want to ask a question about Google Grants, because I feel like when we've been teaching, and we've done a lot of summits and online classes, teaching about how to improve your website and these kinds of things, but one of the biggest questions that we get is from someone who's working and you know, maybe a small nonprofit somewhere in the world, and they're so excited because they've gotten a Google grant. And they're looking at it. And their executive director is looking at them saying, Okay, we got a grant, what do we do with it? And so can you dive into what do you do once you get that Google grant?
• 13:21
  Chris Barlow: Yes. First, you can think about what are the different kinds of ways that we can use Google Grants? Well, you can obviously expand your mission if you have some program or service that you can offer to people and you just need to get the word out. You can target those keywords you can do some research on those keywords, put those keywords in your into your campaign, create a couple ads and and send people to your Devens, your just your homepage, if you're just trying to get people to find your, your mission? and expand that. If you're trying to find donors that requires some more of that planning some of that, what are our donors looking for in the first place? What do they need?
• 13:52
  Chris Barlow: How can we help them? How can we help them in a way that doesn't pull up a lot of time and effort from our main mission. And, and so and thinking of like, we can't expect to get donors immediately, it's possible, and I can get into that. But our win is getting new subscribers, because we can then go with email subscribers, we can build a relationship with them. And we can help them catch the vision of what we're doing, we can invite them to our next fundraising event. And so that that key piece is kind of the understanding what what your goals should be, what what do you want to aim for, and then your mission donors in other conservative volunteers, and then doing that keyword research. And, and one of the best, like, very specific tactics I can share is when you're creating an ad, you write various headlines, right? The first headline to match what the person searched as closely as possible, is like active listening. You want to restate what they said, show them the understand because people aren't like reading the Google results carefully. They're not like reading it word for word is you're scanning.
• 15:06
  Jonathan McCoy: I mean, you're not you are scanning reading really, you're just scrolling,
• 15:09
  Becky Endicott: you know, almost
• 15:10
  Jonathan McCoy: totally.
• 15:12
  Chris Barlow: Yeah, people make the decision in milliseconds.
• 15:13
  Chris Barlow: And so if you're responding with word for word closely, their search on the in the headline, then that's going to feel relevant to them. And you could also use a thing called dynamic keyword insertion that basically Google will insert their keywords for you. Okay,
• 15:30
  Becky Endicott: I've fallen for that. I don't know. Does that work?
• 15:33
  Jonathan McCoy: Well, you go to the sight and you're like, this isn't exactly at I bet. It's probably from the Stein campaign.
• 15:38
  Becky Endicott: It's probably Google trying to help you get to your customer. It's like, it's not what I would say. But that's what they're looking for it does this active listening piece, I think is actually very key to knowing how to target How fascinating that Chris's entire strategy is about listening, right?
• 15:53
  Jonathan McCoy: It's fresh to your doubt, it's very interesting Google. And it's what we talk about a lot. Like it's so key and development. So I love that the alignment here.
• 16:00
  Chris Barlow: So another thing to do is, you know, when you're doing your research, there's all kinds of different, you know, sub themes within keywords. And so when you're just starting out, you can target every keyword you want. But the thing is, you need to make sure that you have something to respond like you can, you can make an ad that responds to their keyword, but then if they click, and they go to your site, and you don't have anything on your site, about that particular keyword, or that that question that that person has in mind, that's not relevant for them. And so start with what you have, start with the content you have, and and work your way out from there in terms of what you can target and what keywords to go after. So and then keep your with the keep those keyword themes, which is called an an ad group, narrow, when you create an ad group, you're targeting a set of keywords, and then you creating one ad or to ads for those keywords. And so again, it's just the act of listening of like, and how to organize things of, I need to make sure that the ad that I write, responds directly to those keywords, and then make sure that when someone clicks, they land on a page on my site that addresses that topic. And I want to mention this now. And maybe we would come to this later. But I just I met I said I would talk about how do you turn people into donors, you know, with with Google ads, and especially with Google Grants, you're unlikely to be able to show up for those keywords that people like donate to x, first of all there, if you're a small nonprofit, they're probably not searching for you. If you're Red Cross, you probably can target donate to Red Cross, that'll work for you. Your goal needs to be smaller than that, like, like getting a subscriber. And why how, why will they subscribe, will you because you're helping them what once they've downloaded your guide, or whatever, you know, whatever offer that you've put in front of them to help them, you drop them onto another page called the thank you page. So as soon as they complete that form, and they hit submit, you put onto a thank you page, and that page just says, Thank you. We've sent your guide, watch your email for it, you don't have to do anything else. However, we were able to create this because of supporters and donors like like you. And if you would like to help more people get resources and help more people like you consider making a one time donation. And you can have a donate form right there on the thank you page. I go ahead, john.
• 18:12
  Jonathan McCoy: Thanks. So I think you're talking about a core value that is very core to us. But honestly, I don't see it come up as much in conversation.
• 18:18
  Jonathan McCoy: And that is that we're not just trying to get donors, we're trying to grow believers. And I like the strategy of we just gave you something that's going to be value to you. And at this point, they've been so focused on themselves in this journey, which is nothing wrong with that, right. But immediately, you're saying, hey, this was put together because of the support of blah, blah, blah, blah, whoever it may be, it's almost the NPR approach or the public broadcasting. And it's in that moment, even if you're just planting a seed that Oh, I'm actually on a nonprofits website, I didn't even realize where I was, I was just looking for this guy. Yeah, you know, and I just love the little breadcrumbs that you're leaving,
• 18:55
  Becky Endicott: Oh, my gosh, we are such the same brain, because I'm sitting here thinking that what you've just said, Chris, is, is a very big mindset shift for everybody. And I'm sorry, I'm gonna use a sports analogy, john, but stay with Checkout. I mean, I think that the ways of old for the nonprofit have almost been like a catcher's mitt, like, we're just sitting here as recipients of your generosity. And there's been no concept of actually, like, we're a pitcher, you know, to we have value, we have things to give, we have things to offer. We're not just sitting here, accepting your gifts, we are an organization that you can come to because we have experts. We know our business really well.
• 19:35
  Becky Endicott: We know this target market. And so almost even looking at yourself, like a for profit is a way to draw somebody in because they're not thinking about how do how do I just get the give this nonprofit money to just give toward this cause it's like, oh, they're going to give me value. And I'm going to give them value. And it's a complete shift in the symbiotic nature of the way that we can interact and build community. And to John's point, this is this is how you, you build believers. This is not how you just build donors, donors come from believers, but they are long time fully invested people who are languages, they're rabid fans, and at the end point, they're not going to let your mission fail. They're going to want to amplify it within their networks. And then that ripple just compounds compounds and I just think, you know, if I'm gonna like, go back to the beginning, you have Found them in the smartest way in the Google land. And like in the in the interwebs, they were just sitting out there, you know, wherever they are in the world.
• 20:43
  Becky Endicott: And by leveraging something like Google Grants, this little pop up popped up in their window, because we have a shared common value. And your goal is to believe me, I am so challenged by this because I am the most long winded person, as you can tell right now, you have so many you have so many characters to grab them. And that becomes the biggest challenge. At least that's what I've heard in this conversation to transact that person to be curious enough to click on that button and start a journey with you. So I think that was mine shifting for me.
• 21:17
  Becky Endicott: And I hope everybody caught that too.
• 21:18
  Chris Barlow: That's the things that shift from we need. donors, we need people to help us, we have this mission we have to fulfill to our mission defines every relationship. Our core value defines a relationship, we can help everyone. And, and we have something to give everyone and there and yes, we need money. We need volunteers to do with this other thing that's beyond our ability. But we can we can approach every relationship with this core value and serve through that.
• 21:48
  Chris Barlow: Love it.
• 21:48
  Jonathan McCoy: Well, Chris, you know, this has been such a fun conversation. And I know your journey has taken you through different missions that you've been a part of and service oriented things. I know you believe in the power of philanthropy, what is a moment that's really stuck with you in your lifetime, and could be a client you worked with, or it could be something personal?
• 22:07
  Chris Barlow: Yeah, there was I was thinking about this. And had several, you know, I could talk about my dad, who I've always looked up to, in his very quiet generosity. But I'm actually going to share about my seven year old daughter's cherry, she is our fourth out of six. And she's very flexible. Because of that, you know, middle children are often very flexible and work with others, well
• 22:32
  Becky Endicott: shout out.
• 22:32
  Becky Endicott: Children, Julie and I,
• 22:35
  Chris Barlow: especially is also a bit of a powerhouse. this past December the worldvision catalog was sitting out. And in case you're not familiar the catalog, you guys probably know. But the catalog has a bunch of different items that you can buy, which are just like specific, very specific, I like projects basically, like provide a family a goat for milk or provide seeds, or buy a share of a well, or or buy a whole Well, whatever it might be. There's all kinds of different ideas and things in this catalog that you can end with different amounts. So you know, like I wanted to buy this and this and this to help help these people and help with these specific ideas. And she just was spending every day going through that catalog, thinking about what she wanted to do to support. And finally, she decided she spent $63, which was everything but two of her life savings on mosquito nets for three families. But that's not the end of it for like the next week, she kept lamenting how she wished she could have done more.
• 23:31
  Chris Barlow: And that just man that got me, let's you know, keep in mind, what are your deepest values and, and live according to those and make the most of our opportunity. So
• 23:44
  Becky Endicott: we you send your daughter to us in 10 years, because we want to make a nonprofit professional out of her passion and out of her justice. That was a really great story.
• 23:54
  Jonathan McCoy: Okay, Chris, our last question always comes back to what your one good thing. And this can be, you know, some kind of life hack or motto. Just what's what's true to you that you think people can implement in their own life?
• 24:08
  Chris Barlow: Sure. Um, so there's a really good book, I need to read it again, it's called what's best next by Matt perman. I really recommend recommend it. He wrote it in kind of inspired by the book, getting things done, and just being efficient. And that book, I can kind of summarize it in two quotes. He says our greatest fear as individuals or as a nonprofit organization, should not be a failure, but of succeeding at things in life that don't really matter. And that it's not about efficiency.
• 24:42
  Chris Barlow: For the sake of being efficient, it's about doing the right thing or doing the best thing. Or efficiency is good if you're efficient with things so you can be effective with people. So I guess my thing is, just understand that there's only so much you can do as a person in your life as an organization.
• 25:01
  Chris Barlow: And just say no to everything.
• 25:04
  Chris Barlow: That's not the best thing and be be more effective than an efficient or spread out of that.
• 25:11
  Jonathan McCoy: Such good stuff.
• 25:11
  Jonathan McCoy: So okay, Chris, how can people connect with you with Beeline?
• 25:14
  Jonathan McCoy: We'd love to, you know, we'll link up the great resources you've mentioned in the show notes, but how can people find you online?
• 25:22
  Chris Barlow: You can email me at Chris at Beeline dot marketing, or you can connect with me on LinkedIn or go to my website be lined up marketing.
• 25:30
  Becky Endicott: Go connect with Beeline will inspire you and if you need More helps with your Google Grants connect with Chris. I love it when a founder puts his email address directly out there, go Connect.
• 25:40
  Jonathan McCoy: don't spam him.
• 25:40
  Jonathan McCoy: Have a great day.
• 25:47
  Julie Confer: Hey, friends, thanks so much for being here.
• 25:49
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• 26:05
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• 26:19
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