Foundation For Sickle Cell Disease Research - Google Ad Grant Case Study

Client

Foundation For Sickle Cell Disease Research

Industry

Medical Research

Services

Google Ad Grant Management

98% grant utilization

Foundation For Sickle Cell Disease Research

VIDEO Watch the Case Study

89+

registration inquiries

$14.67

average CPC

98%

grant utilization

Introduction To The Foundation For Sickle Cell Disease Research

The Foundation For Sickle Cell Disease Research (FSCDR) is the United States’ first outpatient center exclusively dedicated to the treatment of and innovative research for sickle cell disease. Located in Florida but attracting patients and healthcare professionals from around the world, FSCDR opened their treatment center in 2012 in Hollywood, FL.

FSCDR publishes research on sickle cell disease, provides educational content to the public, coordinates treatment via their sister organization, and holds an annual symposium where they share the latest sickle cell disease research.

Google Ad Grant Goals

FSCDR wanted to use the Google Ad Grant to:

Generate more registrations to their 2024 annual symposium where they connect more than 500 physicians, clinicians, stakeholders, advocates, and social workers from all over the world, all with the goal of finding better treatment and, ultimately, a cure for sickle cell disease.
Utilize any remaining budget to increase exposure for their treatments not only to people in their local area but also on a national level as well.

That means we have two distinct audiences (medical professionals and patients) but for this case study we’ll be focusing on the medical professionals to generate event registrations.

Overall Results

FSCDR had a Google Ad Grant account but the spend was only a few dollars a day and typically stayed below $15. We were able to quickly scale the account to 98% grant utilization and send more than 89 interested medical professionals to the registration page. This all occurred in May, one month before the symposium started.

You can see the overall results for May here:

FSCDR Google Ad Grant results overview

The 89.52 conversions are clicks to the registration page which was hosted on a 3rd party domain. We always want to track as far down the funnel as possible, but for this project this was as far down the funnel as we could go.

It’s also worth noting the cost per click, which is quite high compared to most Google Ad Grants.

Process and Strategy

Let’s break down the core components that led to these quick results.

Google Analytics 4

FSCDR did not have live Google Analytics 4 and like many organizations they had not yet made the switch from Universal Analytics to GA4.

Google Analytics 4 is a standard part of our Google Ad Grant management (which isn’t the case for every agency) and so that was our starting point. Once we had tracking in place for donations, contact forms submissions, and of course registration clicks to the symposium we were able to move to the Google Ads build out.

Once GA4 was implemented, FSCDR was able to compare results across multiple marketing channels and this screenshot shows results for the first 10 days of May (click to expand):

google ad grant conversions for healthcare event

Data like this is not only nice to have, it’s critical for any nonprofit marketing plan since it allows FSCDR to know what’s working, what isn’t, and focus on the channels with the best results.

Keyword Targeting

There are two search intents when it comes to medical conferences:

Those looking for a conference on a specific subject to learn more and satisfy annual CE requirements
Those looking for a medical conference to satisfy annual CE requirements but with some flexibility on the subject.

Of course, there are more reasons than that to attend a conference but from a keyword perspective these are our core audiences. As a result, we have a campaign structure that looks something like this (with many more ad groups than what we see here):

FSCDR Google Ad Grant account structure

More generic keywords like “nursing conference” have a lower conversion rate compared to high intent and highly relevant keywords like “sickle cell disease research conference” but of course specific keywords like that also have a lower total search volume.

To utilize as much of the Google Ad Grant as possible, we targeted both while focusing on the highest intent keywords whenever possible.

Moving Forward

This case study is far from over and the account continues to pick up steam as we give Google Ads more conversion and better data. We’ll continue to find new registrants for FSCDR along with expanding their treatment and education campaigns.