Washington DC Economic Partnership - Google Ad Grant Case Study

Introduction To Washington DC Economic Partnership

The Washington DC Economic Partnership (WDCEP) is a nonprofit that facilitates economic development initiatives in Washington, DC. The organization works to connect businesses seeking to relocate or expand in DC with local resources.

WDCEP provides several services, including real estate and site selection assistance, business-to-government connections along with access to grants and financial incentives. They also develop market research that helps business owners understand the benefits of selecting DC as their base of operations.

WDCEP is different from most nonprofits because they’re a business-to-business (B2B) organization rather than business-to-consumer. This creates a unique challenge when it comes to maximizing the Google Ad Grant as B2B keywords are typically more competitive with lower search volume.

Google Ad Grant Goals

WDCEP wanted to use the Google Ad Grant to:

• Share latest market research across key markets. WDCEP conducts in-depth research on Washington D.C. covering everything from neighborhoods and education levels to real estate and site selection details. Businesses considering moving or launching in DC would be looking for this sort of information early on in their research process which is a great time to make them aware of how WDCEP can help.
• Support business development with grants, incentives and soft landing program. WDCEP wants to get in front of people that are searching for DC-specific grants and incentives but also people searching more generally for grants that could be unsure of what location they want to choose or are looking for locations with the best incentives.
• Connect with entrepreneurs and business owners visiting DC. WDCEP is active at business conferences and networking events. They want to use the grant to promote their presence at these events and connect with their ideal audience in person.

We have one core audience type (business owners) with several types of content to promote.

Overall Results

WDCEP had a Google Ad Grant since July 2023 but over that time the account had never utilized more than $1,300 in a single month. We took over the account in May and were able to steadily scale each month and eventually reach $9,620.73 in October:

Of course, grant utilization is just one piece of the puzzle and we also expect to see valuable conversions from those clicks. You can see in the screenshot from October that we had a healthy number of conversions and excellent CTR along with 96% grant utilization:

The 56.24 conversion actions are contact form submissions, newsletter sign ups, and downloads of detailed marketing data in PDF format. The dips in daily spend come from weekends which is typical for an account focused on a business audience and search terms.

This account focuses on both high-intent keywords (like “Washington D.C. grants”) and lower-intent keywords (like “best city for tech” or “Washington D.C. education stats”). Lower-intent keywords can often lead to a lower CTR but we can see an excellent CTR of 16.30% thanks to thoughtful ad copy and a balance of low-intent vs high-intent keywords.

Process and Strategy

Let’s break down a few of the core strategies that went into this account.

Conversion Tracking & Smart Bidding

Conversion tracking is critical for every Google Ads account - paid or grant.

However, conversion tracking is about more than just seeing what actions people take on your nonprofit’s website. Of course, that’s important, but we also need proper conversion tracking so that we can send correct data to Google on what’s working. Google will then use that data to inform their smart bidding strategies like Maximize Conversions or Target CPA.

This will not only improve account quality, but I’ve also seen this scale spending in a grant account. With bad or no conversion data, accounts will get “stuck” and either fail to spend anything or hit a ceiling.

That’s why conversion tracking is always the starting point for a new account and WDCEP is no different. Here are the conversions we added:

• Newsletter sign up
• Contact form submission
• Marketing report downloads across several categories
• Phone calls

When people take these actions, Google knows that they’ve shown the ad to the right users. This is especially critical anytime you’re using lower-intent keywords like we did in this account.

Once we added these new conversions and focused on Target CPA bidding, we were able to increase grant utilization while improving conversion quality.

Connecting and Networking With Conference Attendees

WDCEP attends several conferences that take place in the DC area. These conferences are a chance for the WDCEP team to meet their ideal client in person.

In June, we targeted conference search terms for an upcoming event that WDCEP was attending (in this case SelectUSA Investment Summit) asking to connect along with offering transportation to the event. You can see an example of the ad here:

When running ads targeting another popular search term, you need to be careful not to mislead the person. That’s why our ads are relevant to the conference but we are still making it clear that we are not the conference. Instead, we simply want to convey that WDCEP is attending and interested in connecting with the added bonus of offering transportation.

Once users click an ad, they’re taken to a landing page with more information about WDCEP and a form to set a meeting with the team at the conference.

We had a very short time to run this ad but you can see our results here:

With a cost per conversion of $272 this is not a campaign you would likely run in a paid Google Ads account- but in a grant account that cost per conversion, at least over the short term for a specific event, is well worth it.

Especially since the conversion value here is an in-person meeting compared to something much less valuable like a newsletter sign up.

This campaign gave the account a nice boost in grant utilization as soon as Digital Tabby took over management but since this only ran in June it didn’t have an impact on the 96% grant utilization achieved in October.

Performance Max

Performance Max is a new campaign type for Google Ad Grants and has been slowly rolled out over the last quarter of 2024. While this campaign type serves multiple channels in paid accounts it will only serve search ads in a Google Ad Grant account.

Still, this can be a powerful tool for nonprofits and something that we were able to leverage for WDCEP’s account. Instead of keywords, Performance Max campaigns primarily use audience targeting and we’ve seen the best results when we use our own data first followed by in-market then affinity audiences.

WDCEP has an email list of more than 20,000 people which we used as our primary audience. This campaign is still new, but you can see the 30 day results so far:

With a variety of content, WDCEP is in a good position to leverage Performance Max campaigns using URL expansion which allows Google to crawl the site and create an ad from any page.

Moving Forward

The WDCEP case study shows how even business-to-business nonprofits can effectively use Google Ad Grants despite common challenges like low search volume and high competition. Through focused targeting of research seekers, grant applicants, and event attendees, the account maintains consistent performance across key metrics: 96% grant utilization, stable conversion rates, and strong click-through rates.

You can see more Google Ad Grant Case Studies here or book a call to discuss how we can help you leverage your nonprofit’s Google Ad Grant and achieve similar results.