Paid Traffic for Non-Profits, with Sean Moher

In the not-for-profit world, the justification for marketing spend is straightforward. Put money in, get money out. But how do you get that message across to decision makers when you can't say it's because we'll make a profit out of this. For nonprofits, associations and social enterprises, that profit motive is replaced by a mission, but the fundamental challenge remains, you must find and keep customers, whether they be donors or members or beneficiaries.

Marketing in the not-for-profit sector isn't just about tugging heartstrings, it's about solving a business problem, It can use the same tools as the private sector. Revenue is the common denominator that keeps the lights on. Hey, Glenn here. Welcome to Funnel Reboot the show for data-based marketers.

In this episode, we'll explore how organizations can move beyond waiting to be found by using paid traffic. We will dive into how mission-based organizations. Can and should look at paid traffic. Specifically the Google Ad Grant program.

Our guest is an Ottawa based marketing consultant who supports both for-profit and not-for-profit local service organizations. Through his agency Harvest Demand, he blends smart digital strategies with practical solutions, and he has widely used the Google ad grants program. So now let's go and talk with Sean Moher. Sean Moher.

Welcome to Funnel Reboot. Glen, thanks for having me. I'm really glad to, Sean. we're gonna first try to understand some of the differences that, we're encountering when we step outside of that regular for-profit mold.

can you tell me a bit about the different kinds of companies that lie elsewhere? what else is out there? we were talking a little bit before social enterprise, charities, nonprofits, associations, things like that. I work a lot with both and mainly with for-profit, but, all these different organizations, I guess with a corporate structure that's just defined differently.

depending on the country. Yeah, I know in Canada we've got, these things called B Corps. of course there are registered charities. some might think that marketing is only needed in for profit.

What do you say to that? What's your definition of marketing? Okay, let's go there. Yeah, I'm totally biased, but I say I'm a business person first and a marketer second, and I go by the definition that, marketing is, finding and keeping customers.

And depending on the type of organization you have, that's important, your customers for a charity, your customers, for a plumber like you, you have people Who give you money? revenue. Yep. That's the common denominator.

So I just think like good marketing is a sum of the things that you do to find and keep customers. Yeah. Fair enough. it's imp it's important.

Yeah. if I think back to, I remember a high school economics class and they started us off with this, metaphor of a desert island. and in the desert island scenario, somebody has coconuts and you have, palm leaves and, you do an exchange and it's to your benefit, when that exchange is done that two party. If you expand it to three where the person who is, giving away something, is doing it on behalf of a third party.

That to me is where we're starting to head when we look at not-for-profits. Because they are established with, not only, Something of value that they are trying to give, but that the basis for that value can sometimes be, not just a physical good or something where the entire value is, captured and turned into profit. It can be because of a mission. Or because of some offering that the capital market.

Doesn't capture right. That falls in between the cracks. So when it comes to that sort of thing, if we zoom inside of those organizations, back to your thing about what is marketing, We might have to alter a little bit of how we describe what they would be getting for their marketing. you have probably talked to some, I have talked to some groups who don't, have a profit motive, let's say they're in association, An association that maybe has the, monopoly on a certain, designation or a membership.

Our members are all, people who do this kind of healthcare service and they might think, okay in that way we're a non monopoly. We don't have to do anything to talk to our customers. We have to change our pitch if we're marketers to tell them why they do what do you say in those kind of situations? I think it goes back to the organization's goals.

the reason that they are an organization and they have an objective, they're trying to reach, and that objective is tied to people they're trying to reach, usually people or other organizations. And so like most marketing problems, you have to solve a problem, or if you're trying to exchange value or you're trying to get more members, or you're trying to get more donors, or you're trying to get more customers. These are all very similar problems because you're trying to provide something of value.

You're trying to solve a problem for an avatar or for a prospective customer, member donor, I think so then they organization has a reason that they're, maybe they have programs they're trying to fund or they have, goals they're trying to hit, and I wouldn't use, profit, but I would use revenue because that's the common denominator across a lot of these organizations. They have to raise funds Yeah. and then usually that's something like when you consider, for-profit corporation unless they have an amazing culture and mission and all that stuff, like I look at a lot of that as it's two dimensional, three dimensional is when you know you're.

You're able to, you're doing something beyond just that transaction too. Like maybe the benefit of bringing all this together is solving heart disease or, something like you're moving towards something that's, like bigger than the sum of all the parts. Yeah. That's that three party model.

When you say that foundation pops into my head, right? Yeah. So a foundation is saying We have need of revenue and it's, in service of this thing, be it research, be it, directly helping, that constituency. but you're right, instead of just like a product made in a factory where you might show the staffer or A production worker who is putting together the product.

Instead, you're showing this other person maybe that, child with a heart condition and you're trying to tell their story. When you're doing that, what are the sorts of things that you've got to do to keep it somewhat revenue minded? 'cause I can see us just. deciding that we're, all about, Making people, feel emotional, pulling their heartstrings, but we're not tying it back to a call to action.

do you think we have to as the marketer in the room, do you think we have to stand up at that point and say, don't forget, there's an actual activity, there's an engagement, there's a donation here. Yeah. I think you do eventually. but like all marketing, it starts with attention, right?

Like you have to most of the, like I've interviewed 50, 60 organizations over the past, like year and a half trying to better understand the space. 'cause I'm, I'm not gonna say I'm an expert. I really like the challenge of using marketing to solve a business or an organization's problems. Yeah.

There's all different kind of ways to tackle it. So when people are trying to figure out what the numbers will say on this they might open up Google Analytics, or they might open up their, email, platform. And when they do, it probably is. Configured outta the box to report on e-commerce numbers.

and this is, common, very common. Even B2B companies with a long sales cycle gripe about this. But I think nonprofits would also say, yeah, it, when we open that it is not set up for us at all. we have things like a donor journey or we have things like, getting people to.

Subscribe to our list to, express an interest. They have to, they have to do some things to their analytics. Are there some general pieces of advice that you have for those kind of organizations? And I got distracted there for a second.

Didn't finish my total thought, but when you, you brought up analytics, it's yeah, you can see the whole thing, but like the most important thing is the tip. It's the top of the funnel. Often, this is like anybody who's challenged with getting more revenue, getting more donations, these types of things. I often find that there isn't enough awareness.

People don't know. And if people don't know who you are, they don't know who your organization is, they've never heard about you, like none of this other stuff. There is no funnel, right? Yeah.

So the top of the funnel is a big one, and you'll see like a lot of really successful. Organizations, businesses, they do a really good job of everybody knows them. Once people know you, you have a chance. And with a lot of, organizations that are maybe, strapped for cash, that kind of thing, that is the first step.

First step is awareness. So in Google Analytics, it's like how many people are hitting your site? How many people in social media, it's like how many impressions? It's like these are vanity metrics, but at the same time, if the metric is zero, then that's the problem.

And once you start to fill that part up, the rest of it makes sense. So it's that No, trust the, yeah. Top, middle, bottom of funnel. And usually the problem's at the top.

So you had us towards like the traffic reports, right? Traffic acquisition, is it my email? is my landing page being crawled by organic and appearing in? Do I have any, Do I have any traffic?

Yeah, am I posting enough on social? Is social actually, becoming a referral link. to my, am I using UTM parameters to know the difference between this kind of, social post and that kind of social post. Yeah.

Yeah. Tho those are all good things. we could also talk about paid traffic. So I think it's fair to say most for profit companies understand things like pay per click or paid social and say.

Sure. This is intuitively logical. Yeah. We want money out.

We're gonna put money in. Does the same hold true for nonprofits? This is what got me down this rabbit hole. And how we met.

Is that, yeah. Traditionally when I talk to a business owner, somebody leads an organization, advertising allows you to. gain awareness instantly. Yep.

things that we do organically, we do the thing, we post the blog article, we post on Facebook or put our video on YouTube, and now we're waiting to get that awareness to happen. And with advertising, it's pay to play, so you get to force it to happen. And with charities and nonprofits, they have this. Opportunity to use an AD grant, where they can get access up to $10,000 a month in Google.

And that's pretty interesting because really for any organization that's oh, nobody knows about us. It's you have this. $120,000 a year in ad credits, you have this tool, which honestly is not super easy to use. Yep.

It's there, it's available, and you don't have to wait anymore. So it's pretty interesting from that standpoint. So before, we dive head along into that one quick thing that, I have found in nonprofits is, many of them are grant-based, but when they say Grant, they are referring to either, some level of government that has a program, by which they can. folks, in, Canada will be aware of, jobs, grants.

there's digital Main Street. There's a couple out there. But one thing that those. Specifically carve out for, not-for-profits is they say you can't use the money for marketing.

So this is where, I think people should perk up their ears and listen to what you have found out with, Google grants. yeah, just give us broad brush on it. we're talking about Google Ads and how, the money which you normally have to pay for. clicks that you get through Google Ads That Google is covering.

Yeah. Giving you ad credit. So it's you buy a car comes with a tank full of gas uhhuh and you get to drive it and then they keep filling it up every month. Got it.

so you're using their gas station, and then you're able to get some distribution. Now it's not. It's not the miracle if it's the only thing an organization's doing. I think it's not the first thing.

Yeah. but if you're hoping to be found, like if you publish content anywhere, social media content on your website, by default you're doing content marketing, so you're expecting people to find your stuff. This is an accelerant. it's a way of.

Pushing that forward. and so you should be using it at that point, because if you're waiting to be found organically, you can force it to be found, by figuring out, who is this piece of content for? what might they be looking for? Which is really SEO, and then trying to figure out, how to tap into that.

And it's really just like turning it on and testing. Yeah. Let's get a little bit deeper into the, Google Ads grant, because I'm sure people know that Google is a, it's one of the world's most valuable companies, and they didn't get that way by being purely nice. So let's maybe, say what it is not.

What this is not is, a chance for you to, and I'll come up with a stupid example, but let's say that your not-for-profit decides you're gonna make money by raffling off fidget spinners. So you cannot, for example, just. Slap fidget spinner is a keyword inside of Google Ads Grant and expect it to come to a page on your website where people, pay you, some exorbitant price for a fidget spinner, and then you pocket the cash. it has to be related to the content that your website talks about, right?

I thought that, but you actually just brought up one thing that I think is a little bit of a loophole go ahead. Is that you're able to sell product as long as the a hundred percent of the proceeds go to the charitable organization or the nonprofit. Interesting. Okay.

So I put on a session for Volunteer Ottawa. I was doing a bit of research and I had overlooked that part because it's kinda if you have swag, if you have gear. Those things, products do qualify as long as the proceeds a hundred percent go to the organization. Okay, so you can use it for e-commerce, But you had to even qualify, you had to pre present them with information.

Verifying that you are using the money for that, verifying that your articles of incorporation are set up as charitable, correct? Yeah. Okay. Yeah, to even get the account, you basically just need to prove that you're a nonprofit charity that falls within the rules, and Google will approve you or not approve you.

It's very lack, black and white. Okay. and then once you do, you have the ability to use that account. there's certain restrictions and that's one that is actually open.

And I thought it was closed, but, there's another restriction, I think, on cost per click. every keyword, of course, is in a keyword auction. so you know people who pay, for example, injury lawyer. Ad accounts pay a ridiculous amount on a cost per click.

what kinds of cost per click are we looking at for Google grants? So the last I looked, there's a click through rate that you have to maintain and then there's a cost per click. I think it's just a couple of dollars. Yeah.

I honestly rarely pay attention to what it is, mainly because. What we're trying, we know we're left with the way they've set it up, the way Google has set it up is that they're like, Hey, there's inventory you're not front of the line. So we're giving you access. you can do these things.

The restrictions are designed to give you the leftovers. Yes. Okay. there's oversupply in, there's oversupply, charitable.

Keywords. meanwhile they're raking in money, hand over fist on the injury. Lawyer clicks because there's over demand. Okay.

and so they're, and it's an auction, so they limit, it's they're like, Hey, you can only bid so much. So they limit your ceiling and, but you get to play and then you really have to look at it widely. You have to be extremely patient, just like you do with search engine optimization, I think just like you do with. So with, content marketing, yeah.

it's not a 'cause otherwise, you open up a separate account and then you play with host money and then you can do the two parallel. And that's really the answer is that you play both ways. you take what you've got and it's a testing account and you test widely and you learn deeply and you use it to the best you can. And then if you're impatient, you have to find some budget and start playing.

yeah. Parallel you had said this earlier, just harken back to your point on, you can force, fast throughput with things like paid traffic. But I like what you said, it's, take the short term gain from there, but also apply it to the long-term game of figuring out what the self same visitors, searchers, donors. Possible customers.

Figure out what they want and apply that into your content, onto your landing pages. Yeah. Then you're gonna have, that SEO traffic when it finally starts picking up. So you got it.

So that's a really good, way to put these two together. And we're not just talking about search engine optimization here. There's newer things, there's ai. Some people are trying to game, what they call generative AI optimization.

But you also say that we should just look at AI simply as something that's embedded in the woodwork of what we should do. And you know that even nonprofits, should be considering how it could be the invisible utility that is lying around everywhere that. Is going to change things for them as well. how do you see that taking shape?

what are some guesses you have right now on where that's gonna go? I think yeah, like a utility. I look at it like electricity. Okay.

it's there and you gotta plug into it it's just really, it's the ability to. solve problems and to, have access to infinite knowledge in almost everything that an organization's doing, so it's hard to just even pigeonhole it, but like in advertising for example, you're able to rapidly, you're able to start with better campaigns like one of the most important things is knowing who your market is. The way you're, I think you can do what used to take weeks and months in terms of research and coming up with an angle and evaluating competitors and do it in hours, minutes and hours and days.

Yeah. To end up with a world class campaign for whatever it is you're doing, promoting an event, finding donors, you name it. And you can like the way, the rate at which you can do that without having to do these things where you can just tap into this infinite knowledge. It's pretty astounding.

yeah, and I would say for not-for-profits, especially those that are donation based, they actually have a higher bar, to hit. because it may catch them unawares, but I believe that they're. Substitutes competitors, are much farther afield than just a another foundation. If you're a donation based organization, you are competing with, take a foundation, who's looking for high net worth individuals?

So their competition is actually a luxurious cottage or A timeshare somewhere sunny a cruise, an inheritance, bequest. these are things That person could be using their money for other than giving to you. You do need to look good and hard at who your avatar is, what they are thinking about. and you really do have to elevate your game.

I agree with you that this kind of Electricity type utility that we can tap into is there, but. We have to do it because the challenge, just saying that you're doing good is, not going to get you as far as you think it is. I totally agree. like spending, almost like a weird amount of time.

Thinking about the hopes, fears, desires, like the better you know your market, the better you know the people who are going to be giving you the donations. Even if you're playing pretend, and then when you can play, pretend with the machine and Yep. And really get like feedback where you're like, wow, I've forgotten all this stuff, or I hadn't even thought about these 20 angles. And that is the difference because when you're out there in the market and people notice something, they see themselves in it, you have their attention for the first time, and then magic can happen later.

Yeah. Instead of a lot of this generic stuff and like you, there's no, show ad, drop donation here kind of thing. Yeah. but there is an opportunity to get attention.

We're all. Spending time on our phones, devices, and all these places and it's everybody, and when they're there, the more homework you do in advance knowing what's going on in our minds, then when we see it for a second, something clicks and you got me and it starts. So that's an important part. Yeah, you're conjuring up in my head.

That story I was telling about the desert island economy. I think that the higher calling that not-for-profits can take is often reminding us. This is still an island. There's 8 billion people here, but we do have, there's nothing that's a pure externality.

And if you are going to give us your money versus giving a company your money, we are mindful of those. Things that, just aren't always looked at by a for-profit. And, we aren't, there to just get that transaction out of you and then, hit the first train out of town. We're here.

We're in your community. We're as invested as you are in life here. You can make it as big or as small as you want, but to give that closed loop sense of, we, we don't, simply want to be a transaction. We want to be something more, something mission based.

that really should be leaned into. That is something I think that, we as marketers wanna lean into. What would you say to a marketer who hasn't done, for example, any volunteering or pro bono work for one of these organizations? Or if they're an agency and they haven't looked at doing a somewhat reduced rate job for, a local, not-for-profit or social enterprise.

what would you say to them? I guess I would say, it has to be something that you're interested in. And it would be nice if there was like a win-win. So if you can find, I'll use the example like my kids swim.

Okay. And, these, a lot of these clubs are nonprofits. Yeah. Everybody's busy, so like one of the challenges that charities and nonprofits I've talked to have is recruiting board members trying to get people to fill the seats to do the work they need to do.

And so if you're a marketer and you've got this interest and you want to do something three dimensional, trying to align with something that's already an interest and a hobby and a passion, it'll make it easier because you probably already spend money and time there. That's the way I'm looking at it. I've been very careful about I'm not looking for a lot more opportunities to give my time away. But for the right, if you can find something that checks a couple of other boxes, then you got me like, if I'm already spending time and money there, then you got me.

Yeah. Looking deeply in your list and figuring out what people on your list do, and trying to mine that data or feed it back into these social platforms, it reveals a lot about, the interests that people have sure. Yeah. When you've taken your talents and there's also a personal interest there.

What would you say to somebody about the fulfillment you get out of that? Yeah. No, it's pretty special. yeah, because it's fun.

Like I, I, we've talked about this. I love solving business problems with marketing. It's something I enjoy doing and when you can do it and it's not just helping an entrepreneur make money, I like that too. Yeah.

But I do believe that you can do good and make money. And when you can do good and make money and there's a great cause. I think there is something selfish in it. There's, dopamine, there's something that kind of makes, feeds the ego a little bit makes you feel like you're making a difference.

yeah. Short term, but I think when you look back after a while and you say, I have definitely left this entity better than I found it. I think that's a longer term thing that you'd also get to say, when you have the benefit of that perspective. and I think that you have already shown that, Sean, really glad that you've, tried to coax other people to follow in your footsteps here.

Sean, if people wanna find out what you do and where you do it, where would you send them? I think I'd send them to LinkedIn. look me up. Sean Moher, on LinkedIn here in Ottawa.

my company's called Harvest Demand, Start a conversation. I've got some resources on that profile that give people a pretty good idea, especially if you're interested in charity, nonprofit, this kind of game plan that we kinda danced around a little bit, Amazing. Thanks so much, Sean. Okay, thanks Glen.

Sean has helped to show you how you get insights into your funnel and how to make it even better.