Google Analytics for Nonprofits
Ilia Jones | February 2021
Your nonprofit’s online presence is an important part of reaching your current and future supporters. But all the hard work you put into creating effective online content means nothing if those supporters can’t find you.
There’s a tool that can help with that. Google Analytics is a free solution that provides insights into the traffic your sites are getting. But nonprofit organizations have unique needs when it comes to measuring marketing success. Here are a few things you need to know to ensure you’re getting the most from the data.
Understanding Google Analytics
The first step toward launching any successful marketing campaign is to set goals. This will define what you’ll be measuring with Google’s tool. What do you want to accomplish with your website? Traffic, sure, but do you want that traffic to lead to conversions? If visitors linger for a while, then leave, will you see that as a good sign?
Google Analytics will show you your daily traffic, as well as how that changes over time. You’ll get insight into how long consumers spend on your site, the demographic makeup of your visitors, and the search terms the use to find you. The information can then be put to use in refining future marketing efforts.
Google Analytics and Ad Grants
Nonprofits have access to something that’s not available to other Google Analytics users. If you’re taking advantage of the Ad Grants program, you don’t just get no-cost advertising. You also can use Google Analytics to watch the entire customer lifecycle, from the time they click on your ad to any actions they take.
To get the most of Google Analytics, though, you need to link your Google Ad Grants account to Analytics. You’ll just log into your Google Analytics account, click Admin, and choose the account you want to link.
Putting the Data to Use
Once you have access to data, it’s important to put it to use. First, you’ll need to know what to look for. You can see how many people are clicking on your ads, as well as what they do after coming over. For nonprofits, “conversions” are tracked by how many people volunteered or donated, rather than how many people purchased a product or service.
But information on activity on one ad probably won’t be as useful as being able to compare that activity to another. Over time, using A/B testing, you’ll get a thorough picture of how well your marketing efforts are working. But best of all, you’ll gain information from each campaign that you can put toward creating ads that better target the potential supporters that fit your organization.
Nonprofit marketing is an ongoing process, requiring testing and tweaking. But the right tools will help you measure your efforts and put the information toward improving your campaigns. As a nonprofit, you’ll simply need to make sure your Ad Grants account is connected to Google Analytics to ensure that all your ad activity is being tracked. Then create multiple ads over time and monitor how the results differ from one campaign to another.
