Through Google AdWords, we had to spread the word about the Family Promise of South Bay, which has little exposure or resources. Family Promise of South Bay is a nonprofit that strives to end homelessness.

With our $30,000 Google grant and AdWords login in hand, we began our 10-week journey by immersing ourselves in the advertising medium. The first three weeks consisted of learning the basics of launching a successful paid search campaign from the talented individuals from Resolution Media. We felt confident that we could run a successful campaign. Or so we thought…

Our team quickly ran into some difficulties. After our first week we had a low CTR and impression volume across the board. Driven to find a solution, we began by optimizing our keywords and deleting competing keywords. We began seeing immediate improvement but we didn’t stop here. Week by week my group improved our campaigns through superior ad and website copy. We persistently explored more innovative ideas such as targeting ads at specific times of day, targeting the Hispanic population of LA, and geo-targeting through zip codes. Our continuous improvements pushed us to reach for a goal of a 5% click through rate.

Throughout the duration of the project, September 14th to December 8th 2015, the Family Promise of South Bay campaign achieved 2,490 clicks, 60,513 impressions, and a 4.11% click through rate.