Update May 6, 2024: The Make Marketing blog is temporarily closed to new activity. Current marketing focus and processes are shifting to a new experimental project called WordPress Media Corps. Check out the WordPress Media Corps Initial Roadmap to learn more.

Any marketing contributors wanting to participate or follow along with this new project can join the WP Media Corps site and Slack channel.

Work on the Showcase remains open to contributions, and marketing amplification requests can be made on GitHubGitHub GitHub is a website that offers online implementation of git repositories that can easily be shared, copied and modified by other developers. Public repositories are free to host, private repositories require a paid subscription. GitHub introduced the concept of the ‘pull request’ where code changes done in branches by contributors can be reviewed and discussed before being merged be the repository owner. https://github.com/. For any other ideas or discussions unrelated to these contributing areas, you can use this GitHub discussion area.

The WordPress Foundation (WPF) is approved for a grant from Google Ads. The primary aim of using the grant is to increase overall awareness and coverage of the foundation and topics related to its mission. This might be reflected in additional coverage via social media, blogs, tech media, etc. Here are some details and how you can help this project succeed.

Background

The grant is for restricted use of up to $10,000 for monthly ads spent through AdWords to support the mission of the WPF:

To ensure free access, in perpetuity, to the software projects we support. People and businesses come and go, so it is essential to ensure that the source code for these projects will survive beyond the current contributor base so that we may create a stable platform for web publishing for generations to come.
wordpressfoundation.org

From Google: “To qualify for Google Ad Grants, your organization must be an eligible nonprofit, have a high-quality website that meets our website policy, and be able to meet the program policies.” The WordPress Foundation has met these requirements and will launch the campaign tentatively this spring, in March 2024.

Campaign Scope

In an Ad Grants campaign, nonprofits may only leverage text ads (no images) supported by multi-word keyword phrases (no single words). To this end, text ad campaigns will be created that drive awareness of the following topics/items/categories:

The WPF mission (general awareness)
WPF programs such as scholarships and do_action events
Open sourceOpen Source Open Source denotes software for which the original source code is made freely available and may be redistributed and modified. Open Source **must be** delivered via a licensing model, see GPL. software, news, policies, topics, benefits, such as:
- Openverse Wins the 2023 OEG Open Infrastructure Award
- Concerns over the European Union’s Cyber Resilience Act (CRA)
Educational materials about open source, such as:
- The Basic Principles of Open-Source Software
- Introduction to Open Source (Learn WordPress)
WordPress Briefing Podcast, such as these episodes:

Objective & Metrics

Apart from monitoring campaign performance using the typical AdWords KPIs such as impressions, clicks, and quality score, we’ll look at the total amount and quality of traffic driven to the promoted resources. Additionally, with more traffic to the WPF website, the foundation may receive additional donations. While not a primary goal, it’s another valuable measurement of success. @dansoschin will configure and manage the campaigns with approval from the project’s leadership team. Results will be shared in the marketing SlackSlack Slack is a Collaborative Group Chat Platform https://slack.com/. The WordPress community has its own Slack Channel at https://make.wordpress.org/chat/. channel and/or marketing blog when appropriate.

How You Can Help

Leave comments below, including links, for any resources you believe align with the WFP mission and would be helpful to support as part of this campaign through paid traffic. The resources must be non-commercial, educational, and aligned with the WPF mission (as listed above). Furthermore, the content promoted must be hosted on WordPress.orgv or WordPressFoundation.org.

While this campaign will launch soon, feedback is welcome anytime – list your resource below with any relevant context.

#ad-grant, #adwords, #google

Adam W. Warner 11:17 pm on January 29, 2024

Do we know who’ll be creating these ads?
Is there a committee approval process planned?
Do we know how many ads, etc. 10k a month is expected to give WPF?
Jason King 12:41 pm on January 31, 2024

Hi Dan.

I’m an Ad Grants Certified Professional, and before that I was a WordPress developer. I’d be happy to give you pro bono advice on using the grant, and to have an online meeting if it would be helpful. And I’d love to see the results of your advertising, it would make an interesting case study.

A possible hurdle might be proving you own the WordPress trademark, otherwise ads get disapproved. Fingers crossed it doesn’t question it!

Your #1 priority should be to set up conversion tracking in Google Analytics, setting goals based on actions people take on the websites. Could be tricky when there are multiple sites. You have 90 days to do that, and once it’s done you can use a conversion-based bidding strategy that lets you bid high enough to get impressions. It’s a necessary step, and the most technically tricky aspect to running a grant. Always optimize for real-world actions taken, rather than number of impressions/clicks.

Good to see you thought through your priorities.

You’re allowed to use one single word—WordPress—because that’s your brand name and therefore exempt from the rule. My guess is that you could use the entire $329 every day on that single keyword if you wanted to (not saying you should). That’s a good position to be in, means you can pick and choose your topics.

Have you already requested permission to point ads at the additional domains? If not, use this form: https://support.google.com/grants/contact/grants_v.

And… have you heard of Microsoft’s Ads for Social Impact grant? It’s on pause at the moment but it’s worth signing up for, ready for when it reopens. See https://nonprofits.tsi.microsoft.com/en-US/ads-for-social-impact/.

Good luck!

Comments are closed.

Background

Campaign Scope

Objective & Metrics

How You Can Help

Share this: