Recently Facebook and Google announced plans to offer grants to businesses that have been using their ad platforms and affected by Covid-19. These grants may be in the form of cash or ad fees so you can continue to advertise your busienss. Many, many businesses have of course been affected adversely because of declining sales which means they can’t spend as much on advertising or marketing.
As a marketer, we’re also seeing great opportunities for businesses to continue to advertise or start to advertise. Across the board, ad costs are dropping, meaning its getting cheaper to find customers on Facebook, Instagram, Google, Pinterest and more.
In addition to these grants, we’ve cut our base recurring advertising fees in half to support new advertisers. Contact us here to get started, or schedule a free strategy call here.
See below for more info on the grants and also some other opportunities from Facebook.
Facebook Grants
Facebook was first to announce some grants – currently set to $100M in cash grants and ad credits. They have a short eligibility list:
Up to 30,000 eligible small businesses in more than 30 countries where we operate will be able to receive the grant. To be eligible to apply, you must:
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- – Be a for-profit company
- – Have between 2 and 50 employees
- – Have been in business for over a year
- – Have experienced challenges from COVID-19
- – Be in or near a location where Facebook operates
This last one is tough, It means you need to be in or near a city where Facebook has a physical presence. This will for sure cut out a very large number of advertisers and while they don’t give any sort of distance limitation, it does seem very strange.
When you start to apply, you get this:
The drop down menu lists these cities:
We don’t know what happens if you choose “My location is not listed” or how close you need to be to a location, but we do recommend you apply no matter what.
Apply for a Facebook Grant HereFacebook Gift Cards
Recently Facebook announced a partnership with Square and Kabbage to create gift cars for you business. If you have an account with either of those transaction providers, then you can generate gift cards for your business that you can promote. This can be a great way to drive more sales to your business.
Start Facebook Gift Cards HereFacebook Fundraising
Facebook is now allowing personal fundraising campaigns on business pages. This didn’t use to be the case, but according to Facebook:
If your business has been affected by the COVID-19 pandemic, you can set up a personal fundraiser for your small business from your personal Facebook account.
So now, businesses that may be hurting because of Covid-19 can start fundraising for their business. Obviously, there are some limits and restrictions, but could be another good tool to use to keep your business afloat.
Learn about Facebook Fundraising HereGoogle Grants
If you thought Facebook’s $100M grant was large, Google recently announced they’re giving $800+ million to support small businesses and crisis response around the world.
There’s a lot of money there and it’s being divided up in several different ways for different organizations. For most of us advertisers, grants can be awarded as ad credits to be used later. If you advertised on google and have been impacted, or even if you didn’t advertise, I think it’s definitely worth exploring this option.
Learn about Google Grants HereWe hope you can take advantage of some or all of these programs. We’d love to hear if you’ve been successful with any of them.