Endeavor MiamiAd Grants Plan
AuditDiagnosisCampaignsBuild specCompetitorsPeer studyActionsWhat to do
Execution

Action Items — Sequenced, With Owners

Everything that has to happen, in order, to move the account from 3.4% to full grant deployment — plus the decisions only Endeavor Miami can make, and a running log of how this document changes.

Owners Agency · Endeavor Miami Horizon 3 weeks to build, 3 months to ramp This is a living document — same link, updated as work progresses

How to use this document

This link stays the same and is updated as the project moves. Everything here is a proposal open to revision — particularly the keyword lists, landing pages and competitor set. Review it tab by tab and send comments; the sections marked open are the ones where input changes the build most.

0Change log

DateWhat changed
Sep 2-3, 2026Measurement went live and the whole structure was built and switched on.
  • GTM is installed. Verified on the live site the day it went up: container in <head>, <noscript> after <body>, exactly one container, and the pre-existing Google tag (G-JMJES2MLTR + AW-16469366552) untouched — the "replaced instead of added" failure did not happen.
  • A build bug of ours was caught and fixed the same day. The GTM conversion tag builds its destination as literally "AW-" + conversion ID, so our value AW-16469366552 produced AW-AW-16469366552 — an account that does not exist. Every symptom looked healthy: the tag fired, the label was right, and every Google endpoint answered HTTP 200. Proof it was dead: the config Google serves for that id is byte-for-byte the size of the one served for a made-up account. Corrected to the numeric id and republished as version 4; a browser test now shows the conversion reaching /pagead/conversion/16469366552/ and GA4 answering 204.
  • All six campaigns built by API and enabled — $330/day, the plan figure to the dollar. Brand $15 · Mentorship $55 · Founder Community $70 · Ecosystem $25 · DSA $120 · PMax $45. 22 responsive search ads, 5 dynamic ads, 41 keywords, 3 shared negative lists, sitelinks, callouts and a Services snippet on every campaign, UTM tracking on all six.
  • Both structures now run in parallel. At Endeavor Miami's direction the new campaigns were switched on before the legacy campaign is touched, so the new structure proves itself against a live control rather than replacing it on faith.
  • A full audit found five defects in our own build, all corrected before launch: a broad jobs negative was silently killing our own keyword advisory board jobs; every ad had HEADLINE_1 pinned, which caps Ad Strength on its own; the second ad in each ad group had lost its keyword headlines; ad copy promised a PDF download that /research-reports/ does not host; and PMax had no sitelinks.
  • The DSA targeting had to depart from this document. WordPress serves posts at /YYYY/MM/DD/slug/, not under /blog/, so a /category/press/ rule reaches the archive page and never the 48 articles behind it. The thematic ad groups keep their category rules and a catch-all ad group on /20 carries the 179 dated posts.
Aug 23, 2026Measurement stack built:
  • GTM account and container created (GTM-TS5QRG54) and fully populated by API — 9 built-in variables, 6 constants, 4 triggers, 9 tags — published as version 3.
  • Four Google Ads conversion actions created — Apply Today click, Newsletter signup, Report download, Email contact — all as SECONDARY, so the live Website traffic-General campaign is unaffected until the tag is installed and verified.
  • Three goals from the earlier plan were corrected against the live site: event registration is dropped (/events/ returns 410 Gone), the contact-form goal becomes a mailto click (those pages have no form), and the donate goal is deferred (donations run in a cross-origin Donorbox iframe that GTM cannot see into).
  • Only Apply Today click will be primary — the earlier plan marked five goals primary, which risks the Ad Grants clicks-equal-conversions flag.
  • The Apply trigger targets the form URL, not the element id — Click URL contains docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSf5Ps instead of Click ID equals take1st — because the homepage, the account's main paid landing page, has no Apply CTA at all; a future one would carry the form URL but not that element id. Worth raising with Tatiana alongside the Donorbox ask.
Aug 17, 2026Updated from Endeavor Miami's written comments:
  • The founder-programs campaign is removed. The programme is no longer active, so SR_NB_Founder_Programs_MIA has nothing to advertise. The plan drops to six campaigns and its $30/day moves to DSA ($90 → $120/day). Total stays $330/day.
  • Three pages added, all verified live the same day: /endeavor-miami/, /press/ and /companies/. /endeavor-miami/ resolves the open blocker on campaign 1 — AG_Brand_About replaces the retired AG_Brand_Programs as the mandatory second ad group, so brand no longer waits on a programme decision.
  • Noted that /companies/ is not the excluded /endeavor-companies/, which now redirects to the homepage.
  • Competitor set extended to the written list — Greece, Poland and Ukraine added; México re-measured on the correct domain (the earlier "not measurable" result came from endeavor.mx, a construction company). Social profiles documented per office, and every office checked for live Google Ads.
Aug 11, 2026Updated after the review call with Endeavor Miami:
  • Geographic strategy rewritten as a two-phase plan — Florida with "presence or interest" targeting first, widening to the US and Latin America if spend is constrained. Added the soft-landing audience rationale.
  • All CPC caps corrected to $2.00 — the Ad Grants cap applies to Maximize Clicks, so the earlier $2.50–$3.50 ceilings would not have been compliant. Mix economics recalculated.
  • EndeavorLAB and ScaleUp flagged as retired programmes. AG_Brand_Programs is on hold pending replacement destinations.
  • Bot-traffic finding updated — the web administrator has already deployed blocking rules; expect the share to fall over two to three months. Confirmed none of it comes from paid.
  • Added the Endeavor network benchmark — Brasil, Argentina, México, Global.
  • Added context that underspending is normal across the Ad Grants programme, and anchored the target to the ~$8,000/month practical ceiling.
  • Added a note on why CPC should not be over-capped, and flagged the event-registration URL for verification.
Aug 8, 2026First full version issued — audit, campaign build spec, competitor benchmark and action list.

1Guardrails — read before touching anything

1 · Never edit Website traffic-General It is the only campaign spending and it holds the account's conversion history. No budget change, no bid change, no keyword change, no geo change. Everything is built as new, parallel campaigns.

The premise behind this rule has weakened, and Endeavor Miami should know it. The 6.91% CTR it was written to protect is historical. Measured on Sep 3: the account came in at 4.30% in April and 4.49% in August, with September running at 5.02% — and the legacy campaign is now the drag, not the shield (its Entrepreneurship ad group is at 4.50% and Startups at 2.30% over 30 days). Two consecutive months under 5% deactivate a Grants account. Nothing was changed there, but two items now need a decision — see below.

2 · Built paused, reviewed, now live in parallel — Sep 3 Every campaign was created PAUSED, audited against this spec, corrected, and only then switched on. All six are now ENABLED and the legacy campaign is still running: Endeavor Miami's decision is to prove the new structure against a live control before anything is switched off. Rollback is one command and returns all six to paused without touching the legacy campaign.
3 · No change without a written record Every change is logged with its before and after values, so any step can be reversed. A change log is shared with Endeavor Miami at the end of each week.

2Dependencies on Endeavor Miami — start these now

These items gate the rest of the plan and are the only dependencies that sit outside the campaign build itself.

#ItemOwnerWhy it blocksPriority
1Install Google Tag Manager on the WordPress theme

Container: GTM-TS5QRG54 (Endeavor Miami / endeavormiami.org)

  1. Delete nothing. The Google tag already on the site — G-JMJES2MLTR (Analytics) and AW-16469366552 (Google Ads) — stays exactly as it is. GTM is added alongside it, not in place of it. Removing it would drop analytics and remarketing on the same day.
  2. Paste this as high as possible inside <head>: 
    <!-- Google Tag Manager -->
<script>(function(w,d,s,l,i){w[l]=w[l]||[];w[l].push({'gtm.start':
new Date().getTime(),event:'gtm.js'});var f=d.getElementsByTagName(s)[0],
j=d.createElement(s),dl=l!='dataLayer'?'&l='+l:'';j.async=true;j.src=
'https://www.googletagmanager.com/gtm.js?id='+i+dl;f.parentNode.insertBefore(j,f);
})(window,document,'script','dataLayer','GTM-TS5QRG54');</script>
<!-- End Google Tag Manager -->
  3. Paste this immediately after <body> opens: 
    <noscript><iframe src="https://www.googletagmanager.com/ns.html?id=GTM-TS5QRG54"
height="0" width="0" style="display:none;visibility:hidden"></iframe></noscript>

Nothing needs to be configured on Emi's side. Every trigger and tag is already built and published in the container. Tell us the date it goes live and we verify the same day.

 Tatiana → Emi Critical path. Without GTM there are no click-based conversions, so Smart Bidding stays blind and the account stays in breach of the ≥1 conversion/month rule. Done — installed Sep 2, verified same day
1bDecision: the keyword Entrepreneur in the live campaign — a single-word keyword on broad match, which Ad Grants prohibits unless it is a brand term. It also sits in the ad group with the most impressions (1,533 in 30 days) and the lowest CTR (4.50%), so it is at once the policy exposure and the reason the account's CTR is sliding. Pausing that one keyword is the recommendation. It requires your sign-off because it means editing the protected campaign. Tatiana Ad Grants deactivates an account after two consecutive months under 5% CTR. August closed at 4.49%. Decision needed
1cDecision: the account-level callouts — today they are four single words ("Endeavor", "Entrepreneurship", "Founders", "Tech Miami") and one snippet whose header is the literal word "Types". Account-level assets are inherited by any campaign without its own, which includes the live campaign, so replacing them with the six written for the new campaigns ("98 Active Mentors", "7,000+ Jobs Created"…) would raise its CTR. Also requires sign-off, for the same reason. The new campaigns already carry the better set at campaign level. Tatiana The cheapest CTR available on the campaign that carries the account. Decision needed
1dSubmit the newsletter form once, with a real address. Every other conversion was proved end to end in a browser; this is the only trigger that cannot be tested without creating a real Mailchimp subscriber. TatianaConfirms the last untested conversion. This week
1eDonorbox access, so donations become measurable — they run in a cross-origin iframe that GTM cannot see into. For a non-profit this is the most valuable conversion on the site and it is currently invisible. TatianaUnblocks the only high-value conversion still unmeasured. Open ask
1fWhere do the research reports live? /research-reports/ hosts no PDF at all — the reports sit on endeavor.org and multipliereffect.endeavor.org. So the "Report download" conversion has no surface anywhere on the site. Either publish the reports as PDFs on the site, or we repoint that trigger to outbound clicks toward the Endeavor global domains — which changes what the conversion means, so it is your call. TatianaOne of the four conversions can currently never fire. Decision needed
1gAdd an "Apply Today" button to the homepage. It is the account's main paid landing page and it has no Apply CTA at all. The trigger is already built to recognise a future button by its form URL, so it will start counting the day the button ships — nothing to configure. Tatiana → EmiThe primary conversion has no entry point on the busiest page. This week
2New destinations for the retired programmes' sitelinks — ScaleUp, EndeavorLAB and the founder programme are all retired, and /scaleup/ and /endeavorlab/ now 301 to the homepage, so this is no longer a decision — only a list of replacement URLs. 19 sitelink assets still point at those paths plus summit24. and apin., but every one sits on a paused or removed campaign: none is serving today. They need destinations before those campaigns are ever switched back on, not before anything else. Proposed replacements are in Week 1 below.

Separate, and this one IS live: the sitelink “Endeavor Entrepreneurs” → /endeavor-companies/ is serving on the active campaign and 301s to the homepage. That page was already on the kickoff exclusion list.

 Tatiana Answered 17 Aug — all three programmes are retired. Nothing dead is being shown to anyone today; the one live broken sitelink is the only part costing money. Not blocking
3Review the document tab by tab and send commentsTatiana Keyword lists, landing pages and adjacent-term choices are all proposals open to revision Received 17 Aug — applied
4Send the written competitor list — other Endeavor offices and any local organisations TatianaReceived 17 Aug: Global, Argentina, Brasil, México, Greece, Poland, Ukraine and eMerge Americas — all now on the Competitors page, websites and social accounts included Received 17 Aug — applied
5Flag any pages or articles worth featuring with their own ad groupTatiana DSA picks up blog content automatically, but priority content deserves dedicated keyword research and copy This week
6Event registration — finding, not an open question: /events/ returns 410 Gone and no ticketing host (lu.ma or otherwise) is linked anywhere on the siteTatiana The conversion action built against lu.ma can never fire again; the goal is dropped from the measurement plan (see the Aug 23 change log) Resolved 23 Aug — dropped
7Update the services section of the siteTatiana Keywords in campaigns 2–5 must match on-page copy, or Quality Score and landing-page experience suffer Before launch
8Share Instagram / LinkedIn posts and brand guidelinesTatiana Source material for RSA copy in the brand's own voice (Multiplier Effect, Elsewhere Entrepreneurs)Week 2
9Confirm the annual Ad Grants programme survey is completeTatiana Mandatory for continued eligibilityVerify

3Week 1 — repair

Stop the bleeding and rebuild the measurement loop. None of this touches the live campaign's structure.

Measurement — built, pending install

URL hygiene — 18 of these are on paused campaigns; the last one is live

Foundations

4Week 2 — build

Create campaigns 1–4, all paused, then enable in order.

5Week 3 — scale

Content recommendation for the Endeavor Miami team Hello Alice captures 399,850 searches/month largely on grants and funding language. Endeavor Miami's /category/access-to-capital/ holds only 4 posts. Growing that category to 15–20 posts is the highest-leverage content investment available — it directly feeds both the DSA campaign and organic search.

6Ongoing governance

CadenceTaskWhy
Weekly (month 1)Search-term mining → negative keywordsThe account has never had a negatives process; early passes will be productive
WeeklySpend pacing vs $329/day per campaignUnused grant budget never rolls over
WeeklyAccount CTR checkTwo consecutive months below 5% deactivates the account. DSA is the main dilution risk — PMax is exempt.
MonthlyFull Ad Grants compliance sweepConversions ≥1, no single-word or generic keywords, QS ≥3, ≥2 ad groups, ≥2 sitelinks, geo relevance
MonthlyConversion-action health checkThe July failure was silent for a month. Verify every action still fires.
WeeklyCheck whether campaigns are spending their full daily budgetThe trigger for phase-2 geo expansion (US, then LatAm) — expected within weeks given Florida-only demand
Month 2Switch campaigns to Maximize ConversionsOnce ≥15 conversions/month are flowing, this lifts the $2 CPC cap — the single biggest spend lever available
Month 3Re-evaluate Website traffic-GeneralOnly once the new structure carries the account — and only with explicit sign-off
Month 3+Spanish/LatAm layer + AI Max testReserve levers if the account plateaus below $8,000/month

7Risks to watch

RiskLikelihoodImpactMitigation
Demand ceiling — the account plateaus below $10kMedium-high Goal missedAlready priced in: committed band is $6,000–8,000 by month 3. Reserve levers are Spanish/LatAm and AI Max.
DSA drags account CTR below 5%Medium Account deactivation after 2 monthsWeekly CTR monitoring; tighten DSA targeting rules before adding budget; PMax carries volume instead (CTR-exempt)
GTM never gets installedMedium Plan stalls at week 1Escalate early; interim fallback is a page-load conversion on the Google Form thank-you page if one exists
PMax cannibalises brand trafficMedium Inflated brand CPCAccount-level brand negatives from day one; verify at day 5
Generic keywords flagged as policy breachLow Warning / suspensionCampaign 4 uses mission-specific terms only; the generic pool is reached via DSA, which is compliant
Bot traffic corrupts GA4-based signalsHigh if unfixed Bad baselines and audiencesGA4 filter + Cloudflare rule in week 1
Live campaign degrades on its ownLow Loss of the only spendMonitor only — do not intervene. Its zero-conversion state is already the worst case.
On this page
Change logGuardrailsDependencies on Endeavor MiamiWeek 1 — repairWeek 2 — buildWeek 3 — scaleOngoing governanceRisks to watch