Hi Anra
I have some experience of working with Google Ad Grants so can offer some pointers.
I'd definitely recommend creating an AdWords Classic account rather than an AdWords Express account. The Express version of AdWords is extremely limited in what it allows you to do, and is a sure fire way of you spending budget that you don't need to spend. Specifically, you can't select the keywords you want to bid on—it allows you to select the category under which you define your busines and then picks keyword for you. This is a really, really, really bad idea!
It also doesn't let you select negative keywords—these are keywords you add to your account to ensure your ads don't appear when a user's search includes those words (or phrases). Negative keywords are the backbone of a successful, well-targeted account.
Lastly, AdWords Express doesn't offer conversion tracking. Whether it's a ticket sale, a PDF download, a video play or something more nuanced like the amount of content a user consumes once they've clicked your ad—if you're not importing conversions into AdWords you have no way of measuring how much value each of your keywords is delivering. Is a certain keyword "worth" bidding on? Wth AdWords Express you can't answer that question. You just don't know if your ads are working.
In conclusion, the level of control you have with AdWords Express is terrible. Stick with Classic.
On your comment "Are we right to assume we’ll stand no chance with highly contested words/terms and should stick with the more granular, less-contested end of things?". There's a $2.00 bid limit in your Google Ad Grants account but in almost all of the accounts I work with, this is rarely a problem. Where there is a problem, or where keywords end up performing really well, you could always use a paid AdWords account alongside your Grants account to bid on those more competitive keywords that the Grant can't compete on. Lastly, Google state that they favour paid advertisers over Grants ads in the auction system—they'll typically rank an ad coming from a paid account higher than one coming from a Grants account. If you're competing in an area where there's a lot of "real" paid activity, you might find your average position is lower than other advertisers.
As an aside, if you do take the Classic route, I'd also recommend downloading AdWords Editor to create and edit your account—you make changes offline and upload them when they're all ready. It takes the stress out of working within the AdWords interface and has some extremely good functionality with things like copy and pasting, batch editing etc. It'll save you hours of time, I promise.
I hope that helps.
Best
Phil McMinn
Head of Search
Torchbox Ltd | Southill Park | Charlbury | OX7 3EW
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t: twitter.com/phil_mcminn
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