Skip to main content

Nonprofit Marketing 101: Figuring Things Out

Are you creating a digital marketing strategy for your nonprofit? Are you looking to revamp your organization's digital marketing strategy? In either case, this post contains some easy things any development or communications specialist can do to make a Web site or a Facebook page work harder.  

Define Goals and Objectives

If fundraising, do you want individual donors or subscribers, or are you going for major donors and legacy gifts. All four require different tactics and different marketing copy. 

Are you motivating people to take a certain action or change behavior? If yes, you need to figure out how to appeal using something like AIDA or a sales funnel.

Know Where You Are

Take stock of your recent success in social media and on your site. Answer these questions, at a minimum:

1. How many visitors come to your site from each social media account?

2. How many visitors come to your site and immediately leave?

3. What percentage of visitors hit that Donate money and give? Track this separately for your social media accounts and for your Web site's donation page. If have a newsletter and want people to sign up for it, what percentage of people visit the newsletter page and then sign up? 

4. How much are you spending on digital marketing and where are you spending the money? Break it down. 

5. Study trends over the past few months. Do you see any trends in your traffic or engagement? 

Now you have some baseline data on how you are doing.

Decide What You Want

No doubt you'll be able to think of several goals for your revamped digital marketing strategy. What are they?

Make your goals S.M.A.R.T - Specific, Measureable, Action-oriented, Realistic, Time-Bound. Here are two examples of setting goals, one good and one terrible:

GOAL: By January 1, 2020, our donation page will get a minimum of 1000 visitors a week and produce at least 30 donations per week. 

GOAL: According to our social media traffic we will be the Web's number one source of information on the benefits of eating local. 

With a little thought, I think you can tell which goal is "good" and which goal is more like wishful thinking or a mission.

Decide How You'll Get There

In short, how will you invest time and money to get from where you are to where you need to be? You can do many things with your Web content, your social media accounts, your email list, and even just the words on your Web site. All of those areas should get some attention as you think of reaching that goal. 

Become a Growth Hacker

Eazl has an inexpensive course on this at Udemy (or was it Coursera?). Consider taking it and using what you learned. There's a lot to know! Here is one lesson that doesn't take a huge amount of training to use - do some marketing experiments.

Your site should have an invitation to donate now on most or all pages. The button should come with a call to action, not just a "Donate Now" label on the button. Change the call to action for a couple of weeks and see what happens. If your donation page isn't getting donations, try adding a success story or a list of great things you can do with the money. Focus on your audience, not on the organization. People will care more about making things happen in the world, less about your need for some new video production gear. 

If you post lots of Facebook updates, change your schedule. What are you sharing on Facebook now? What is the tone? Change tone, maybe to be more friendly and positive or more formal and academic. Change the type of content you post. If you mostly post news and events about the organization, shift your focus to share good news and tips relevant to the cause. To be honest, people likely care more about the issue than about your organization anyway.  

If you like this little Nonprofit Marketing 101 strategy tutorial, well, bookmark this site and check it weekly. I'll be sharing more insights over the next several weeks. 





Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Imagining New Economic Models

I was listening to NPR today. One of the stories concerned a nuclear power plant this about to close. The plant is a major employer in that area, so this closure will be a huge economic hit to lots of families and local businesses. Can something be done about this? Well, no. The only approach in this situation and thousands like it around the world is to creatively replace the lost income and tax revenue. One can assume the jobs, and associated tax revenue, will not be coming back in the case of that power plant closure. Another source of money must be found by local governments, displaced workers, and small businesses. I'm sure there are some programs for this now but the story sparked an idea: A group like the Taproot Foundation or the De Bono Group could offer pro bono consulting on new ways to cut costs, or generate revenue, for the communities and new business models for local businesses that are in danger of going under.
Post a Comment
Read more

A New Approach to Activism

Nonprofit executives report the same issues in survey after survey. Fundraising, communication with donors, budget woes, effectiveness, and efficiency come up in some form. Performance measurement is a cause for concern, though that goes to efficiency and effectiveness - How do you know how well you are doing? How do potential donors know? Is there a simple system out there that could make it easier to answer such questions, and deal with those other issues too? At the risk of sounding like an Internet marketing hack, the answer is a qualified 'yes' to both halves of that question. Allow me to explain. To have an effective organization you need ideas, people, money, and a plan. There are a few other things too, but I think you follow. Ideas - Look for ideas that promise more impact for less cost. Look for ideas that allow you to attack the real problem instead of the symptoms. Doing so will probably require breakthrough thinking. Do not expect inspiration to come from som...
Post a Comment
Read more

Aggressive Humanism?

This is just a random post sparked by some things I learned by watching The Big Question on BBC. Actually, I just watched the clips on YouTube. Nevertheless, here is the idea: Activists have manuals for various things, but humanist activists don't have a manifesto and guide to effective action in pursuit of a humanistic world. What to do, when, and where? That would be the activism manual part. The Humanist Manifesto gives a pretty good overview of what humanism is and why it matters. My manual would elaborate on how to enact the values of humanism in the modern world. Recent developments in systems theory, climate science, positive psychology, and behavioral economics need to be accounted for. What do these things mean for humanist activism? Some of the answers are clear, but others are not. That's what I like to think anyway. There need to be instructions on various sorts of direct actions. How do we deal with churches that post anti-gay slogans outside? Do you picket the...
Post a Comment
Read more