Nonprofit Marketing Guide
11 Must-Try Nonprofit Marketing Strategies for Collecting More Donors and Volunteers
When resources are tight, which is the case with nonprofit organizations, every marketing team tries to do more with less. Marketing for nonprofits is a critical factor that helps organizations raise their brand awareness and attract more donors. Digital marketing has brought many opportunities in terms of reaching the audience, education of the public, and increase of support for your mission, which is essential for your organization's development. The following post will explain 11 remarkable nonprofit marketing ideas that will help your organization reach its primary goals without wasting its resources.Why Do You Need Marketing for Nonprofit Organizations?
In order to do good, your organization must be recognized by people. Consequently, nonprofits need to establish reliable connections with donors, volunteers, the media, and even governmental organizations that will support their mission. To reach out to all of them, you need to implement marketing strategies that will help you benefit in many ways. For example:- Spread your message and direct it to the right audience
- Bring in new donors and increase revenue
- Show your current donors your success
- Build strong relationships with other governmental and non-governmental organizations
- Become visible in the media
- Announce important events and news to the public
Nonprofit Marketing Plan: 11 Ultimate Advertising Ideas
Once you’ve started developing your marketing plan, you shouldn’t stop as soon as you notice positive results. Marketing is an ongoing process that requires your attention and devotion in order to continue bringing donations and promoting you in front of the public. Consider the following nonprofit marketing strategies to accomplish your organizations' main objectives:1. Create a Website to Establish Online Presence
A website is a crucial aspect of establishing a long-lasting online presence. A site of a reputable nonprofit organization should look professional and well-designed in order to make a strong first impression on your visitors and prospective donors, volunteers, or organization members. Your webpage should provide crucial information about your organization so that people can get to know you better. Therefore, make sure you include your nonprofit’s history and mission, upcoming events and initiatives, stories, a brief bio of your organization members, and instructions on how to donate money and start volunteering. Apart from being useful for visitors, a well-created website has a significant impact on search engine optimization (SEO). SEO is an essential part of digital marketing that consists of a site’s effort to reach the first page on Google, Bing, Yahoo, or any other search engine. The higher the rankings of your website, the better the chance to be recognized by potential donors or volunteers. To make that happen, you need to focus on different SEO aspects, such as targeting relevant keywords, internal linking, backlinks, written and visual content, and more. SEO is a comprehensive and ongoing process that won’t bring results overnight. To stay focused on your nonprofit organization and its missions, consult an SEO firm that will complete the vital SEO tasks for you.2. Make Sure Your Site is Responsive on Mobile Devices
The consistent use of mobile devices has impacted the necessity of creating mobile-friendly websites. When a site is mobile-friendly, it means that it can load images, display forms and run seamlessly on any mobile device. Apart from providing better user experience, mobile-friendliness impacts your SEO practices, which means that Google may reward you with better rankings. Potential supporters and donors will appreciate the fact that they can contact you or donate money via smartphone or tablet, which will help your organization grow and help you generate more leads.3. Create Donation Pages and Include Them to Your Website
Donations are the lifeline of any nonprofit organization, and they need to create a solid base for receiving them. To create a platform that will help you increase conversions, collect donations and raise awareness of current social problems, you need to implement donation pages that should consist of the following elements:- Your brand: Make sure you include your nonprofit's name and a brief introduction to what your organization does and where donations go.
- Personal information: Your donation page should have a form that requires a donor’s name, address, phone number, and email.
- Gift amount: You should allow a donor to choose the amount of money they want to give to your organization.
- Pricing plan: Allow donors to choose whether they want to make a one-time payment or monthly gift.
- Payment method: Include payment methods you offer – credit card, PayPal, checks, or something else.
4. Take Advantage of Nonprofit Email Marketing
Email marketing is something worth considering when you’re running a nonprofit organization. You can create newsletters and send them to your contacts once a week, making sure you include the latest updates about your organization, missions, and volunteer needs. Besides, it’s vital to set up an email sequence for new donors, thanking them for joining and their contribution. Make sure you provide clear instructions on how to subscribe to your mailing list so that donors and volunteers can do it immediately. When someone can't find the necessary item on your website, they will probably give up their actions and leave it.5. Focus on Written Content that Sends Strong and Valuable Messages
Blogging represents a crucial asset of content marketing for nonprofits. If you focus on creating it, you can experience tremendous benefits of it. By writing a valuable nonprofit marketing blog that's relevant to your organization's primary goal, you have the opportunity to educate your audience about your mission and cause. Besides, it can help you collect more donors, volunteers, subscribers and leads. If your organization does its best to help people who struggle with anxiety and depression, you can write blogs that will dispel the common myths and misconceptions about such an issue. That way, you can educate your audience about the problems other people are facing and raise their awareness about it.6. Consider Videos as Critical Part of Digital Marketing for Nonprofits
Nonprofit organizations can accomplish a lot by posting video content. Videos can transmit a meaningful message that can be shared via email or social media, and by embedding them to your nonprofit's official website. Here is how video marketing can help your nonprofit organization:- It’s visual: People prefer visual content over the written one, which is why videos represent a more accessible way of approaching your audience.
- It’s more personal: Videos can help you express your empathy and emotions and show your audience who stands behind the face of your organization. That way, you can convince donors and volunteers to join you in your mission, whose goal is to make the world a better place to live.
- It’s educational: Videos can be aimed at educating people on the organization’s causes and their missions in order to gain people’s attention and trust.
- It’s shareable: Video content is shared on social media every minute, which makes it visible to a broad range of audiences.
- It's inspirational and exciting: Nonprofits tend to create videos that are inspirational and engaging, which is usually the reason why they achieve to collect visitors, followers, and supporters.
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7. Try Google My Business to Enhance Marketing for Nonprofit Organization
Google My Business (GMB) is a must-try tool for nonprofit organizations. It’s free, which means that you won’t be using your resources on its implementation, and it represents a platform that will enhance your organization’s productivity. GMB is also vital for improving your local SEO practices. Most importantly, it will let your potential donors learn all the important aspects of your organization and contact you right from the search engine result. You should provide essential information about your nonprofit, including its name, website, physical location, phone number, working hours, photos of your offices, et. The more the information you deliver, the better the chances to get into the top 3 GMB results.8. Create Social Media Accounts
Social media marketing is a highly popular method that’s used by a variety of different industries. It’s convenient for nonprofits, mainly because it’s free, but its other benefits are outstanding, as well. Still, you should know that not all social media channels have the same goals, purposes and target audience. For example, you can use Twitter if you want to reach out to supporters individually; Instagram is suitable for reaching out to people through photos and compelling posts, while Facebook and LinkedIn can help you connect with donors, volunteers, and other entities that can help your campaign grow.
Regardless of the platforms you choose to promote your mission, make sure your posts are creative, relevant, emotional, and rich in visual content. It will attract more followers and make your profile look professional and trustworthy.
If you go for Facebook ads, which is an affordable version of Internet advertising, don’t forget to add a “Donate Now” CTA (call-to-action) button that leads directly to a donation page where people can make transactions.
9. Don’t Be Afraid to Reach Out to Influencers
Reaching out to social media influencers is another powerful nonprofit digital marketing strategy. They can spread the message for you and make it visible to a much broader number of people since they usually have a lot of followers. The best would be to contact them directly via email or social media. If it seems too challenging for you, try looking for so-called "micro-influencers" within your network, and ask them to say a couple of kind words about your organization and its mission.10. Benefit from Google Ad Grants
You must’ve heard about Google Ads, the most popular platform used for PPC (pay-per-click) campaigns. It consists of paying a certain amount of money anytime someone clicks on your ad, which is found on the first search engine results page (SERP). However, since nonprofit organizations are trying not to spend too much of their resources on marketing, Google has come up with an ideal solution for them – Google Ad Grants. Namely, you’ll receive $10.000 of in-kind advertising from Google each month in order to create text-based ads and access tools that will help your campaign display on Google Search when people look for details related to your organization. Google Ad Grants will help you attract more donors, raise awareness of your nonprofit, and find more volunteers that will contribute to your organization and help you accomplish your primary goals.11. Host High-Profile Events and Webinars
Organizing fundraising events can be quite advantageous for you. Such events can gather a lot of donors, volunteers, and other people who’d like to contribute to your mission and learn more about your organization’s cause and purposes. You can use social media or email to promote your event and invite more people to join you. As for webinars, they are essential for educating volunteers and answering critical questions about your work and cause.6 Extra Tips on How to Get the Best Nonprofit Marketing Results
It's vital to perform marketing strategies adequately in order to get the right outcomes. To achieve that, make sure you apply some of the following tips:- Know who your audience is: You should know what demographic group you’re trying to reach so that you can determine which platforms, messages and language you’re going to use to communicate with them.
- Determine your goal: Make sure you know what purpose your nonprofit wants to achieve. That way, you'll know what path to choose.
- Express your emotions: People will be more likely to hear you when your story is personal and emotional.
- Segment your mailing list: It’ll be much easier to communicate with different groups of people if you divide them based on age, political learning, location, income, interest in volunteering, etc.
- Communicate with your donors and volunteers: You shouldn't neglect your donors and volunteers, but keep in touch with them as much as you can. Use phone, email, CRM, or any other tool that will provide seamless communication between you.
