Whether you want to spread awareness of your nonprofits mission, attract donors, or find new volunteers, a great digital marketing strategy is essential for the long-term success of your nonprofit. Luckily, with the right content management tools and a little creativity, you can reach your organizational goals without going over budget or working additional hours.
Now, if you’re skeptical of “easy” marketing tricks, know that the following tips are specifically tailored for the needs of nonprofit organizations; not major companies with seemingly unlimited resources! If you’re ready to expand your online reach and accomplish bigger goals this year, consider these 5 tried-and-true strategies to make the most out of your next marketing campaign:
1. Build a consistent email marketing campaign.
One of the biggest mistakes that nonprofits make is using email sporadically instead of building a consistent, reliable newsletter. When organizations only send messages when they’re in need of additional funds or volunteers, it comes across as impersonal, especially if a recipient is already a passionate supporter. Email marketing can be an incredibly powerful and effective tool to keep your audience engaged and educated about relevant topics. For instance, here are just a few ideas for taking your organization’s email to the next level:
- Create a weekly newsletter to update recipients about the latest news, progress towards specific goals, volunteer opportunities, and other related information.
- Use email to help promote content on your website, such as blog posts, videos, or infographics.
- Request input from your audience by sending short surveys or polls to gain new insights and ideas. To further encourage participation, offer a small prize for a randomly selected recipient, such as a reusable water bottle or a t-shirt with your organization’s logo.
- Send monthly wrap-up emails to summarize what your nonprofit has accomplished, outline your goals for the next month, and highlight any upcoming events or volunteer opportunities.
- Create drip campaigns that are triggered by specific actions, such as someone making a donation for the first time or someone signing up to attend an online event. Drip campaigns are automated sets of emails that you can set up ahead of time in order to make sure that everyone who interacts with your nonprofit will receive a relevant message.
- Set up an email sequence for new subscribers thanking them for joining and educating them on your organization.
- Set up an email sequence for new donors thanking them for their contribution and sharing how else they can support your organization.
2. Form collaborations and partnerships.
As a nonprofit leader, you should never feel as if you’re solely responsible for promoting your organization’s message. Always be on the lookout for individual activists and other nonprofits that share similar values and goals to partner with. When you team up, both of your organizations will benefit from a boost in online reach. You can share each other’s content on social media, write guest posts for each other’s websites, create collaborative videos, host webinars, or partner up in other unique ways to meet your specific community’s needs. And don’t forget to reach out to local media outlets or reporters about your efforts, too!
3. Show transparency with frequent reports.
Along with your fundraising efforts, you should strive to create quarterly or annual reports to highlight genuine impacts your organization has accomplished. The American Red Cross, for example, releases an annual report to share facts about their fiscal year, their ongoing projects, and specific accomplishments their organization reached. This level of transparency shows donors that the organization is reputable, trustworthy, and truly making a positive difference around the globe. The American Red Cross also incorporates eye-catching photos, infographics, and color-coded sections to make the document easy for people to read and navigate.
4. Identify new opportunities through social listening.
Social listening is the process of selecting a few relevant terms to monitor on social media. Using an inexpensive social listening tool will alert you whenever these terms are mentioned on any social channel and provide valuable insights over time to show you what people think about your nonprofits organization and help you identify potential opportunities for fundraising or outreach. But the best part about social listening is that the process is almost completely automated once you select the terms you want to track, which is ideal for nonprofits with limited time and resources.
If you’re curious about using this type of technology, the following brands offer free trials of their software before asking you to commit to a monthly or annual plan. Furthermore, each basic plan is budget-friendly at less than $30/month.
- Awario. The starter plan starts at $29/month, which includes monitoring 3 topics of your choosing and alerting you when any of those keywords are mentioned on Twitter, Facebook, Google+, YouTube, Instagram, and hundreds of other web pages.
- Cyfe. Cyfe’s starter plan begins at just $29/month, and it includes an intuitive dashboard so you can monitor data in real-time as people mention your selected keywords across a broad range of social media channels. Cyfe can also alert you about other KPIs, such as someone signing up for your newsletter or leaving a comment on your content.
Mention. You can try a limited-time free plan with 3 social accounts, 1 basic alert, and 1,000 mentions to test out the software before upgrading to a paid plan, which starts at $25/month. Mention will give you valuable insights into public sentiments about your organization and allow you to “listen to millions of conversations” across the web.
5. Invest in high-quality content.
People don’t want to interact with a faceless organization. To engage your audience and attract new supporters, you need to create relevant and relatable content that draws people in and gives them reasons to donate to your cause. You can post pictures of your team organizing materials for an upcoming event, share a funny clip from a video conference you recently had, or brag about an “employee of the month” to show your audience the real people behind the logo.
Of course, you should try to reach a balance between personable content and content that highlights your nonprofits expertise and ongoing efforts. Blog posts, infographics, case studies, and webinars are valuable tools that can continuously drive traffic to your website for years if you incorporate relevant keywords and update content when new information comes to light.
If you lack the time to create high-quality landing pages, CTAs, email marketing campaigns, or other essential content for your organization, outsourcing this responsibility might be the key to expanding your online reach. For a flat monthly rate, our professional writers at Content Cucumber can take all your content creation needs off your hands so you can focus on what you’re truly passionate about.