Your Ultimate Guide To Non-Profit Marketing
Having a marketing strategy for your nonprofit is essential to help expand the reach of your mission by increasing public awareness and recruiting more donors to your cause. However, most nonprofits operate with a small team and a tight budget.
In this guide, we take a comprehensive look at how to create and execute an effective non-profit marketing strategy. Read on to amplify your cause, attract more volunteers, and solicit donations.
Creating a Marketing Plan for Your Non-profit
Nonprofits depend on effective marketing to increase engagement and awareness without depleting their limited resources. You need a systematic approach that aligns with your goals. Having a marketing plan is, therefore, the first consideration. Below is a guide to help you design a suitable marketing plan for your non-profit organization:
Start by Defining What You Want to Achieve
A marketing strategy helps you achieve organizational goals. Therefore, you need to start by clearly defining your big-picture and short-term goals. Doing this will help you come up with an actionable plan that advances your cause.
Ensure you consider the size of your team when defining marketing goals. It will also help to determine your budget to ensure you have a clear sense of the resources you have available. Start small and slowly expand your marketing efforts.
Understand Your Audience
Non-profit marketing often targets a wider audience of stakeholders. For starters, you need to find volunteers, constituents, donors and even government partners. Understanding and defining each of these audiences will ensure you have an effective marketing plan.
For instance, an email targeting volunteers has a different call to action than one targeting donors. Therefore, you need to segment your audience into different groups. Separating contacts will help you push the right message to a suitable audience.
Draft Your Key Messages
The next logical step after defining your goals and understanding your audience is drafting your key messages. You need a catchy message that encompasses what you need your audiences to remember and share. Having these key messages helps your organization stay aligned while simplifying your marketing.
Let's say you are drafting a message for a children's home. Below is an example of how to craft a suitable message for different audiences:
The key message: We protect children who can't live with their families by providing adoption, education, and fostering services.
For foster parents: By adopting a child in need, you help safeguard the wellbeing of children in our community.
For volunteers: We protect children unable to live with their families by providing round-the-clock care and advocacy.
For donors: You can help safeguard the wellbeing of children without families by donating to support our children's home.
All the above messages serve a similar purpose. However, the framing of the message differs depending on the audience. Therefore, take your time to ensure the message effectively communicates your organizational purposes and needs.
Implementing Marketing Strategies That Align With Your Goals
Most marketers make the mistake of jumping to this step before completing the first three. Therefore, they end up with a marketing strategy that doesn't convert effectively. Understand that marketing is much more than creating blog posts, events, and advertisements.
Defining your goals, key messages and audience lets you determine appropriate marketing tactics. This upfront planning becomes a guide on how you are going to say what you need to say and what communications channels will be the most effective to reach your audience. You will find it easier to define your marketing mix from the many options you have – social media, email, events, and more. However, ensure you plan efficiently before and after executing your marketing tactics.
Analyze Performance
It will take some time to start seeing substantial benefits from your marketing strategy. Therefore, a little bit of patience is always appropriate. Routine analysis and reporting will also help you determine what is working and what needs changing.
Keep your original goals in mind when tracking your performance indicators. Only make adjustments when the marketing performance doesn't align with your organizational goals. Use tools such as Google Analytics to help you analyze performance.
Executing For Results
Although creating a marketing plan is vital for your non-profit, you need to learn how to execute it for results. For starters, most marketing strategies for non-profit will be coordinated. Releasing an email invite will probably come at the same time as sharing a blog about the event on social media. Below we take an in-depth look at how you can slowly introduce different marketing efforts without overwhelming your small team or limited resources.
Non-profit Video Marketing
Today's consumer is more receptive to video content than ever. Therefore, you need to create videos that motivate the audience to support your organization. Equally, 92% of consumers are more likely to share mobile videos with others. Non-profit video marketing is excellent because it is visual, educational, personal, and interesting.
Non-profit Email Marketing
Email marketing is powerful because it gives you a personal touch and is low cost. Thus, it is an effective marketing strategy for nonprofits. Below are a few ways you can use email marketing to effectively reach your audience:
Send weekly updates about your industry and organizational needs.
Send monthly emails outlining your donation needs.
Thank new subscribers for their support and educate them on your goals.
Do not forget to automate as much as possible.
Non-profit Event Marketing
If you are looking to increase awareness and connect with the larger community, event marketing is an excellent strategy. You can gain a lot of support and connections, which can translate to raising more funds. Therefore, make it a habit to organize events for your non-profit organization.
Non-profit Content Marketing
Blogging is one form of content marketing that is an excellent way to educate your readers and followers about your cause. Having great content also helps bring new subscribers, donors, and visitors to your organization. Ensure you repurpose the content for different types of media, thus saving time and resources.
Non-profit Social Media Marketing
Social media marketing is a low-budget option that is suitable for all non-profit organizations. You also get the chance to showcase your brand personality. Use social media to boost brand awareness, fundraise, share news about your cause, and recruit volunteers.
Non-profit Website
Your website is an online home that includes critical information. It shows visitors how they can help or participate. You also get to showcase what you stand for and why the audience needs to care. Finally, a website hosts marketing assets such as event information, blogs, social media handles, and so much more.