Copyright © 2024 Olumide Peter Awujoola
Plan 2024
Digital marketing for foundations is an indispensable tool for organizations that have a social impact. In some countries, like the United States, non-profit entities routinely incorporate marketing actions into their communication strategies.
However, in Latin America, there is still some resistance when it comes to hiring the services of a digital marketing agency to carry out these tasks, or even when thinking about these strategies to carry them out on their own.
In this article, we want to tell you about some marketing strategies for NGOs and foundations that every organization should carry out to position its image and thus achieve greater citizen participation in their solidarity proposals.
The Importance of a Marketing Strategy for Foundations and NGOs
Given the need to capture donations digitally, NGOs and foundations must develop digital marketing actions that include:
- SEO Positioning
- Adwords Campaign for Foundations
- User Experience (UX)
- Web Analytics
- Social Networks for Foundations
- Email Marketing
However, the lack of resources and knowledge about marketing means that many organizations, especially the smaller ones, cannot position themselves enough in search engines or make their brand stand out.
In addition, when a foundation decides to hire the digital marketing service from an agency, it fears encountering a lack of empathy or a lack of synchronization of marketing professionals, even though this can be totally false.
This belief is due to the fact that many digital marketing agencies specialize in promoting high-consumption products and services, but it is not so common for them to work with NGOs, and therefore, it is believed that they lack the appropriate sensitivity to empathize with the reality of a foundation.
The digital marketing actions that foundations develop can include various objectives, such as: capturing leads, gaining brand positioning, converting prospects into donors, capturing volunteers, retaining their members and sponsoring brands, among others.
For all this, developing a digital marketing strategy is a complex task that requires a lot of knowledge in areas such as copywriting, graphic design, web development, SEO, SEM, or social media.
Steps to Design a Digital Marketing Plan for Foundations
If you want to successfully implement, and with the help of an agency, a digital marketing plan for foundations and NGOs, you should bear in mind that there are several steps to follow. A good plan should combine creativity, effectiveness, technological tools, and technical knowledge.
To start, you should bear in mind that everything you do, you must do thinking about two aspects: your audience and Google, which is the one that will finally position your content. So, where to start? We give you the steps that every marketing plan should have.
Marketing Analysis for Foundations
The first step is to thoroughly understand your foundation and know its current brand positioning on the Internet. To perform a complete analysis, the following steps are necessary:
- Thoroughly analyze your foundation
- Conduct an audit of the website and social media
- Use a SWOT matrix to detect strengths, opportunities, weaknesses, and threats
Design a Marketing Plan for Foundations
The second stage focuses on the design of your digital marketing plan, it’s time to think strategically. To design this plan, you should follow the following steps:
- Optimize your digital ecosystem
- Create your Buyer Personas
- Define the keywords
- Set goals
- Write a value proposition
- Define your content strategy
- Set your Editorial calendar
Create Your Content
Now it’s time to design your communication pieces: each one must pursue a specific objective and must be part of the communication plan integrally. Your content can be of very diverse formats: blog articles, audiovisual content, infographics, animated GIFs, images, ebooks, podcasts, downloadable resources from the website, etc. Plan your production deadlines to respect the dates you previously set in your editorial calendar. To create your content you should consider several items:
- Copywriting
- Graphic Design
- Web Design for foundations
- Audiovisual production
Spread Your Content
No matter how incredible your content is, your buyer persona will not be able to see them if you do not publish them. So, it’s time for the dissemination stage. This is a very important phase and must combine SEO, SEM, and social media to reach your audiences.
How to do it?
Publish and spread the content Your content should be guided by the editorial calendar you created in the previous stage. So, follow the days and hours you determined to make the publications to the letter. Plan your blog and social networks very well: Facebook, Twitter, Linkedin, Instagram, etc.
Implement SEO strategies SEO positioning is a set of techniques that help you place your content in the top positions of Google. By following certain guidelines and creating quality content, you can position your website in the top positions of search engines.
Create paid campaigns Google Ads for foundations can be the solution to all the concerns of your organization! Investing in paid campaigns on platforms like Google Adwords, Facebook Ads, or Twitter Ads can be a great investment to bring your content closer to future possible volunteers or donors.
You can create campaigns for very little money and with great effectiveness. There is even a Google program called AdGrants special for foundations that request it and that meet certain requirements.
Paid campaigns allow you to overcome the limits of your community and reach an audience made up of strangers that is much larger. For this, you must choose your landing pages very well and optimize them, in addition to making sure they have a very visible CTA, or call to action, and a well-designed form.
Measure the Results
It is essential that you analyze the results of your publications. It is the only way to check if your strategy is giving results or not. You can use tools like Google Analytics, Facebook Insights, YouTube Analytics, or Twitter Analytics. Don’t forget the KPIs you determined in the first phase, when you did the audit of your website and your social networks.
Comparing Before and After Your New Digital Marketing Plan for Foundations
Now is the time to compare the before and after of your new digital marketing plan for foundations. Also, it’s time to compare the results with the goals you set at the beginning. In conclusion:
- Analyze the results of your actions
- Implement improvements and adjustments in the marketing plan
- Use reports and KPIs to guide you
Reasons to Hire Digital Marketing Services for Foundations
If there are still doubts about why hiring a marketing agency is a good option to carry out that marketing plan we mentioned earlier, keep reading. Here are some of the advantages you will get by hiring a digital marketing specialist for foundations:
- Better analysis from an external perspective: Hiring a digital marketing specialist for foundations will give you an external look at your organization, aspects to improve, opportunities for improvement, and advantages to promote.
- Professionalism: A specialist is constantly learning and updating on relevant digital marketing topics. Delegating this task to a professional will allow you to focus on other NGO topics.
- Optimize resources and time: Increase the productivity of your NGO by making better use of resources.
- Return on investment: You will get a higher ROI by working with a team specialized in digital marketing consulting.
Choosing the Right Channels
Unlike traditional, digital marketing allows reaching a large number of potential users. The way marketing works is extremely different since the advent of the internet. Traditional marketing focuses on a unilateral campaign with centralized content production, whose objective was the bombardment of the message and feedback was measured in sales.
However, the success of carrying out a digital marketing plan for foundations largely depends on the communication channels chosen for the campaigns. Therefore, it is key to understand and know in depth the preferred media of the target audience of the foundation, to direct all scheduled actions there.
So, recognizing the interaction, attitude, and frequent channels of our audience is what will make a digital marketing campaign for foundations successful, achieving that more people visit the institutional website or networks and thus achieve the recruitment or loyalty of new users, volunteers, and donors.
© 2024 Olumide Peter Awujoola
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