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4. Create and Distribute Your Content
Next, it’s time to create content centered on your message and share it with your audience.
In some cases, this can be relatively straightforward. You might craft a marketing email or a new series of posts. In other cases, creating your content can be much more complicated, for example, if you’re going to create a podcast or a promotional video.
Once you know what content you plan to create, you can think about the best ways to share it. Tools like a content studio can be useful to keep your brand agile. Based on what you know about your audience, consider what you will distribute and through which channels. And using an all-in-one Marketing Platform, you can do much of this work from one place.
Again, it’s best to start simple. You’ll learn from each channel and campaign what works best, so you can change as you grow. Be realistic about the bandwidth you have to create and share content, and focus on what works.
5. Track, Measure, and Refine Your Initiatives
Finally, devise a plan to track everything you do and measure the results based on your objectives and budget. You’ll need a clear idea of the performance of your initiatives to know whether your strategy is working or not. If your results don’t match your goal, you may need to adjust your strategy.
Whether it’s a sign-up form, marketing emails, or social media content, there are several analytics tools that can help you gather data and measure performance.
Measuring results is a vital part of the process that helps you ensure your goals are achievable and your strategies are consistent with your main objectives. Both qualitative and quantitative data are very valuable for devising the best possible marketing strategy. Examine your data carefully, but also make sure you track the feedback you receive from your audience in their responses to emails, social posts, and surveys.
Digital Marketing Strategies for Non-Profit Organizations
Digital marketing offers many different ways to reach your audience, all of which can be hugely beneficial for non-profit organizations. To decide what’s best for your organization, it’s helpful to know more about the advantages of each tactic and how to use it according to your needs.
With the many options at your disposal, it can be tempting to take on more than you can manage. It’s important to choose the best strategy for your organization, your objectives, and your capabilities. You’ll find it much more useful to do excellent work to engage your audience on a few platforms than to achieve scattered content and irregular interaction on many different platforms.
Content Marketing
Content marketing involves creating digital content and resources, such as posts and technical documentation, and sharing that content with your audience. Your content should be unique and interesting, but there are some basic qualities that good content has in common. High-quality content should be:
- Clear: Your message should be obvious. The audience should not feel that they have to decipher or search for important information.
- Clean: Your content should be well presented and thoroughly reviewed. It should not include errors or appear sloppy.
- Consistent: You don’t want to present contradictory information or messages to your audience, and your tone should be uniform across all channels. You should also post regularly.
- Relevant: Your content should not stray too far from your main objectives, and it should not appear outdated.
4. User-Friendly Content Creation and Distribution
Trying to find the information or resources they want should not be a futile search for your audience. Ensure that resources and tools are intuitively easy to use.
Infographics are a powerful content marketing resource that you can use to illustrate why your cause is important to your target audience. Providing information in the fastest and most digestible format possible is practical and effective. This is especially true for important but complex data. There are some good general rules to follow when it comes to using infographics in your online marketing strategy:
- An infographic should be created based on need, not just for the sake of creating it. If you find that you’re looking for something to make an infographic about, you probably shouldn’t do it.
- Think of an infographic as a friendly face of data. An infographic should weave numbers into an engaging and accessible story, rather than spewing data in image format.
- Cite your sources and avoid tabloid-style graphics. You should make it clear that the information presented is reliable and accessible.
- Make sure it’s readable. The information should be presented as clearly and simply as possible.
5. CRM Marketing
CRM (Customer Relationship Management) is the management of interactions between an organization and its audience. CRM marketing software streamlines these interactions by automating many activities related to customer relationship management, such as lead generation and consumer data collection. This is especially useful for non-profit organizations facing irregular staffing. Automating customer relationship tasks removes some of the burden from actual staff members and allows for long-term consistency with little training.
Email Marketing
Email marketing is a great way to generate leads and keep your audience up-to-date with your organization’s news. Email marketing is especially useful for non-profit organizations because it’s very easy to automate, which is often managed through CRM software.
However, while email marketing can be a great tool, it should be used with care. Send emails with information and initiatives that can truly capture your audience’s interest, don’t spam them with every little initiative or company update. And as with other facets of digital marketing, it’s important to constantly measure the success of your email marketing campaign against your objectives.
Digital Ads
It may seem out of place for an organization that is not looking to profit from its marketing initiatives, but digital advertising and non-profit organizations go hand in hand. This channel is effective for raising awareness and fundraising.
Ads can be attached to your content in many ways. You can create an ad for social media platforms like Facebook and Instagram, or even on a search engine itself. However, it’s important to research which platforms or search engines do or do not offer advertising, and what their rules are for doing so. For example, many platforms will not monetize content that is considered “explicit”. In addition to funding, online ads are also useful for getting your brand and message known.
Social Media Marketing
Social media marketing is an absolute necessity for any organization. Given that social media is widely used, it’s as important for your non-profit organization to have social media profiles as it is to have a fully functioning website.
Effective Social Media Strategies
The following strategies can help make your social media presence as effective as possible:
- Choose Your Platform Wisely: Focus on the platforms that best suit your message, content, and audience. For example, Twitter is a better option than Instagram for sharing a post, because Instagram does not allow links.
- Know Your Audience: It’s important that you develop a relationship with your audience and experiment with what type of content attracts them.
- Post Regularly: Regular posting is vital for a social media marketing campaign to succeed. This can be difficult without a dedicated social media manager, but platforms that allow you to schedule posts in advance and reuse content can help you get the job done.
- Post at Strategic Times: Find out when your target audience is most likely to be online, and post when a traffic peak is expected.
- Measure Your Progress: Constantly measure your progress against your objectives, and use this information to improve your strategy over time.
Video Marketing
Videos are a simple and effective medium to communicate with your audience. They offer a compelling way to make your audience feel more engaged and establish your tone in a way that other mediums often can’t match. Although creating a video can be expensive, it doesn’t have to be.
It’s important to put all the effort you can into video production but, ultimately, telling your story is much more important. Speak sincerely and passionately about your objectives, and seek a narrative form to reinforce the cause you support. This is the heart of a video marketing campaign for a non-profit organization.
Web Workshops
Like video marketing, webinars are a useful way to connect with your audience and educate them about the work you do and why you do it. Webinar software like Google Hangouts allows your audience to interact in conference calls with your organization in real time. Webinars are extremely useful for engaging your audience and organizing volunteer initiatives, without the huge cost of publishing materials or renting space for a physical conference. For example, if you’re planning to hold a bake sale to raise funds soon, you can organize a webinar in advance to teach volunteers how to organize the event.
Website
It’s important to ensure that your website matches your marketing message, is easy to navigate and use for your customers, and is optimized for search engines. Websites are incredibly valuable (arguably indispensable) resources for non-profit organizations. It’s essential to have an obvious central hub that acts as an information resource about your organization and a point of contact with it. Your audience needs to know what you do and where they can find you.
Looking to Amplify Your Channels? Seek a Partnership
Partnerships can be a great way to compensate for a lack of resources. A partnership is an operation in which 2 or more companies share resources to boost their online marketing presence. In some cases, a partnership may simply involve cross-promotion of the other party’s products or services. There are some simple ways to ensure that your partnership works to the benefit of all involved:
- Choose a company whose products or services complement yours. Ideally, your marketing content should go hand in hand to have full effect (although this depends on the type of partnership).
- Make sure your organization gets its fair share of promotion. This partnership should be symbiotic, not parasitic. For this reason, it’s also important to track the impact of the partnership on your key performance indicators (KPIs).
Most Frequently Asked Questions
Why do Non-Profit Organizations Struggle with Marketing?
Creating a marketing plan for a non-profit organization can be challenging because many of these organizations simply do not have access to the necessary resources for solid marketing. Reduced marketing budgets can make it difficult to spend enough on digital marketing, and many non-profit organizations lack a good internal marketing team. These two obstacles can hinder reaching your audience, making it more difficult to generate potential clients.
Non-profit marketing is also complicated because it is intrinsically more difficult to advertise a cause than a product. Non-profit organizations are often formed, at least in part, by volunteers, so they often lack the experience and knowledge necessary to carry out effective digital marketing campaigns. In addition, people have many things to do, which means they do not always have time to keep up with your non-profit organization and its cause.
What is the Best Marketing Strategy for Non-Profit Organizations?
As with any digital marketing campaign, the best strategy depends on several factors. What can be an effective marketing strategy for one non-profit organization may be ineffective for another. You have to take into account your organization, what you want from your marketing campaign, and who your audience is.
If you are trying to create the best non-profit digital marketing strategy, you should start by incorporating various types of marketing into your strategy. Stick with what works and leave behind what doesn’t; in the end, you will have an effective marketing strategy tailored to your non-profit organization.
How do Non-Profit Organizations Sell on Social Media?
Many non-profit organizations use social media to reach a wide audience and raise awareness of their cause. Social media can be a good way to raise awareness and create a community that cares about a cause.
When it comes to social media marketing, the key is to be upfront about your non-profit status. You should register your social media accounts as non-profit and add a donation button on platforms that allow it. Also, take your time to create a content calendar; this way, you will have optimized content to post regularly.
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