5 Marketing Tips For Nonprofit Organizations

Are you a nonprofit organization that's looking to push your message out to more people? Are you having a hard time finding the ideal target market or getting in front of them? If so, then you need to learn all that you can about nonprofit marketing.

Doing so can help you with your entire online communications strategy. Your digital marketing can single-handedly grow your list of donors and volunteers. You need only dedicate the time to refining your approach.

See below for an in-depth guide with several tips on nonprofit marketing that your organization can use to gain significant ground. It never hurts to find marketing experts to team up with!

1. Refine Your Target Market

In our introduction, we referred to you finding your "target market." Some of you out there might not be familiar with the term.

A target market is simply the group of people that you're looking to connect with your nonprofit. In other words, they're the ones that would actually be interested in your message, resonate with your cause, offer donations, volunteer at your events, grow your community, and so forth.

Does that sound overwhelming? It shouldn't be! One helpful exercise you could use is by creating buyer personas. These are imaginary "donors" that you make up to help you define and understand your target market. 

For example, let's say that you have a nonprofit for little girls who suffer from Rett Syndrome. One of your buyer personas might be a lady named "Kate".

Kate is between the ages of 30 to 50 years old and is very involved in her kids' lives. She uses Facebook and Instagram to keep tabs on her children's social media activity, as well as connect with her friends.

She has a niece who suffers from Rett Syndrome, which would make her and her family supportive of your nonprofit's initiatives. If you found a way to connect with her on Facebook and/or Instagram, you could have a whole team of "Kates" joining your cause.

2. Start a Blog

We know what you're thinking: "I'd love to increase my marketing strategy's effectiveness, but I can't afford to spend much more on it!"

You don't have to open up your organization's budget for every form of marketing. In fact, there are some marketing methods, such as Search Engine Optimization (SEO) that are completely free!

For those of you that are unfamiliar, search engine optimization is a marketing tactic where you focus on making your website more appealing for search engines—such as Google.

The search engine crawls your site to check for mobile friendliness, loading speed, and (most importantly) fresh content. They grade the content on your page by its keyword usage, backlinking, and information.

Starting a blog can help you cater your site to Google's preference. You can use your blog to discuss common issues and questions that donors/volunteers would have regarding your nonprofit's cause. Then, you can answer those questions, making you appear like the industry expert.

All the while, your SEO ranks will improve, thus giving your nonprofit organization a passive form of marketing that will send more donors your way.

3. Book a Marketing Service

For-profit companies aren't the only ones that have access to marketing agencies. If you feel like marketing isn't in your forte, then find an expert service to team up with!

Sometimes you just need a bit of help. If you can get just a little bit of direction with your digital marketing plan, then you can put in the work to make it effective. If that's the case, then you'll love our marketing and communications advisory services.

We can help your organization's brand in two ways. First, we'll assess the current marketing strategies you have in place and provide some insight on what works and what doesn't. We can also help you learn about how to assess its progress for yourself.

Lastly, we'll give you a few online communications strategies that you can use to reach those target buyers we discussed previously.

4. Focus on Call to Actions

Listen, it doesn't matter what type of marketing campaigns you're running; if they don't include a strong call to action, they won't convert. It doesn't matter how much money you throw at them.

Whatever your marketing strategy is, make sure you're putting a stiff call to action. Give your site visitor, for example, actionable next steps to take. If you want them to donate, then tell them to donate and provide a link where they can do so. 

Contrary to popular belief, people want to be told what to do. They want to help your cause, but they need to know how you need help.

5. Know Where the Activity is

Everyone has their own preferences when it comes to social media platforms. However, for the sake of your nonprofit marketing plan, you need to be where social media users are active.

Facebook, YouTube, and Instagram have the most active users by far. If you're able to gear your marketing plan towards any of those social media platforms (you don't need to engage in them all), then you'll see higher conversions.

Remember, your nonprofit's focus should be on building community. Where better to do that than through your social media channels?

Boost Your Nonprofit Marketing Today

Now that you have seen an in-depth guide with tips on how to boost your nonprofit marketing initiatives, be sure to use this information to your advantage.

Take the time to read this blog for more information on why small and medium-sized nonprofits fail to grow.