It’s no secret that digital marketing for nonprofits is insanely powerful. However, it’s not enough to post on social media sporadically or send generic emails to constituents. The online space is competitive, so you need a holistic strategy that defines your objectives and how you’ll reach them. Otherwise, your efforts might be disjointed and not contribute much to strengthening your digital presence.
While each nonprofit’s marketing strategy will vary, there are some common steps to craft a plan that works for your cause. Let’s walk through those now!
Define Your Marketing Goals
Laying out clear goals will help you craft the right messages to the right audiences who will get you there. Every digital communication you send will get you one step closer to reaching whatever goals you set, so spend plenty of time hashing your objectives out with your marketing team.
Generally speaking, you might want to boost awareness for corporate giving, increase membership renewals, or increase sales for your nonprofit’s services. Think through how these goals correlate with your overall mission and how your digital marketing efforts can support that. Let’s take a look at a specific example of a bad goal vs. a SMART goal:
Goal 1) Grow our email subscriber list and use that channel to earn more sales.
Goal 2) Add 1,000 more subscribers to our email list and use that channel to raise an additional $50,000 in sales revenue by the end of the year.
Notice how the second goal is much clearer, defines how your nonprofit’s digital marketing can support your mission, and gives you solid metrics to work toward. That’s because it’s what we call a SMART goal.
A Purpose-Driven Framework
As a marketer, you might already be aware of this approach. The SMART goal framework allows you to set clear goals that anyone on your team can understand. The acronym stands for:
- Specific: Be as clear as possible when setting nonprofit digital marketing goals. That way, everyone will know what you’re attempting to achieve! Returning to our example above, we’re clearly aiming to raise more money specifically through matching gifts by leveraging email rather than all channels.
- Measurable: Your goal should have clear metrics attached to measure performance. In our example, the key performance indicators are 1,000 more subscribers and $5,000 in matching gift revenue sourced from that channel.
- Attainable: Your goal should be reasonable yet still aspirational. You want to challenge your team without deterring them. For example, let’s say that you grew your email list by 800 subscribers and sourced $4,250 in matching gifts through that channel last year. That makes your new goal attainable yet aspirational!
- Relevant: Your nonprofit’s digital marketing goal should play into your overall mission. In the example above, it’s clear that growing email subscriptions will provide valuable fundraising dollars.
- Time-Based: Your goal needs a clear deadline to establish a sense of urgency! In the example above, we made the goal time-based by setting the end of the year as the deadline.
By following this framework, you can set objectives that make sense for your organization, make the most of digital outlets, and push your mission forward in meaningful ways.
Choose The Right Nonprofit Digital Marketing Platforms
There’s no shortage of nonprofit digital marketing platforms that you can leverage. Whether you’re trying to reach tech-savvy teens or email-reliant boomers, there’s a platform for reaching every segment of your audience.
Let’s walk through some of the most common ones:
- Search ads. Paid advertising is a fantastic way to promote your cause. Plus, many paid digital marketing platforms offer free or discounted rates for nonprofits. For example, the Google Ad Grants program offers $10,000 in free monthly funding to eligible nonprofit organizations that apply. Then, these nonprofits can spend that funding to create ads promoting their website at the top of Google search results pages for mission-specific keywords. Using search ads like Google Ads, you can promote anything from donation forms to educational content, bringing more visibility to your cause on search engines.
- SEO. In contrast to paid search ads, nonprofits can also drive website traffic with organic search results through search engine optimization, also known as SEO. Ranking number one among organic search results is a free way to attract new visitors to your website, which can be especially beneficial for nonprofits that depend on revenue-generating sales. However, to rank highly, nonprofits need to create content likely to get picked up and seen as valuable by search engines, which is where SEO comes in. SEO is the process of creating and adapting your content to be search engine friendly to boost online traffic.
- Social media. Social channels, such as Meta and LinkedIn, can be good channels for nonprofit digital marketing. Regularly post updates, engage in visual storytelling, and expand your audience by encouraging social sharing. Platforms like Facebook even offer unique fundraising features for supporters to drive donations on your behalf.
- Email. As this nonprofit fundraising statistics page explains, email-based marketing and promotional campaigns generate around 28% of all online nonprofit revenue. That makes email an essential channel for your nonprofit’s digital marketing strategy! Create eye-catching subject lines, send a regular newsletter, and promote relevant opportunities to each supporter group using your email marketing platform’s segmentation tools.
- Texting. SMS marketing has an incredible open rate of over 98%, compared to just 20% for emails. By leveraging texting in your online outreach, you can send succinct updates directly to supporters’ phones and tap into fundraising tools like text-to-give. While a great way to connect with supporters, this nonprofit digital marketing channel isn’t for every organization! Organizations that find this strategy most useful are those with younger audiences.
These platforms will serve as the foundation of your organization’s outreach. When getting started, think through your audience for each platform carefully. Then, craft messages that support your objectives and play to each channel’s strengths.
For example, if you’re aiming to boost awareness for your animal rescue’s adoption services, you might use search ads to amplify your adoption page, social media to share a testimonial video about an animal that found its forever home, email to promote an upcoming adoption event, and text to share a quick announcement and a link to your adoption page.
Pro tip: Use a mixture of platforms to connect with supporters. Multichannel marketing allows you to expand the number of people you’re able to reach, bringing more exposure to your cause online.
Pushing Your Digital Marketing Campaign Live
At this point, you’ll need to write your digital marketing messages and publish them on relevant platforms.
There’s a lot of competition online, so your team needs to do everything it can to stand out online. Get creative in how you present your messages. Lean into storytelling tactics, use visual techniques like video and images, and offer different engagement opportunities to garner as much attention as possible.
Remember, digital marketing for nonprofits offers two-way communication opportunities, so pay attention to people’s interactions with your posts and messages. You might like their comments, respond to their emails, or show them you appreciate their interactions with your team in some other way.
Finally, you’ll want to create a schedule for each platform, so your team creates a pattern of consistency. That way, supporters will regularly see your nonprofit’s updates in their inboxes and newsfeeds, keeping your cause top of mind.
