Essential Marketing Tactics for Nonprofits

While Nonprofit organizations face specific challenges, marketing ultimately has become an essential tool. With over 1 million registered nonprofit organizations, it’s critical to create a strategy to overcome the obstacles.

How can marketing help your nonprofit?

• Bring awareness to your organization
• Help raise funds
• Can generate recurring donations
• Recruit volunteers
• Promotes and highlights the services

We’ve listed some helpful tips on how to create a nonprofit marketing strategy that can better your organization reach and positively engage your target audience.

Best Time to Post:

• Website
• Keep Donors Up-Dated
• Define Your Marketing Goals
• Tell Your Story
• List of Nonprofit Marketing Strategies

Website

Marketing can be challenging and somewhat time-consuming. Along with phone calls, event marketing, and direct mail, it’s crucial to have an online presence to grow your nonprofit. That’s when having a well designed and fully functional site plays an important role. Create a website that gives the donors a reason to visit and return.

Make it easy for them to learn about your mission statement and your goals. Today, having a robust online presence is an efficient and cost-effective way to create awareness.

• Reach and Capture New Users
• Build Relationships (current and new donors)
• Tell Your Story

Website Tip: Make sure your site is set up for secure online donations, volunteer sign-up, and learn about upcoming events.

Keep Donors Up-Dated

Donors keep your organization up and running. It’s important that they hear from you. Whether it’s a “we met our goal,” or “thank you for your support,” they love to be in the know and thanked.

By not keeping them up with the latest news and not being engaging, they may not contribute in the future. This can be done by sending an email, newsletter, or mailing a postcard as a thank you note occasionally.

Tip: Say thank you often and promote ongoing events.

Know Your Audience

Just like any business, it’s essential to know your audience. Compared to a business audience, with nonprofit, you are more likely to be targeting a variety of groups; volunteers, donors, constituents, and customers.

But, before you get started, make sure you understand your goals. We’ll discuss that more below.

Once completed, the focus should be on the audience, since they are the ones you’ll be focusing your fundraising and marketing efforts towards. This will help determine the content, tone, images, and message for your digital and print marketing initiatives, including flyers, Every Door Direct Mail®, and more.

Define Your Marketing Goals

By defining your goal, you can create a plan of action. Take a few minutes to brainstorm and come up with five ideas about an objective.

This can include coming up with content, social media presence, newsletters, or educational pieces and resources. Focus on the goals that matter most to your organization. The others can probably be built into the overall goal. When you have established your goals, then ask yourself who would like to attract? Who do you want to reach?

Tip: Look at the previous year’s goal to see what worked and what needs improvement.

Tell Your Story

Everyone likes a great story. Storytelling is a powerful tool that gets the message across and keeps people engaged. Explain what makes your organization different? Create a powerful mission statement. Whether it’s emotionally driven or short and sweet, it needs to resonate with your audience.

Describe your mission statement, provide examples of how you have a positive impact on the community. People will want to connect with you and contribute to your cause.

For example, Goodwill Industries of Kentucky, Inc. provides a clear mission statement and focus on how there is a story behind the stores.

Tip: Use real examples and outcomes. Statistics are compelling and can help bring your story to life. For example, if you mention the number of families your organization helped during the year. Highlight the story of the family and how donors were involved.

“While Goodwill is best known for retail stores, they’re not nearly the whole story.”

Nonprofit Marketing Strategies

Now that you have determined your goals, audience, and nonprofit marketing plan, it’s time to execute it. Below are few ways to either keep your volunteers in the know or ways to expand your audience and reach new audiences.

Email Marketing

We briefly talked about making sure you incorporate a user-friendly website that allows visitors to sign up to receive news about your nonprofit. Whether weekly or monthly, an email newsletter is vital when trying to keep donors and volunteers updated. Allow users to easily find and subscribe to your mailing list by submitting their email address. Often, they are located on the homepage and in the main menu.

69% of nonprofit professionals believe Newsletters are an effective content marketing tactic.

Tip: There are a few services to look into, such as SendGrid and MailChimp.

Have a Social Media Presence

Why should you focus on social media? With over 3.2 billion (that’s with a B) social media users, it’s by far one to the more powerful outlets to reach and market individuals. Create an account for the following; Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Linkedin, and Youtube.

Make sure you understand the difference between each social media platform and come up with a marketing strategy. Now, before you get started and post everything imaginable, create a social media calendar. This way, you can plan and execute the content efficiently. Have fun, and make sure you keep your audience involved and engaged.

It can be challenging to come up with some creative ideas. Get started by trying one of the following 37 Social Media Ideas for Nonprofit suggested by Whole Whale.

Benefits of Social Media Marketing:

• Builds Trust
• Drives Users to the Website
• Easily Promote Upcoming Events
• Engage with Followers
• Add Personality to Your Organization

48% of nonprofits believe social media is valuable. via. HubSpot

Benefits of Social Media Marketing:

• Builds Trust
• Drives Users to the Website
• Easily Promote Upcoming Events
• Engage with Followers
• Add Personality to Your Organization

Along with social media, look into adding additional digital marketing strategies for your nonprofit.

Event Marketing

Event marketing is an excellent opportunity not only to get noticed but an effective way to build awareness for your nonprofit. You can quickly connect with supporters, connect with your local community, and raise funds.

39% of event professionals agree that ‘engaging attendees’ is the most crucial element of a live event.

Press Releases

Writing a press release is a great way to promote your nonprofit and upcoming events. Allow the press release to be informative yet engaging. You want to make sure that you tell the story and provide a way for readers to visit your website.

When creating a press release, you’ll want to allow plenty of time for the media to pick it up. By doing so, the journalist will have plenty of time to research, reach out to you and your organization, and publish their piece.

Tip: Try to send the press release about 2 to 3 weeks before your event.

Analyze The Results

Once you have put a plan in place, it’s essential to look at the results. Keep in mind that the marketing strategy probably won’t perform from the get-go. But that’s ok. Whether the results or good or bad, Keeping an eye on analytics and reports can help you decide what to change. Discuss with your team to determine which measurable channels to monitor.

Whether it’s open email rates, social media comments, and shares, website pages views, or volunteer sign-up, knowing your strategy is essential.  As you can see, there can be a variety of statistics to look at.

Nonprofit Printing

Did you know that we provide nonprofit printing? We list some of the benefits of using our nonprofit services.

• Best Prices Purchase your printed materials at the industry’s best wholesale prices.
• Easy Online Ordering Tools Complete order history and file archiving for quick re-orders.
• Priority Support Dedicated, US-based customer support by phone, email, and chat.
• Our Program No catch or obligation, and there are no start-up costs or hidden fees.

Marketing trends are constantly changing and evolving, so use the above tips can help you get started. By doing so, you’ll be able to get your organization in front of the people who matter.

Do you have a nonprofit marketing strategy? Let us know by leaving a comment below.

Additional Nonprofit Blogs:

• 8 Fundraising Tips for Nonprofit Organizations:
  Fundraising is a necessary part of nonprofit work. No matter the size or type of the nonprofit you’re running, these eight essential tips will help you revitalize your fundraising efforts.
• 6 Networking Tips for Nonprofits:
  Are you looking to spread the word about your nonprofit? We’ve listed six key networking strategies that can help you build connections and spread the word about your cause.