Digital Marketing for Nonprofits

This piece is a set of general guidelines for nonprofit organizations looking to launch a successful digital marketing campaign.

Managing a marketing campaign can be difficult

Running and maintaining a nonprofit is a monumental task; there’s work to be done in managing financials, donors, staffing and more – all while fighting for and supporting a great cause. If that wasn’t difficult enough, donor retention rates have been on a steady decline over the past decade - the Association of Fundraising Professionals estimates that for every 100 donors gained in 2015, 96 were lost. Given these substantial hurdles, how best should nonprofits aim to maximize their efficiency and donations? I believe the answer lies in high impact digital marketing.

Marketing can also be difficult task, for not every nonprofit has the resources and the trained staff to do so. However, the advent of social media allows for impactful and cost effective marketing options. This article will discuss in more detail how best to optimize your digital marketing campaign.

Know your ideal donor

Before any marketing campaign, there must be a target audience and an end goal in mind. For nonprofits, understanding what kinds of people their cause attracts and which profiles donate the most is highly important. This is why the first step in the marketing process is to define the market and understand the ideal donor. The Foundation Group notes that finding the ideal donor is a simple process that consists of a brainstorm session and an analysis of past donors. After defining the ideal donor, the next step is to think how best to establish relationships with and reach those kinds of people.

This is where familiarity with fundraising psychology can be highly beneficial. Understanding the psychology of giving will help optimize donation campaigns. For example, more people tend to donate near the completion of a campaign or when a campaign is attached to an advocacy task. Optimizing your strategy and finding the right market is the best way to start.

Branding Yourself

Branding, especially when it comes to nonprofits, is important on so many fronts. At its core, branding is about establishing a strong presence centered around a mission that will reach and resonate with the intended audience. There are many different ways to brand your organization, such as modernizing your website or adding relevant graphics that effectively relay your organization’s work to potential donors. A particularly important example is to create branded donation pages – they collect five times more donations than those with a generic donation page. A branded donation page means using unique fonts, images, and graphics that match the overall feel of your campaign.

An example of a great donation page – clearly branded yet simplistic, making donating as easy as possible.

Generate Meaningful Content

The best way to maintain and further relationships with donors while engaging with more people is to have valuable content on social media or the organization website. What kind of content is the best? The Berkeley Group, in their research on nonprofits’ social media, found that content showcasing an organization’s work was what often garnered the most likes compared to other posts. In supplement to that, they found that image centered content created the most engagement.

The overall story here is that people want to see what kind of work your organization is doing and the best way to do that is with visual storytelling: use photos and videos, infographics, and whatever else best connects and creates empathy in followers. Other great content is user appreciation – charity: water created specific thank you videos and received lots of positive feedback. Overall, it’s good to understand the benefits of different social media platforms and their use cases.

Track your success

Success may not always come easily so it’s important to know how and what to analyze results with. When it comes to social media, there are often native analytics built in to check statistics on engagement, growth, and more. Salesforce has a great platform for nonprofits of any size and Google analytics is a free, easily integrated program on top of the native metrics. There are countless other accessible software products for nonprofits as well. To measure success, keep track of time/money spent on specific campaigns and what kind of returns they can be associated with – whether that be donors, volunteers, or engagement.

Closing

Marketing for nonprofits can be difficult, but social media has made it more accessible than ever to connect people to specific causes. Establishing a strong online presence will greatly improve any organization’s ability to recruit volunteers and attract committed donors.

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Johnathan Zhou is currently a second year at UC Berkeley majoring in Computer Science. Johnathan is particularly interested in the applications of technology in education and the nonprofit space.

This post belongs to the #DigiViewpoint series of Digital Marketing Today, a social media marketing course taught at UC Berkeley’s Haas School of Business by course instructor and LinkedIn Campus Editor Julian Gamboa. #StudentVoices