Marketing of non-profit organizations is not as easy as other businesses; rather they have to face difficulties and also, profit-oriented organizations are more known in the current market. However, the best part is that marketing is not only limited to the companies looking for profit and revenue rather meaningful marketing efforts can also improve the visibility of a non-profit. By true marketing strategy, you can share your story, tell how people are engaged with you and endorse your mission, and inspire others to become a donor for you.
Every non-profit organization has its mission or noble cause for which they cannot help everyone just by their services. They have to put in good marketing efforts to achieve this goal. By promotional methods, you can easily spread words, create awareness among people about how their firm is helping people, and this is how you can gain their attention. Like profit-businesses, non-profit also follow the same marketing approach; they also understand their audience first and then create content to grab their attention and boost engagement.
Do you think that updating the website and calculating the annual benefit is enough for you? If your answer is ‘yes,’ you are overlooking many good opportunities. To grow and make a non-profit successful, it is important to follow a consistent marketing effort. There is no rocket science in learning the marketing ideas of non-profit firms. It’s very simple – understanding your cause, understanding the targeted group, preparing marketing materials, using these materials to get engaged with people, telling success stories, utilizing newsletters to send your voice, maintain a website, educating people about who you are and how you help people with you noble cause, etc.
13 Sharp Ways to Market Your NonProfit Organization
Since everything has come online in the modern market, non-profits also need to be at the same pace. This is the prime reason behind the marketing and promotion of a non-profit firm. The only difference is their way of presentation is different; they appreciate people more than the organization. Let’s discuss some marketing strategies that will help you to promote or market your online non-profit organization:
Figure out your target audience
Understanding your audience as a non-profit organization helps you get a clear picture of what more people are expecting from you as service or in other words, they help you improve your services. By providing great services, you can inspire people to tell about your organization to others, and thus, they become the word of mouth that helps in marketing for a non-profit organization. By improving the business processes, these non-profit techniques reinforce their brand image, too, that increases the probability of fund-raising. Means, analyzing the target people, and changing the services that can serve them best – together, make a building-block of promoting a start-up non-profit organization as well as the established ones.
The next big question is how to find out the target audience? If I talk about the simplest method, installing Google Analytics to your website is the best way to find out the audience interested in your services. Also, with this analytics information, one can easily prepare a structure of user behavior for the website. Always know one thing, the more good you’re to your target group, the more is the chance they will promote your organization.
Understand what your organization is and set measures
Before marketing, it is important to know who you are and what your organization’s objective is. For which good reason you have built the company and how it is going to fulfill audience issues. I know this may seem a bit silly to you but, trust me, without having clarity of these small things, you can never promote your non-profit firm. Also, think from the perspective of others because you know what your non-profit is all about, but others have no idea about it. Always engage with people in a way that they don’t know anything.
Make a habit of setting up targets; otherwise, you would never know what is the impact of marketing on your organization. When you decide a goal, you calculate what you have achieved and what is still pending. These goals may include donations, email registrations, new members or donors, the number of people being served every year, etc. Once you decide a target, you work with a team strategically and thus, move towards the success.
Keep your Marketing Material always ready
To increase the visibility of your brand image, do these things:
- Send brochures to a targeted group
- Send a thank-you greeting quote to your members
- Participate in events and showcase table presence for your organization
In all of the above situations, you need to have a marketing material for communication. Hence, it is important to keep these materials ready beforehand. In this material, try to cover everything from the objective, services, values of the firm to how people can be the part of this organization.
From a start-up non-profit organization to a well-established one, every company has a different type of content creation team. For example – a big non-profit company may have a dedicated to -house team to create such material while a small or medium-size non-profit company approach to a small creative agency or a freelancer to get this job done.
Take benefits of using Social Media
The logic of social media in the modern online world is that the more a non-profit makes a presence on the various social platform, the more users it gets engaged with. But play, smartly! Keep eyes on which type of audience spends the most time on what platforms. Like, Instagram is the first choice of teenagers, while middle-aged groups people are found engaged on Facebook. On the other side, Twitter shows a mix of these two.
Managing social media creatively and being consistent in it is a critical job for non-profit firms. All the social posts should be dynamic and appealing that can drag the attention of the audience; all the communication channels for target people should always be opened on these platforms. Be interactive with people, and keep them engaged. Make sure; you have enough people to manage these social channels since they are the only responsible for Social Media Optimization (SMO) for non-profit organizations.
Build a responsive website
In the modern digital world, an organization without a responsive website can’t survive. A fully responsive is the one that visitors can navigate easily and access from any device such as laptops, phones, tablets, etc. Also, such a website reflects high-quality images with perfect resolution.
Once you are done with the web design of a non-profit organization, next move onto the information or content that you are planning to fill in your website. Make sure; the website data should be informative and useful for people so that they can become a donor. Run multiple campaigns for fundraising, create a dedicated landing page to keep the audience engaged.
To conclude the impact of all marketing and online efforts, a website is a right place where you can monitor everything. Also, people who are not aware of your non-profit company can understand your objective, other people who are already involved with you, etc.
Data points like a cause of non-profit, people’s involvement make others sympathize for you and inspires them for contribution.
Prepare your Database
Now you have all the necessary marketing material, but the question is where are you going to use it? Of course, you need to have a database where you maintain the list of all existing customers and prospects.
Chances are less that people would get inspired by you in one go; rather a regular communication is the only key to convince people to become the part of your non-profit.
Once your database is ready, you can classify the audience basis their behavior. This helps in making an effective strategy of email marketing for a non-profit organization. Also, it helps to create a cost-effective way of marketing.
Showcase your success graph
Keep your existing audience updated with all small and big success. Every time, you achieve something new, tell it to everyone. Doing so will help you in member retention, new audience attraction, and media coverage. Don’t forget to mention donors or other partners that have understood non-profit cause and helped you along your way, praise them, and show gratitude for their contribution. This would inspire other people to be part of your non-profit.
Don’t hesitate to show all the marketing results like how you are helping others and the ways that aided you to win people’s trust etc. Tell about the campaigns, their significant impact, and how it could be used to convince people.
Make partnership with other organizations
It’s better to put a combined effort than solo when it comes to marketing for a non-profit organization. This strategy helps you to reach a wider audience, create good word of mouth, and improves visibility of your cause among people.
Always look for other famous non-profit firms having the same cause or the famous companies who understand your cause and appreciate it. Not only, it does help in your marketing effort, but you can also utilize their resources and create an event for fundraising or charity.
Don’t miss out on media coverage because when you work for a cause that too with famous non-profits, media wants to know about you. Try to send press releases from time to time that mentions everything regarding your efforts and success.
Spread your story everywhere
Think about the mission of your non-profit firm. What is the cause? This mission may be short & sweet or emotional or straightforward. Know one thing always; people believe more in stories because when they see that people are getting benefits from an organization, they psychologically trust that it would be true.
Whenever you describe a story, don’t just mention about organization rather talk more about people, their involvement, their contribution to meet the goal of the cause that your non-profit is based on, why I’m saying so because being around everything related to the company makes the story marketing oriented and it doesn’t inspire most people.
The best way to play is ‘mentioning the truth.’ An honest story is powerful than any writeup as people can easily connect and understand the mission of your company, and go step ahead to be the part of your non-profit.
Hire a volunteer group to promote your social content
Your first job is to create interesting and engaging social posts such as tweets, stories, and visuals. And, the next most important step is to garner a group of people who too find your posts mind-boggling and want to share them with their networks.
You just need to have passionate people who love to share good posts, but, once you have such people in your team, everything will depend on how creatively you prepare these posts. And, you never know, maybe a few of your posts go viral and boost your visibility.
Try to add a click to action (CTA) in your content to turn visitors to your website. These buttons should be like ‘Sign Up here For Newsletter,’ ‘Subscribe our emails’, etc.
Put personal efforts to make your brand special
Almost all of us spend at least 10-15 minutes on social media websites like Instagram, Twitter, or Facebook, which could be used in some meaningful tasks such as promoting our brand. Social Media is the power today, and it is ruling. It has allowed everyone to become a brand. Therefore, whatever we talk about or spread, gets viral and then people also perceive us in the same way. It is good as well as equally bad especially when you trying to set up a brand. In that case, you have to be careful about every post.
Share the best posts on your account and discuss it with other people on various social platforms. Search for good articles, share your thoughts, and get engaged in a conversation. Check relevant tweets and involve them. Increase your reach on LinkedIn, too, as people there would help you gain more endorsement. Don’t over reflect anything, try to be simple, sober yet appealing.
Make a budget
Make a list of what all your non-profit has and what is still pending. Work smartly and plan everything like how much time and money each activity will take. Make a team of people, wherein each individual will be responsible for defined portion and managing its budget. For example, – marketing material cost, fundraising event cost, etc. Ask everyone in the team that they should take the accountability of non-profit finances to avoid any kind of mismanagement.
Build and boost relation by Newsletters
A newsletter is a key source for a non-profit to attract an audience and market your cause before them. It is obvious that when people come to your website, they at least check one or two pages and make a few clicks too. After coming back 2-3 times, most visitors click the subscription for the newsletter button. This newsletter is your strength; you can talk about everything with visitors through a newsletter. Keep an e-newsletter, a focal point of your website.
Most of the time, people don’t subscribe when they visit the website for the first time. Hence, your first objective should be to get them back to the site again and again and inspire them to click the newsletter subscribe button.
After getting people in your list, your next step should be making a strong relation with them by sharing with them each small and big thing related to organization and people who are involved with the non-profit. Try to send newsletters every 14 days. Research says, people at least read ten newsletters and then think to become a donor of a non-profit firm.
Mention all the achievements, procedures, and people who have done a lot to meet those goals in the newsletter, since people connect each newsletter with the previous ones and try to make a story to understand better your organization.
Conclusion
The objectives of a non-profit organization and a profit organization are indeed different, but somewhere both of them require the same action. One of those is Marketing, but yes, the marketing methodology in both cases is a bit different. While marketing your non-profit, convey more about audience engagement with your organization and how their assistance endorsed your cause and helped you to meet your goals. Create a website, send newsletters timely, create events for fundraising, tell your story, and be honest with it, mention all sorts of achievements, create social posts and share them. Approach people who find your post interesting to promote, understand your mission and perform all activities around that and maintain a database of your existing and prospect audience. This is how you can promote your non-profit organization.
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