The Five Foundational Nonprofit Marketing Strategies

As the world moves virtual, your nonprofit organization should be no different. What does your current marketing plan look like? Is there a structure to it? Is it intentional? Is it speaking to your local audience and donor pool? As nonprofit employees, you wear a lot of hats, including digital marketers and email marketers. Here are the five foundational strategies all nonprofits should know when planning their marketing efforts for the year.

1. Always be putting out Value-Based and Impact-Driven Content and Information

What is value-based and impact-driven content? First, you must always think about your donor & community. What do they need to know and see to be engaged with your content and most importantly, your organization? What gets them excited and makes them feel good? Share about the impact you’re making, using high-quality photos and videos. People are connected to people, so the more people photos you can use, the better. Share about the ROI on donations. Have your monthly impact report or results from a fundraising campaign on hand when creating content for social media and emails. This donation information lets the audience know what their donations went to or are going to that month. Lastly, Facts, Impact, Testimonials, & Donate. Those four pillars can get you months worth of content. Rotate between the four on a daily basis and watch your content come easy to you while impacting your audience.

2. Invest in Your Video and Photography

Having high-quality photos to use throughout marketing campaigns will make you stand out on social media and in emails. Making the investment of hiring a photographer or even a videographer for one of your larger events will be a game-changer. Not only can you use the hundreds of photos to market the event, but you can also use them throughout the year as well. Again, people are connected to people, so the more photos of people you can get, the better. Having high-quality photos on hand will not only help your digital marketing, but your fundraising efforts, print marketing, and more.

3. Make Sure You’re Discoverable

You don’t have to be an SEO whiz to boost your searchability on various websites. Start by searching for your nonprofit and see what shows up, then try your keywords and city and see if your organization is in the search results. If your organization is one of the first results, congrats, your SEO is good! If it’s not, let’s fix it. Sit down and write out some keywords to describe your organization or if someone didn’t know the name of your organization, what would they type in to find you? Edit your website to include these keywords in the page’s title and on the page itself. Same goes for Instagram, your name field and bio are discoverable, so make sure those keywords are in there along with what you do, any relevant hashtags and a CTA for your website link!

Need help with social media marketing? Feel free to email me at maddyhein@juniperabbey.com!

4. Run Marketing Campaigns During the Year to Boost your Fundraising Efforts

Marketing campaigns are a fun way of getting your audience engaged and excited consistently. So, what can you do? Well, consider what your organization does and who it helps. Are there any national or international holidays around those things? If your organization is family-oriented, run some Mother’s Day and Father’s Day campaigns with photos from your families. If your organization is around education, back to school time is perfect for a hefty campaign. You can also highlight different authors’ “National” holidays. Just do a quick Google search for fun holidays throughout the year you can work with.

Working with local businesses/groups/people to help spread the word even further is another way to make your marketing campaigns successful. Hosting mini-events or asking sponsors to submit a post for your campaign increases your reach and your engagement with not only your sponsors but your audience as well.

5. Utilize your Email List with Email Marketing

Your email list allows you to have a direct line of communication with a very warm audience. Your email content should still be value and impact-driven and should be sent out on a consistent basis to keep them engaged. Include a CTA in your email header and use those high-quality photos to build a human connection for your readers. Remember, this audience is already warm, they know about your org and have probably been to an event or even donated before, stick to content that shows where donations are going, and inviting them to take the next step further in their donor journey.