Your marketing strategy results can make or break your non profit organization.
Have you launched a campaign that you were genuinely excited about but didn’t raise the amount of money you expected? That experience must have left you feeling sad and confused.
The reasons below will help you figure out what could have gone wrong.
You don’t have a target audience
A target audience is a specific group of people that you want to get your message across. They are the people that you have in mind when designing campaigns. Failure to have a target audience can be disastrous for your organization because you will never achieve results(getting funding and retaining donors)
Before designing a campaign, put your target audience’s age, gender and demographics into consideration so that your messages can uniquely be tailored to them.You can also go an extra in ensuring that your target audience comes across your messages by including their job titles and interests in your ad campaigns.
You don’t have goals
Goals act as a compass for your organization. They help you keep track of your vision and mission.
To be effective, goals should be SMART; an acronym for Specific, Measurable, Attainable,Realistic and Time Bound.
Your stories are not compelling
Storytelling is a fundamental part of being human. We feel connected when we share stories about work, our experiences, family etc. Stories make your target audience memorize and internalize information a lot better. In order to start getting results from your marketing strategy, you need to start telling compelling stories about your work, vision and mission.
A good story must evoke emotions such as pity, joy and fulfillment. The emotion must make the person watching or reading your story respond to your call to action, i.e. donating, signing up for membership or visiting your website
You are not building networks
Putting yourself out there opens doors of new opportunities for your non profit. Networking is a great way to market your non profit to donors as you meet people with a common goal and vision as yours.
These people can eventually turn into donors or talk about you in rooms you cannot enter to pave the way for you. Some of the ways you can build your network include joining platforms such as Linkedin and attending events hosted by other non profit founders.
Evaluate your current marketing strategy and identify the problem then use these tips to help you move forward. Nice goal smashing!
Whether you’re planning a multi-year capital campaign or a food drive fundraiser, creating a detailed roadmap from beginning to end is significant to help you achieve your goals. When planning your campaign, make sure to keep these best practices in mind:
Determine your goals early on.
Be mindful of your budget and timeline.
Choose which type of campaign is right for you.
Consider conducting a feasibility assessment.
Delegate tasks and assign ownership.
Work off a fundraising calendar.
Create stellar marketing materials.
1. Determine your goals early on.
Determining your goal is easy. What’s often overlooked is conducting an audit of the performance of your past fundraising campaigns. This is the kind of information that will best inform you on how to structure the next campaign so you don’t make the same mistakes again.
As you brainstorm, make sure to identify the challenges you may encounter in trying to achieve this goal. Use this data to create a goal chart. These charts don’t have to be tied solely to financial goals. Instead, you can identify a wide variety of benchmarks to strive towards as your fundraiser progress.
Define specific key performance indicators (KPIs) for your campaign so that you know when you’re winning and when you’re not.
2. Be mindful of your timeline.
When drafting your timeline, there are a few key elements to consider. First of all, fundraisers with clear timelines establish a concrete sense of urgency. If your fundraiser has no deadline, people may not feel compelled to give immediately, and will more likely put it off.
You may also want to give your campaign more context and relevance by planning it around a holiday that’s relevant to your organization, a particular season, the year’s end, or a big annual event.
3. Create A Budget With ROI In Mind
Organizations need to get the most out of their resources. That’s why we recommend creating a “budget” to evaluate costs vs. ROI (return on investment) before starting a new fundraising campaign.
For example, if you spend $1000 in creating marketing material to promote your campaign and you only raise a total of $400, your ROI is negative.
Creating a budget with an itemized expense report (staff time, design/printing, travel, etc.) is an important exercise because it gives a complete picture of the resources it will take which then you can compare against what you anticipate raising.
To determine what you anticipate raising, you’ll need to craft a gift range spreadsheet.
This sheet should list different tiers of supporters with dollar amounts (ex: major donor, mid-tier donor), how many gifts your organization needs in each tier, and how many prospects you need to contact at each tier.
Be sure to create your sheet in a way that reflects the type of fundraiser you’ve chosen. For example, a crowdfunding campaign is typically composed of hundreds of smaller donations, while a capital campaign tends to target a tighter range of major donors.
4.Choose which type of campaign is right for you.
What specific project or program do you need to raise gifts for? What types of fundraising are most effective in those circumstances?
For example, are you looking to fund your nonprofit’s general operations for the next year? If so, an effective option might be an annual fund campaign, where supporters give to your organization’s unrestricted fund to cover essential overhead costs.
On the other hand, you may have a specific initiative for which you’d like to raise critical funds (ex: “To build a new animal shelter in our community, we need to raise X amount. Help us bring animals in from the cold this winter). In this case, a crowdfunding campaign might be exactly what you’re looking for.
5. Consider conducting a feasibility assessment.
Once you’ve outlined the basics of your fundraising campaign— your goals, budget, timeline, and main fundraising activities— consider reaching out to key stakeholders such as board members & major donors.
Gain feedback and information to guide your fundraiser and raise interest among key supporters.
For example, you may ask a few of your top donors how they feel about certain virtual fundraising ideas to help you get a sense of what the most successful campaigns may be going forward.
Marketing materials provide donors with a compelling reason to give. They should be attractive, informative, and skimmable. Share these materials with donors at every step of your donation solicitation through letters, events, email newsletters, and social media. Storytelling films, graphics, and your website are key in getting you there. All your material should cover these key areas.
A clear WHY- “why is there need to sponsor kids?”.
The different ways donors can help you get there (big and small).
Clear amounts you want donors to give
A clear deadline for giving
Your plans for the donations raised—who it will help, what impact it will make.
Pro tip; always remember to choose the easiest donation payment gateway to encourage donations. Consider incorporating these tips when planning your next fundraiser to set your team up for success. You’ll create a solid foundation for your fundraiser going forward, and equip your staff with everything they need for success.
For some organizations, blogs are just a dumpsite for company information. You can tell there’s no strategy yet blogs can be leveraged to push for donations and grow readership when handled well.
Below, I outline the best 8 effective elements to incorporate in driving growth from your blog.
1. Moving Content
Great blogs must touch, move and inspire the reader. They need to hold the reader’s attention while they tell a story that transforms the reader’s perspective (on a big or small scale). For example, a reader might already know of a hunger crisis but how you tell that story- from the choice of words, photos, and headlines can make them feel the urgency and move them to give.
2. Informational Content
Informational content such as a blog post on a trending issue affecting your work as a nonprofit is better supported with data put into infographics. People love to consume content broken down in visuals because it’s easier to digest and comment on when they understand what message is being relayed.
3. Engaging Stories
Any nonprofit blog must embrace a story format that allows readers to naturally follow the impact and results of your work while developing an emotional connection. Numbers are generalized and forgettable- but stories stick because they are unique to each beneficiary.
4. SEO-Friendly Language
It’s critical to make sure that your blog is optimized for search engines. Your good story might go to waste without using SEO-friendly language to connect web searchers with the most relevant information.
5. Wider perspectives
There’s nothing better than reading something that helps you learn. Good content establishes the organization as a thought leader. We don’t want to just hear about the lives you’re transforming, we want to see your passion for the sector you serve in. How are you influencing the rest of the world to take action about the crisis, not just your organization?
6. Testimonials And Case Studies
Yes, nonprofits can also write case studies. Of course, you’d be communicating impact. Stakeholders are looking for evidence that those gifts and resources have made a valuable impact. Check out this case study by World Food Program on Electric Cooking in Burundi Households.
You could for example write a case study on a key program/project showing the impact it has had over the years. This will help new potential donors get a stronger feel of what you’re about and join your Monthly Giver’s Program.
7. Calls To Action
Engagement! The best blogs include calls to action—it’s not just about informing readers but asking them to respond and act on a variety of ways to volunteer and donate. Don’t end at telling me a good story, ask me to support your causes at the end of the article. A simple “Learn More about our work for youth in the slums ” goes a long way.
An example of a good call to action by WFP
8. Concise videos
Some people avoid blogs because they are wordy and they hate to read. To account for everyone in your audience, you have to provide visual information i.e an impact story in video format would create higher engagement in the comment section and grow your audience faster over time.
Try out these tips and let me know how it pans out.
In simple terms, it’s like Netflix but for companies and way better. You don’t just pay to enjoy a variety of things, you get to make more money out of it.
The era92 Growth Plan is our new way of enabling organizations to scale their marketing efforts & grow sales/ donations for one single flat rate while receiving a mixture of Web Design, Branding, Films & Copywriting services every month.
Without access to the above services, your marketing efforts — and therefore your sales — will no doubt encounter a bottleneck and slow down.
However, when you spend too much time and money on getting these services, you run the risk of diverting precious resources away from focusing on your main product or service.
Anything beyond that is simply a liability to your business. The reason why companies spend too much money on marketing without good returns is that they are relying on non-sustainable outsourcing methods.
What pain points does the Growth Plan solve?
Freelance hiring
Freelance designers can work with you for short-term contracts or on a per-project basis. If you’ve experienced working with a freelancer, you’ll know that they usually do not have a regular commitment to you, and can disappear without a trace because there isn’t a proper system to which they are accountable. You may also have to juggle multiple freelancers to get a regular stream of work, which can cause inefficiencies in your workflow.
Online marketplaces
Freelancers in online marketplaces tend to be more professional but the really good ones you can trust with your work are usually very expensive. They are also professionally unregulated unlike if it were an agency they worked for. This means that there isn’t a team to conduct quality control, therefore putting deadlines above quality work. Just like all freelancers, they are never in sync with all your internal processes which forces them to work ‘blindly’, only following your instructions.
Inadequate in-house talent
9 out of 10 times will an organization have a fully professional creative in-house team. Many times, the marketing/communications manager is expected to take on the role of a graphics designer, film director, copywriter which creates a huge workload and therefore, produces inconsistent works. Hire an in-house graphic designer. The only advantage is that they are immersed in your brand, which is good news for your marketing materials.
The era92 Growth Plan: A New Way to Help you Scale
This Growth Plan model allows companies to easily get the right creative support in a dynamic, fixed-cost, and scalable way. Instead of going back and forth with freelance or trying to do it all yourself, you can partner with one agency with proven professional skill-sets, easily accountable, and have a pool of talents that can be dedicated to you, and only you.
For example, if there’s a campaign you’re developing, era92 steps up to take on the graphics, film, copy and web design needs while you concentrate on the bigger things like communicating to your donors, sending out invites, setting goals, and measuring the campaign’s performance.
To put it simply, the Growth Plan:
Allows organizations to outsource help with minimal risk
Provides flexible plans at predictable prices
Gives an upper hand to in-house talent
Delivers double the volume of creative projects, faster, better, and at a more cost-effective rate.
Benefits of the Growth Plan
You know who exactly you’re working with
This subscription model allows companies to find, and subscribe to, top-of-class talent and creative services. Plus, they can easily be vetted, unlike hiring, through external third-party review sites and testimonials. For example, our Unlimited Design plan assigns the best designer for each request you make. The best part is availability. Even if your designer is absent for a day, there’s always someone else ready to handle your requests.
2. You get no-surprise billing
It’s one flat rate, month-in, month-out.
You don’t have to go through the trauma of billing per hour that freelancers offer, let alone billing per project (one-off model), and hoping the final bill isn’t mind-blowing.
With our subscription plan, the pricing remains consistent once the deliverables have been agreed upon. You can increase or decrease your subscription knowing exactly how the cost will be impacted.
3. You can scale your creative solutions
Companies can easily add or remove resources to increase or decrease their creative projects. The Growth Plan is optimized for maximum ease of use but clients are free to scale down if the organization’s activities go down in one season of the year.
4. We sync into your processes
You get a dedicated projects manager who communicates with regular updates on your project using platforms you already use, like Slack, Miro, Google Sheets, or Asana. Our 3 step onboarding process involves a sit down with the team to understand full circle what your organization is about, your work plans, and strategic year plans to help us draw a larger picture. We sync into your current workflow with minimal adjustments on your part.
Our subscription model allows your team to get the creative help it needs at an affordable rate. Check out our Unlimited Graphics & Web Design Plans and solutions for Nonprofits, Businesses & Entrepreneurs. Reach out today and level up your content marketing game with our Growth Plan.
To win on social media, your content has to be super engaging. Every brand has a story to tell, a unique voice and image that should reflect in every post to achieve win more and more people over.
There are also a number of best practices that can ensure that the quality of your company’s social media content relates well with your target audience.
Curious to know the winning formula for your brand’s success on social media? Here is my proven formula I have used over the years.
Winning Formula
Engagement = What you do x Why you do it x Human Side x Advocacy x Impact
What you do
It’s a no-brainer. As a brand, you want your audience to know you for what you do. Unfortunately, some companies only focus on that, i.e post the gadgets they sell. That’s fine if you have no intentions to evolve into a strong brand in the market.
If you do, then letting people know that you’re the best natural hair salon in town is not enough. That’s how the second element in the formula comes in.
Why you do it
Using our example of MK hair salon, through your content, you must help your audience understand why you chose natural hair. It could be that it was a unique and untapped market but people on social media don’t want to hear that. Honestly, they could care less.
You could state your why like this;
“Natural hair for black people has for long been labeled ugly & unprofessional. That is totally false. That’s why we work hard every day to show the world just how beautiful it is with our creative & innovative styles.”
When people know where you’re coming from with a certain idea, you create a space for people to relate with you at a deeper level and to join you in changing the narrative. Otherwise, they just think you’re out to get their money.
Human side
If it wasn’t for the sake of explaining the formula, I would have started with this one.
This is the MOST IMPORTANT aspect for any brand looking to win engagement on social media. It’s social media. People get on these platforms to relate with each other like human beings are wired to.
They are looking for memes, controversial topics, their friend’s wedding photos or weekend plot on Snapchat.
As a brand, you have to show your human side. Here are some great examples;
Posting short vlogs of how your top hairdresser goes about her day
Showcasing team day outs by the beach
CEO launching the salon’s line of locally made hair products
Influencers giving a testimony about the products
Your company should show the people behind it
Advocacy
In this day and age, brands cannot be on the fence about ongoing crises. We’ve seen advocacy campaigns go viral on social media (#BlackLivesMatter) and your audience is always curious to know what you stand for.
Of all the social crises going on from youth unemployment, early marriages to climate change, minimum wage, which one are you trying to contribute positively?
It’s important if you picked one and dedicated your business to doing some good in society. This kind of content amplifies your engagement because you are showing the human side of you.
Impact
Show your impact or let your audience do it for you. One of the best ways to grow your social media engagement is through word of mouth marketing.
Using our example of MK, the natural hair salon, if they created a hashtag #myhairjourneyMK where any of their clients can share their experiences with MK and how their perspectives on natural hair have changed.
Bonus key points to support the formula
* Tailored content
Each social media platform has its own language and content they respond to best. Here is what works best for the most popular platforms for businesses:
Twitter – Plain text posts. Links to content. Memes. Hashtags and handles
Facebook – Videos (live and static). Photos. Memes. Links to content
LinkedIn – Plain text posts. Links to content. Case studies. Some photos and videos are okay, so long as they remain professional in nature.
* Pay attention to what’s trending
It’s important to remember that not every trend fits within your brand. Avoid unnecessary trend jacking but also beware of running campaigns that might come off insensitive in the middle of a crisis.
* Be friendly, be social!
One of the best ways to get noticed by others on social media is by tagging other brands and individuals. Regularly share content from a business or individual you admire even though they are your competitors. They will want to engage with you in the long run.
Every time you build up a content marketing plan and calendar, ask yourself; Does it show who we are, what we stand for, who have been impacted… Let me know how it pans out.
Branding is more than a nice logo and colors. It’s the combination of the consistency in your messaging and the emotions attached to it. It’s that overall unexplainable feeling your audience has when they come across any of your adverts, campaigns, stories, photos, or videos.
When it comes to great branding, here are 5 lessons we can pick from some of our favourite nonprofit brands in the world right now.
Social media marketing
Charity: Water is a non-profit organization bringing clean and safe drinking water to people in developing nations. Charity: water has proven that nonprofits can be sparkly brands too and there’s nothing wrong with that.
What to learn from them?
Strong digital presence; nobody does it quite like them. Along with a superb website, Charity: Water is milking as much as they can on Facebook, Instagram, YouTube & Twitter. They use their platforms to stay engaged with their supporters and push powerful campaigns.
Facebook & Instagram. Charity: Water updates their Facebook page almost every day with image-heavy content. Most posts are photos or videos of people whose lives have been changed by a Charity: Water well. They also post various links to media articles about their organization, announcements for fundraising events, new products available in their store, and new posts on their blog.
YouTube. Charity: Water makes intriguing docu-series that showcase their work in different countries. You get to see the lives of the people they want to change, hear their views, including the locals they work with to drill these wells.
The charity definitely has a spending budget to keep their socials so active but you too can strive to build community online & always engage people around your mission.
Storytelling
Charity: Water tells stories proving that donations lead to tangible, lasting, and meaningful results. They use storytelling that shows a problem, how Charity: Water helped solve it, and why your support can create another story of success.
They take time to create rich narratives about both recipients and donors. Their newsletters are a great example of their storytelling:
Emotive campaigns
UNICEF is the world’s leading charity ensuring that all children’s rights are realized. It is a big and audacious vision that requires strong strategies.
UNICEF runs some of the most emotive & thought-provoking campaigns that often make the audience question their behaviour, prejudices, and world perspectives of children from different backgrounds.
Here’s a great example.
Clear & powerful messaging
International Justice Mission is charity that works hard everyday to end modern slavery around the world.
One second on their website and you’re hit by a powerful rescue story. Unlike other nonprofits who slap their missions on their homepage, IJM breakdown their mission into simple yet clear messages.
Smart fundraising campaigns
Charity Water has some of the most relatable campaigns. They strategically involve their audience to think of original ideas and bring their own campaigns to light. This two-way communication is the reason behind the successful fundraisers. And of course, if you check their financial reports, the numbers are record-breaking each year.
Follow these accounts on social media and study how they manage to stand out from the crowd.
Podcasts are the new radio if you didn’t know that already. Except, unlike radio whose programs are filled with pop music, podcasts offer a variety of tailored content to specific audiences.
Podcasts can be an invaluable tool for your nonprofit as you work to scale your impact, grow your community of supporters, or apply new fundraising tactics to your strategy. There are so many different podcasts, it can be difficult to know where to begin or know what’s worth listening to.
To help guide, we’ve selected 5 best podcasts for social entrepreneur leaders and 5 best podcasts for nonprofit leaders. Below, you’ll get a quick brief about the podcast’s primary focus.
Produced by Causeartist, Disruptors for GOOD takes listeners around the world to explore social entrepreneurship. The breadth of topics keeps this podcast interesting, as host Grant Trahantdoes one-on-one interviews with changemakers in sustainable travel, impact investing, and businesses that impact the world in a positive way.
The plus side, you can nominate a guest to feature on the podcast.
Being featured on this podcast will amplify your work to thousands of potential customers, donors and supporters.
Changing the world is hard. Today, nonprofits are faced with more challenges to accomplish their missions than ever before – along with the growing pressure to do more, raise more, and be more for the causes we hold so dear. With bootstrapped budgets and staff, we need camaraderie, a safe place to learn and grow and a robust community that fuels inspiration and good vibes.
The We Are For Good Podcast welcomes the most dynamic nonprofit leaders, advocates and philanthropists to share innovative ideas and lessons learned. It’s a comfortable space (Jon’s nearly 100 year old house) to have raw conversations and unlock the vulnerability that leads to positive change.
Expect candid talk, dad jokes (#sorrynotsorry), impactful stories and actionable guidance to cultivate an impact uprising.
Produced by HubSpot, and led by vice president of marketing Meghan Keaney Anderson, The Growth Show focuses entirely on growth. Every episode is curated to showcase inspiring stories behind how people grow businesses, ideas, or movements.
Looking to grow your business’ bottom line and hear from other experienced entrepreneurs share tips?
The Social Enterprise Podcast is presented by the President and CEO of FINCA International, Rupert Scofield. Monthly podcasts explore different facets of the social entrepreneurship world.
Rupert explores the challenges of starting, building and running a social enterprise. Guests include other social entrepreneurs and impact investors who share their insights and experience.
What we wear matters—and host Kestrel Jenkins has created an inclusive audio space to discuss just that. This podcast holds conversations around sustainable fashion, clothing, impact, and stories.
Jenkins welcomes people from all around the world to discuss how we can create positive change in the fashion industry.
If you’re a social entrepreneur that is all about eco-friendliness, you should try and get on this pod.
Stanford Social Innovation Review (ssir.org) has been a well-known name in the social impact world for years. The podcast provides informative topics like human rights, impact investing and nonprofit business models.
With topics including storytelling, scaling, and strategy, this is a great source of information and insight for any changemaker.
The Nonprofit Leadership Podcast
Hosted by Dr. Rob Harter, The Nonprofit Leadership Podcast: Making Your World Better, features discussions around trends, issues, and opportunities facing nonprofit professionals and individuals embedded in the social sector. The goal of this podcast is to show you what it takes to be an effective nonprofit leader by sharing real-world stories and strategies from the people and organizations making a strong impact.
Each week, Impact Boom invites top social innovators, entrepreneurs, change-makers, designers, educators, thinkers, and doers onto their show to share their stories and inspiration. You never know who you might inspire with your story, try and get on.
The Classy Podcast tells the stories of today’s leading founders and executives in the social sector. The aim of this pod is to help your own nonprofit level-up in areas like donor retention, marketing, growth, and more.
Social enterprises & nonprofits are constantly looking to scale their impact to other parts of the country or across the continent. It’s the ultimate dream but often as you look for funding & donations, you might be told that your model is not scalable.
That might leave you confused because you’re so sure it is. But maybe, what they mean is you’re just replicable.
Okay, what’s the difference? Let’s break that down for you.
Being Replicable
Scalability and replicability are both important, but the subtle differences between the two can shift strategies and impact trajectories.
Put simply: something replicable can be copy-pasted with variations as needed. Some things are replicable but not scalable.
For example, a project that skills women from underserved communities in farming & invests in their small businesses is a good intervention that could be replicated to create more impact but is not particularly scalable.
If it’s been targeting women from an urban slum in Kampala, it can be brought to a new slum in the north of the country but the cost structures and inputs are largely the same.
Being Scalable
Something scalable can create impact at a rate that increases faster than the rate at which your effort and costs increase.
Scale, however, looks different.
Organisations that scale often involve training others into leadership, movement building, and leveraging technology to amplify impact. They involve not just delivering a replica of a project but building teams, seeding communities, and restructuring processes in the new countries they go into.
If you were to scale a project that skills women in farming for example, it would mean changing the entire structure of the project to go beyond skilling women in farming to perhaps growing into an organisation that provides agricultural innovation in seeds & crop protection to government agencies.
Let’s weigh the pros and cons
Replicability
Scalability
Cons: – Impacts fewer people – Growth is limited to one skill – Lacks sustainability
Cons: – Risk of individual impact being diluted at scale – Hard to track rewards – Involves high financial risks
Pros: – Growth by replication is more straightforward – Acquires more individual impact
Pros: – Impacts more people – Ensures long term sustainability
Consider this as you scale
The impact often runs the risk of being diluted at scale because you move from impacting 60 women a year to 5000 a year. The individual impact is often ignored because the lens is focused on groups and larger organizations.
The rewards may be great, but they also may be hard to track. Scalable interventions are necessary for the type of fundamental, power-shifting, world-changing impact that is required to solve the social and environmental problems that we are facing.
Scaling requires some tolerance for ambiguity and risk and you may have to wait a while for the big, measurable results and impact you seek.
Consider this as you replicate
Growth by replication is more straightforward, and because it’s less people being impacted at a time, there’s evident individual impact.
However, even with replicating the project in more communities, you risk higher dependence on donors and slow growth in the new communities you replicate in. in the end, you risk looking like a fraud in these communities
Food for thought
As you weigh, it’s important to be honest with yourself about the potential to scale. If you don’t have the capacity to scale, you can always replicate and still create more impact even though it might not be ground-breaking.
To know if your organization is better suited to scale or to replicate requires reflection and analysis of your programming, constituents, and core impact.
Ask yourself: which method best serves our mission and intended impact?
Sometimes called “donor funnels” or “cultivation funnels,” nonprofits have learned how to build sales funnels just like business entities.
Some nonprofit leaders have gone as far as acquiring certified business coaches to help them understand how to merge their mission with growing overheads.
A good number of nonprofits today have picked a leaf from business enterprises. They too have embraced best practices in branding, marketing, service delivery models, money management, and leadership.
However, there are still some nonprofit leaders that are a bit hesitant to learn from the business community. There are a number of similarities they can learn from each other.
In this article, we cover;
Why you should learn from the business community
What’s there to learn from them
How you can use that knowledge to build a sales funnel
Why should you learn from the business community?
Just like in the business sector, there is competition
You’re competing for donations with thousands of other nonprofits. That’s why as a nonprofit, you have to develop approaches and skills that businesses use to improve your competitive position and long- term health. If say, your nonprofit belongs to the 45,000 nonprofits dedicated to women & girls in the United States, how are you supposed to stand out?
Nonprofits have bills to pay
Nonprofits have bills to pay which may not always be fully covered by donations especially for startups.
That’s why in 2020, during the Covid’19 pandemic, a number of nonprofits realised the need to develop sustainable business models to grow their overheads and generate more steady income flows.
What’s there to learn from the business community?
Investment
Invest in your employees, operations and your projects.
Business leaders always invest in having a high-quality company culture, benefits, and decent salaries for employees to ensure high value output.
By investing in great branding & marketing for your organisation, your employees and your organization as a whole, you can multiply your funds and ultimately do more good.
Diverse income streams
There isn’t a successful business today operating with one main income source. In business, they apply the BCG Model that identifies which product /service brings in money daily, which one brings in the highest return on investment, which one has the highest potential to grow in the market and which needs to be abandoned.
Nonprofits have to develop healthy diverse income streams. From sales, sponsorships, partnerships, and philanthropy. This includes contributions from individuals, foundations, government, and corporations.
Marketing
To be successful in creating multiple streams of income, nonprofits have to imitate business marketing strategies and tailor them with messages that align with their missions. The psychology of marketing in the nonprofit world is different and has to be applied strategically. There are a couple of strategies to adopt all the same like content marketing, storytelling and cold emailing.
Building a donation funnel
Sales & Marketing Funnels are all the rage. Sadly, we don’t see them as often in the nonprofit space yet digital fundraising continues to grow.
Funnels are really a fancy way of saying that you want to take your customer (or donor) on a journey.
Just like in business, the marketing team doesn’t bombard a customer. The team uses AIDA model to create an effective sales funnel.
People often don’t donate right away. Take your donor on a first date to get to know you. Invite them for a couple of more dates and get them to know you better to invest in you.
Examples of strategies to use in your donation funnel
Lead Generating PDF or Resource
Many times, a donor might feel the urge to donate although not immediately.
Provide a free download about your donor processes highlighting projects and previous donors. It will help you build trust and desire for new potential donors.
Providing free downloads is one way to optimise your email acquisition landing page as opposed to simply asking them to subscribe to your newsletter.
Landing Page Asking for a Donation
In the PDF download, after you’ve convinced and built trust around your donor processes, you can now add a link to a landing page to get them to donate. Make sure your donation page is clear and concise integrated with simple forms and a 3 step process.
I found this guide to donor cultivation quite useful. You can get it here.
Storytelling
Emotive storytelling is crucial to nonprofits. It’s how you sell your brand and your work. With every newsletter, brand campaign including your website, make sure you’re telling success stories, impact stories and beneficiary stories.
No one wants to read lengthy write ups on your mission and your work. Show it through storytelling videos, don’t just tell.
Marketing is not some hard concept as many have made it seem. Effective online courses on marketing have been made simple and fun to learn with personal coaches that can help you learn all about building a donation funnel and more from BMS University.
Here’s something I’ve learned as a founder of a nonprofit and a digital marketing agency. There are many best practices in the business community, which sadly are not being leveraged by nonprofit leaders. I think the Marketing Made Simple Course from Business Made Simple University is a great place to start to learn the basics of building a donation funnel.” Ryan Crozier, Business Made Simple Coach
Have you looked through your Facebook feed recently and wondered, “Wow, why is our Facebook engagement so bad?”
When it comes to organic reach, it’s only getting worse. The average number of people who see posts on social media that aren’t promoted posts is getting lower and lower every year.
On Facebook, the average reach of an organic page post is at 5.20%. That means roughly one in every 19 followers sees the page’s non-promoted content. At the end of 2019 it was 5.5%, and the year before that it was 7.7% When it comes to engagement (likes, shares, comments), the average engagement rate in 2020 for an organic Facebook post was 0.25%. (source: hubspot.com)
But, that doesn’t mean we can’t navigate Facebook’s algorithms and try to reach a higher engagement and reach on our company posts.
So this Facebook algorithm, how does it work?
The Facebook algorithm decides which posts people see every time they check their Facebook feed, and in what order those posts show up. In 2021, the Facebook algorithm is made up of four main ranking signals: recency, popularity, content type, and relationship
The algorithm arranges and shows each individual user’s posts in descending order of interest. Facebook therefore prioritizes this to keep users scrolling so that they see more ads.
First, Facebook understands the user’s interests and arranges these posts to appear first in their feed.
Next, it discards posts that a user is unlikely to engage with, based on that user’s past behavior.
Then, it scores the remaining posts in a personalized way. For example, Brenda is 40% likely to watch food tutorial videos from her timeline but 95% likely to post a heart reaction to a photo of her sister’s wedding photos) and ranks them in order of value.
And finally, it mixes media types and sources so that a user has an interesting variety of posts to scroll through.
Now that we have an idea of how the Facebook algorithm works, here are some tips that brands can use towork with the algorithm & optimize their organic reach.
Reply to your audience
Don’t be too proud to reply to the comments, even those replying with GIFS.
Your branded content may never get more comments than anyone’s wedding photos, but it’s still important to build connections with your audience because the algorithm prioritizes posts from pages that a user has interacted with in the past, remember?
So reply to each and everyone in the comments with words or an emoji, it counts.
Aim for more sentimental reactions
Likes are weighed less now in value by the algorithm. So aim for reactions that are more emotional like, love, shock, anger, caring.
Nonprofits have an upper hand here because they market their brands a lot through storytelling. Once you connect with your audience on a deeper level, they are triggered to react more thus pushing your posts up higher in the feed.
Post when your audience is online
Look at your Facebook page insights and study your audience behaviour better. What times are they most online?
To find these insights, go to your page insights, then click posts to view when your fans are online.
Remember that recency is a key signal. The newest posts go to the top of the news feed. However, if the user has not seen your content that you posted in the morning, they’ll still see it whenever they log in at 10 PM.
If you have your content readily available, scheduling your posts helps you get the best time when your users are online, consistently.
Use Facebook Stories
Did you know? Facebook stories aren’t part of the algorithm. Stories are more effective and personal because users can choose whose story to click on and view than endless scrolling through the feed and be bombarded by ads just so you can reach your friend’s posts.
I do not mean filling up your content calendar and posting frequently. Any good Facebook content strategy needs both organic and paid content. You can’t beat the algorithms without a little help to cut through the noise and get to newer followers. It’s important to grow your audience in order to acquire more engagement and improve credibility and trust.
Careful of the videos you post
Remember that you’re fighting for attention, quite literally. The attention span of users on social media is at 8 seconds today. Just 8!
So what do you do?
Grab their attention within the first few seconds to get them to watch and complete. This is because videos that have 100% watch time and completion rate rank higher in the Facebook newsfeed it will appear.
Advocate for shares
From employees to friends, ask them to share your brand page content in order to reach more people. Everyone has a different friend circle and that means your work gets to more people every time.
I hope you get to practice these tips right away and regularly read your page insights to inform your content strategy better.
Many social media managers are constantly stressed about growing numbers organically and as much as it’s possible, it can only go so far. Incorporate a budget for paid posts to grow the company’s page because from the looks of things, the algos are only getting worse.
