Working for a nonprofit is probably one of the most rewarding jobs on the planet. Your efforts are making a positive impact in people’s life, and that helps keep you motivated on a daily basis. However, as marketers, this gratifying job can turn into a real struggle when it comes to reaching new donors. Let’s face it–reaching potential donors requires a well-planned process, patience, and motivation. We get it. In fact, as important as it is to tap out all your offline options, you could be making your life even more complicated if you are not taking advantage of the online environment to look for potential donors.
Before you exhaust all your energy trying to convince others about your cause, knocking on empty doors, and turning to your dog to ask what you could be possibly doing wrong, there’s something you need to know: most of your potential donors are online. And, as important as it is to be fully aware of this fact, you need to know how they behave online. So, here comes the million dollar question: what are donors looking for when deciding where to donate their time and money? Well, Google has an answer for us:
Websites, online videos, search engines, and consumer reviews are among some of the main elements that donors are paying attention to before they make any decision as to who receives their money. Donors like to have some answers and to see if it’s worthy for them to help your cause or your nonprofit. With this in mind, the better you communicate your goals, distribute your message, show the impact from previous donations in your community, the more chances you’ll have to reach and convince potential contributors.
Today, we give you eight valuable digital marketing tips that your nonprofit can start benefiting from to drive donors to act. Let’s get started!
- Powerful Social Media Platforms: Keeping a solid and well-engaged social media community will be crucial for the success of your nonprofit online. By being active on your main social media channels and by interacting with your users on a daily basis, you’ll establish and ignite the conversation that is key for the conversion process. Here are some ways that you can use to ignite this conversation, to build the trust from the users in your nonprofit, and to share your message effectively based on the social channel:
- Facebook: This social platform offers nonprofits some great features that they can take advantage from. Adding the “Donate Now” button is probably one of the first additions that you should include on your Facebook page. Once that’s done, adding a whole new tab for your users to donate will increase the opportunities of getting donations. This will give your users easy and visible ways to access and contribute to your cause. If you are looking for more tips on how nonprofits can benefit from Facebook’s features, bookmark and check out this link: https://nonprofits.fb.com/.
- Twitter: Running a giveaway contest could be a great strategy to get the attention of new users and to increase your potential donor database. Software like Pay With a Tweet can help to spread your nonprofit’s voice effectively, converting your followers into your best brand ambassadors. Give it a try!
- YouTube: The program that YouTube has for nonprofits is definitely worth a look: https://www.youtube.com/nonprofits. By signing up for Google for Nonprofits, you will benefit from some of the great services and opportunities that Google has planned to help your organization. Did you know that YouTube is the #1 place where donors watch videos about nonprofits? So, don’t get behind.
- Effective Images: Creating the right graphic to communicate your message in an appealing way will play an important role in your digital marketing strategy. On the one hand, your images need to be compelling, so they make an impact in your audience and empathize with them, so they feel involved with your cause. On the other hand, your graphics need to educate your audience so they know your organization’s goals.
- Compelling Videos: In addition to the images, videos will help to support your message and to convince your potential donors in a more visually compelling way. According to Think With Google, 57% of users made a donation after watching a nonprofit online video. Before you grab your camera or buy the most expensive video editor, don’t forget to create a well-planned strategy with the message you would like to communicate on your video. The nonprofit Water Charity does a great job with their video creation:
- Remarkable Messaging: Your message has to be remarkable enough to be retained in people’s mind. Storytelling will be key in your content marketing strategy. Use your blog to tell the stories of how your organization has impacted people’s life. Empower your donors and potential donors through the art of storytelling and make them want to be a part of your organization.
- Responsive Website: Mobile is a key companion for donors. According to Think With Google:
- One out of four use mobile to discover nonprofits they were not previously aware of.
- 40% compared reviews on mobile devices.
- Over ⅓ contacted nonprofits via mobile devices.
- 25% completed a donation on a mobile devices.
- Making sure that your website is adapted to mobile devices and that your users can easily read and navigate through your email is critical.
- Google Grants: As we mentioned before, Google offers great opportunities to nonprofits. Google Grants offers free advertising for those organizations who qualify. Yes, you read it right, FREE advertising so you can put your message out there targeting the right demographics and increasing the visibility of your nonprofit. Start driving digital action today!
- Influencers: Reaching out to your most active users and asking them for assistance in helping your organization to spread your cause can help you double the success of your digital marketing strategies by taking advantage of the community of those influencers.
- Track Your Efforts: Before you implement any of the previous strategies, create your digital marketing measurement plan and choose the key performance indicators that you will measure to ensure that your digital marketing plan is working in the right direction. Something very valuable for your nonprofit in terms of analytics will be to track the URL of all the videos, images, ads, and blogs you share or run through social media.
Putting into practice some of these digital marketing strategies will benefit your organization at a relatively inexpensive budget. To show the cost comparison, outbound marketing costs 62%more per lead than inbound marketing. Educate, inspire, and empathize with your community and you’ll see their support come to fruition. If you need some help with implementing any of these strategies, our team will be more than willing to help your organization. Click below!
Read the full article at:On Target
