How Do I Level Up My Nonprofit Marketing Strategy?

So, you’ve started your nonprofit and you’re looking to make an impact. Naturally, the best way to start making a name for your organization is through marketing. After all, word of mouth is one of the most influential ways to garner attention, bring in donations, inspire volunteers, and finally, make a positive impression on the world. Recent reports show that millennials find word-of-mouth recommendations to be a whopping 115% more influential than traditional advertising methods.

But why is advertising necessary in the first place? When it comes to nonprofits, marketing ultimately helps them gain exposure, cement their brand, and increase visibility. Furthermore, effective advertising efforts help to form, nourish, and maintain relationships with existing and future donors.

How Can I Step Up My Marketing Efforts?

You’ve put in the hard work and invested the time needed to bring your nonprofit vision to life, what’s next? You’ve more than likely identified your target audience, now it’s time to reach out to them. From social media to internet and email marketing, there are many marketing avenues to explore and many opportunities for brand expansion.

And since a marketing strategy is a living entity, an effective marketer must be able to evolve and adapt with it so that it may grow and improve. If you’re ready to tackle and level up your marketing strategy, the following are some best ways to light a fire under your advertising efforts.

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Conduct Research

Naturally, keeping your marketing strategy relevant to your audience is imperative. And to do so, you need to conduct regular research so that you may understand what’s happening within your field of focus, as well as with your target audience. The following are the top factors to consider when performing your research.

• Industry trends

  • Where are there possible growth opportunities?

  • What are the top trends?

• Competitive research

o   How are you different from your competitors?

o   What platforms are they using?

o   What is their unique value?

·         Audience research

o   What does your audience value?

o   What are their favorite platforms/media outlets?

o   Keyword research

·         Which keywords are relative to your industry?

o   How can you compete organically?

o   Which terms can you budget for in PPC advertising?

Evaluate the Current Impact of Your Brand Presence

Now is the time to gaze internally and discover exactly what your brand is doing. You can start with finding where your brand has a presence and find any strengths upon which you can capitalize. Next, take a closer look at any weaknesses you must address, as well as find any potential threats and opportunities for growth. To successfully evaluate the state of your existing brand presence, consider taking the following measures:

• Analyze data and analytics on all platforms

• Perform an SEO and content audit of your site

• Review your site, social media, emails, advertisements, and any sales material

• Evaluate brand mentions on social media

• Search for your brand and discover where its mentioned

Stay Up to Date with Social Media

It’s no secret that social media is one of the leading forms of advertising in the world. Therefore, building a strong brand presence on the most popular social media platforms is perhaps the best way to step up your marketing game. Not only can social media help you understand what’s popular among your audience, but with sites like YouTube seeing a billion unique visitors each month, this is your chance to drastically grow your donors as well.

Pay a Visit to Your Present Marketing Strategy

Once you’ve done your research and learned more about your field and its competitors, you’ll be ready to update your existing marketing strategy. And when it comes to marketing strategy, you want to be certain it’s answering the following questions:

• What are your mission, vision, and values?

• What is your unique value?

• Who is your target audience and how can they be reached?

• What problem(s) are you solving?

• What is your nonprofit’s story?

Establish Consistently Clear Protocols for Your Leadership Design and Personality

Ideally, your nonprofit’s staff, volunteers, and representatives will practice a consistent, high standard for the manner in which they represent your organization. Only then will the public be able to trust and respect what you have to say. Furthermore, it is this consistency that communicates clear professionalism and confidence.

Try Out New Tactics

Should you find your current marketing strategy to be lacking, one ideal route to take is testing out new marketing tactics. And now that you’ve done your research and learned more about your audience, competitors, and what needs to change, you should be well-equipped to begin making informed changes to your strategy. Using information, you can decide what is working and what’s not, leveling up your marketing strategy based on trial and error. If you’re ready to breathe new life into your marketing, ask yourself the following questions:

• What alterations can be made to your existing strategy to boost performance?

• Will changing the message, audience, or product positioning prove more effective?

• Are they alternative marketing channels you’ve yet to use?

• Are there any you should perhaps invest in further?

Set Goals and Review Progress

When implementing new tactics into your marketing strategy, you must also set goals and review the outcomes of your efforts. Only then can you make the necessary improvements. By setting key performance indicators you can effectively review the results of your campaign. The best way to do this is by investing in the right tools. These include:

• Email marketing

• Sales and POS systems

• Customer Relationship Management tools

• Google Data

Make Leveling Up Your Marketing Strategy a Continuous Effort

While you might get lucky with your first marketing strategy proving effective, this is not a set it and forget it aspect for any nonprofit. Marketing strategies require consistent, ongoing attention, maintenance, and planning to maintain relevance and adapt to the times. Whether you’re experiencing a dip in donations and volunteers or you’re simply concerned about your campaign going stale – it’s never a bad idea to reevaluate and pivot as needed. By regularly following these seven steps, your nonprofit will continuously gain visibility and hopefully surpass your goals.