What are the best ways for marketing your nonprofit organization? When you think about how fundraising used to work for many organizations and compare it to the methods available and used today to raise much-needed cash, there really is no comparison in many respects.
Marketing for non-profits and charities should be making full use of today’s modern tools in order to get the message across effectively and reach their target audience.
Here is a look at modern ways of approaching marketing in a nonprofit environment.
Sparking life into your donor base
It pays to take a commercial approach to marketing, even when you are operating in a nonprofit environment.
The fact of the matter for any organization in this situation, is that you need a consistent and reliable source of funding in order to be able to successfully raise awareness for your particular cause and to be able to adapt and expand your various programs and services.
It goes without saying too, that the nonprofit sector is a highly competitive arena and therefore you need to develop a marketing strategy that allows you to get your core message across and to be able to stand out from the crowd, so that your audience can hear this message loud and clear.
It never pays to underestimate the injection of life as well as funding that a successful marketing campaign can achieve in strengthening your donor base and support network.
A long-term strategy
One of the fundamental differences between the way marketing works now and how you might have tried to get your message across in the past, is that you have much more of an opportunity to develop a long-term relationship, rather than forever trawling for one-time donations.
There are several ways open to you in order to evolve a modern marketing strategy which helps you generate recurring donors, rather than just keep trying to find new ones in isolation.
Encouraging monthly or bi-monthly giving in your marketing message is one such way of doing this.
It is now perfectly feasible to combine a variety of strategies using social media platforms, video messages, emails and blogs, to start a conversation and provide the sort of information and answers that potential donors are seeking out.
The modern donor is much more sophisticated and media savvy, so they don’t respond to the tin-rattling approach of being talked at. The aim is to use all of the available media channels to support your cause and invite participation, but in a much more subtle way where potential donors are given the chance to reach a conclusion to donate, on their own.
When you consider that recurring donors are estimated to give at least 40% over a 12-month period than one-time contributors, a long-term recruitment strategy should reap rewards.
Tell a story
Another major change in the marketing landscape is the fact that you have the power of content marketing at your disposal.
Raising awareness is what it’s all about for nonprofits and you now have much more of an opportunity to interact with people and tell stories that are highly relevant and persuasive, such as highlighting exactly what you have managed to achieve with recent donations.
Showing just how their donations might be used and painting a picture, will often help to attract committed donors. If they can see transparency and a willingness to share how and where you are spending their money, this can be a highly persuasive narrative.
Don’t disregard the power of branding
There are many iconic brands that are instantly recognizable across the globe, and you may well consider that branding was really only reserved for big corporations, but when you start to look at some of those well-known brands, you soon realize that there are a number of nonprofits amongst them.
You might not have the resources to believe that you can attempt to build a brand for your nonprofit, but branding comes in all shapes and sizes, and is always worth attempting at some level or another, rather than disregard the concept.
Branding is not just about an iconic logo. It also involves things like having a memorable mission statement that becomes associated with your nonprofit and cause, whenever someone sees it.
If you are looking for something that is the very epitome of how modern marketing differs from the past, branding is it. There are so many ways to get your image and message across, that goes well beyond a badge.
If you set about marketing your nonprofit the modern way, you should definitely notice the difference.