Expand Your Reach: Ultimate Guide to Nonprofit Marketing
Nonprofit marketing is crucial to improve your cause, raise awareness, and engage your supporters.
It’s not uncommon for some nonprofits to focus so heavily on promoting their fundraising efforts, that they leave out time to engage with their organization’s largest group of stakeholders—their donors. Without nonprofit marketing, however, there is no way to steward current donors or cultivate new relationships.
In this guide, we’ll walk you through the foundation of nonprofit marketing, including how to leverage marketing for improved donor relations, mission expansion, and fundraising. We’ll explore these topics:
With these nonprofit marketing insights, you can create more effective campaigns to acquire new prospects and raise awareness for your brand. Let’s jump in with a brief overview of nonprofit marketing.
What is Nonprofit Marketing?
Nonprofit marketing is a mixture of strategies for nonprofits to spread awareness of their cause, raise money for their mission, and attract new prospects. Nonprofits base their marketing on quarterly or yearly goals, such as upselling recurring donations, boosting visibility for a particular project, or increasing volunteer engagement.
Without dedicated marketing strategies, a nonprofit would not be able to bring in new donors and other supporters, the very people their organization relies on to forward their cause.
For-Profit Marketing vs. Nonprofit Marketing
Marketing isn’t exclusive to the social good sector. On the contrary, effective marketing is integral to all for-profit and nonprofit organizations. Business owners can’t sell products consumers don’t know about, and nonprofits can’t collect donations without supporters who understand and care about their mission. Both types of organizations use marketing to keep supporters curious and engaged about the services they provide.
Clearly, there’s a decent amount of overlap between for-profit and nonprofit marketing—but where do these two strategies diverge? One of the biggest differences is that, as their name suggests, for-profit organizations’ goal is to make money. They want to sell their products or services regardless of the cost to their customers.
The goal of nonprofits, however, is carried out by educating supporters, stewarding their engagement, and using donations to carry on their mission. While business marketing is focused on selling, nonprofit marketing is about stewarding relationships between the nonprofit and its donors to build the ultimate support network for their cause.
Because of these differences, nonprofits need to find nonprofit marketing agencies that understand their unique needs, helping them to foster donor relationships and bring in new support for their missions.
Benefits of Marketing for Nonprofits
Marketing helps nonprofits show their personality, passion, and hard work to potential donors. From social media advertisements to direct mail campaigns, marketing outreach allows you to communicate why your mission is important and why donors should rally together to support you.
The most substantial benefits of marketing for nonprofits include:
Spreading awareness for your cause. Whether your organization is local or nationwide, awareness campaigns will reach people new to your cause, and you can in turn tap into their network of potential supporters.
Increased donor engagement. Creating informational materials targets potential donors to educate them about how they can help your cause and encourages them to start contributing.
Strong donor stewardship. Campaigns focused on current donors can help make them feel like a part of your nonprofit's efforts and encourage them to continue giving.
Increased revenue. With awareness campaigns and carefully fostered donor relationships, your organization will quickly see an increase in revenue. More support means more available funds to contribute to your organization's cause.
Nonprofit marketing tactics focus on managing donor relationships to ultimately grow your organization’s support network, increase funding, and aid your various projects and programs.
Marketing Roadblocks for Nonprofits
Nonprofits often sell themselves short because they don’t know how to express their brand identity and appeal to their core audiences. Additionally, they may have failed to establish strong marketing goals in the first place, or perhaps they have yet to identify their target audiences. Without the right research and direction, your nonprofit marketing materials may fall flat.
You may face any of these common roadblocks when you start marketing your nonprofit:
Weak branding. If donors don’t know who you are or what they’re donating to, they won’t feel comfortable sending their gifts.
Not understanding your support base. If you don’t know who your donors are and what they’re interested in, you won’t be able to connect with them effectively.
Not communicating with donors. Just because they donated once doesn’t mean they will continue to give. Keep donors updated on how you’re using their contributions and why you’re grateful for them.
Not using multiple methods of communication. With so many platforms and communication methods in our modern engagement landscape, it’s important to leverage multiple channels to effectively communicate your message to a wide swathe of supporters across different demographics.
Not using a CRM to collect enough donor data. Constituent relationship management (CRM) software allows you to easily collect, organize, and analyze donor data, a critical tool for identifying new prospects and otherwise enhancing your nonprofit marketing strategies.
Not partnering with a nonprofit marketing agency. Without a partner focused on setting tailored goals for your success, you may be marketing aimlessly and miss your mark for donor acquisition and retention.
Fortunately, there’s plenty you can do to overcome these challenges. With a solid marketing plan and the right strategies, your organization can find marketing success.
Top Marketing Strategies for Nonprofits
Communicating with current and potential donors is imperative to sustain donor relationships and spread awareness for your cause. But what channels and strategies should you use to keep your donors up-to-date on your nonprofit’s efforts?
Start with the most important marketing channels to acquire, steward, and retain donors:
Direct Mail
With the world increasingly moving towards digital these days, you may consider letting direct mail fall to the wayside in favor of other strategies. This could be a critical mistake!
In reality, direct mail is one of the strongest marketing strategies for nonprofits. Direct mail can have up to 90% open rates, meaning donors are more likely to read direct mail than email appeals for donations. Direct mail is a highly profitable personalized communication channel to connect with donors. An acknowledgment letter or update on your latest efforts can make all the difference to your new and recurring donors.
Email Marketing
While direct mail often performs better, incorporating email into your marketing plan is still critical to reaching donors online. As you build out an email strategy, make sure to create a variety of donor segments so that your emails are as tailored and relevant to each group as they can be.
Phone Calls
For mid-level and major donors, phone calls are a must to show your appreciation for their time and generous donation. Acknowledging these key donors is vital for retaining them, and phone calls allow you to let them know how their contributions impact your cause in a personal way. Phone calls from your leadership can make a long-lasting impression that gets donor relationships off on the right foot.
Social Media
Keep donors in the loop by posting regularly on social media platforms. This channel makes daily engagement easy and is a great place to start conversations about your cause. Especially if you have a lot of younger or tech-savvy donors, using the right social media platforms can make a big difference in engagement levels.
How to Create a Nonprofit Marketing Plan
Before diving into your marketing campaigns, create a detailed action plan that includes the different channels, goals, available resources, and other elements that make up your marketing strategies. To create your own, follow these five steps.
1. Start by Defining Your Goals
For the best results, tailor your nonprofit marketing plan toward the specific goals you’re trying to meet—such as increasing brand awareness, upselling recurring donors, recruiting volunteers, or gaining new donors.
Here are just a few key goals around which to structure your nonprofit marketing plan:
Donor Stewardship. Keep donors invested in your cause by staying in contact and offering them new ways to get involved. To plan these interactions, a stewardship matrix made by nonprofit marketing agencies can help your organization engage with donor segments in ways that they feel appreciated.
Donor Acquisition. If you’re not spreading awareness about your cause to the right audiences in compelling ways, it will be difficult to reach prospective donors and grow your base of support.
Event Success. Whether it’s event planning and partnership outreach, or promoting the event itself via direct mail, an effective marketing strategy can streamline the event process and increase ROI.
In addition to increasing your organization’s revenue, you might also consider goals like increasing membership, volunteer recruitment, or brand awareness. If you don’t know where to start, a nonprofit marketing agency can help you determine worthwhile goals and set you on the path to reaching them.
2. Reflect on Your Target Audience
From your goals, determine who your target audience is—this could be existing donors, a new demographic you want to access, or prospective volunteers.
Then, take a look at your data. Analyzing data on donors’ ages, location, engagement level, giving history, or volunteer status will help you determine target demographics and learn more about their interests. Compile demographic and engagement information and use these insights to inform your strategy.
For example, if your nonprofit has a large older adult support base but your marketing materials are all digital, you’ll know that you need to move in the direction of direct mail and other traditional channels to reach them.
3. Choose a Core Message
A good nonprofit marketing plan starts with educating potential supporters about your cause, continues with donor stewardship, and shows donors how you’re using their funding for good. However, to connect with donors on an emotional level, it’s important to center your campaign around a single core message.
Your core message should be a straightforward statement grounded in your overall mission. Remember to keep your mission and donors at the forefront of all communications. This builds donor confidence in your organization and can inspire an increase in donations.
4. Determine the Best Channels to Use
Next, choose the right marketing channels based on your target audience, resources, and goals. Look back at the strategies we discussed earlier to weigh the benefits of each core channel, then choose a variety to focus your efforts on.
As a reminder, you might choose from these common communication channels:
Direct mail
Email
Phone calls
Social media
By leveraging these communications channels, you can create a powerful multichannel marketing strategy that appeals to many donors with diverse and engaging content.
5. Analyze Campaign Performance
Data should always drive your strategy, so make sure to frequently analyze your marketing performance throughout your campaign. In particular, pay attention to performance metrics such as:
Response rates: This metric measures how many recipients respond to your direct mail, email, phone calls, and other outreach. High response rates can indicate that you’re effectively tailoring your outreach to your audience, while lower response rates may indicate you need to adjust your strategy.
Per-channel conversion rates: Nonprofits consider conversions as the times recipients take a desired action, such as making a donation or registering for an event. Monitor the rate of conversions for each of your core marketing channels to determine which ones are driving the most donations, and focus your attention there.
Online traffic and clicks: For your digital channels, the amount of traffic and clicks your marketing materials receive can indicate if they’re compelling for your audience. Use these metrics to show you which types of online communications resonate most with your target audience.
If you need help analyzing your data, reach out to a nonprofit marketing agency. They know exactly how to take actionable insights from your data, and they have a range of services that can see you through your entire marketing journey, including developing communication materials to build your donor relationships.
Nonprofit Marketing Tips to Find Lasting Success
Whether you’re looking for tips to better market your own organization or you’re researching how nonprofit marketing specialists can streamline your marketing efforts, implement these best practices for the best results:
1. Understand Your Donor Data
You may not know who your donors are unless you collect data from them. That’s why using data analytics to inform your marketing campaigns is key. Of course, while this is an important step in strategic marketing, it can be overwhelming for nonprofits to do themselves.
Start with collecting donor data from all your channels of communication to begin finding trends within your donor communications. Look for patterns like increased giving periods around holidays, times of day with higher email open rates, or the longevity of an annual donor’s membership. To gain even more insights from your data, partner with a marketing agency that’s well-versed in data analytics.
2. Focus on Storytelling
To pique the interest of potential, new, and longtime donors, storytelling should be at the heart of your communications and marketing efforts. Stand out from other nonprofits by humanizing your organization and making sure your supporters know that you’re passionate about fulfilling the mission and values you've set for yourselves.
What does storytelling look like in practice? Take a look at how Meyer Partners used storytelling to connect the Chicago “Loop” area with the Children’s Home & Aid by creating a multichannel marketing plan:
Here’s what the process of developing this marketing campaign looked like:
We used our nonprofit expertise to recognize the growth potential in marketing the Children’s Home & Aid’s annual Champions for Children Luncheon toward individual donors because it was already well known to local leaders and elected officials.
We crafted the message “This is what thriving looks like!” and paired it with smiling children’s faces to appeal to everyday people.
We used a variety of channels, including outdoor banners, digital campaigns, and radio station advertisements to share Children Home & Aid’s story.
Without our prior knowledge of the nonprofit sector, Meyer Partners wouldn’t have been able to create such an effective and adaptable plan tailored to the Children’s Home & Aid’s needs. Dive into more of our success stories to learn how we can use our expertise in nonprofit storytelling, donor cultivation, and multi-channel marketing to boost your donor relations.
3. Partner with a Nonprofit Marketing Agency
To effectively articulate your brand identity and mission goals, consider seeking out the help of marketing consultants.
Nonprofit marketing agencies are experts at conveying complex information in a striking and engaging way because they know how nonprofits work. As a result, they are well-equipped to convey your story, message, and goals to the world, amplifying your mission to touch the hearts and minds of people who didn’t know they would ever be supporters of your organization.
They also know how different demographics of donors respond to nonprofit messaging and how to best reach them. Additionally, they know what questions to ask. What are your core values? How do you use donations? What do you want people to know most about your mission? Who is your ideal donor? All of these qualities will help you acquire more donors and do more good.
Choosing a Nonprofit Marketing Agency
If you’re ready to seek out the help of experienced nonprofit marketing professionals, then take these steps to choose the right agency:
Speak to leadership. Before diving into your nonprofit marketing agency search, have a conversation with your organization's board of directors. Discuss your goals and present the benefits of working with a nonprofit marketing agency, such as increased revenue, stronger brand recognition, and a more engaged support network.
Determine a budget range. Potential agencies will often create a sample plan or proposal for you to consider, so it’s important to have a budget range ready. This will help your team to better discuss needs and expectations with prospective agencies.
Do your research. Be sure that agencies align with your core values, understand your mission, and are willing to compromise. Don’t be afraid to ask questions, especially about their current clients and references.
Compare options. Compare different nonprofit marketing agencies to assess which may be the best match. Look for agencies with experience in your cause area, proven results, and glowing references. This will help you understand what options are available to you and give you an idea of how different agencies will tackle your problems.
Start your nonprofit marketing journey. Once you’ve narrowed your options based on budget, goal, and culture alignment, start your nonprofit marketing journey! Reach out and have a thorough discussion with your chosen agency to gain a complete understanding of their services, fees, and important details relating to your partnership. For example, Meyer Partners offers a free hour of consultation that you can schedule today.
After choosing a nonprofit marketing agency, communicate regularly and give them full trust to help your organization grow. The right agency will be sure to steer you in the right direction.
Wrapping Up
Whether you market your own organization or seek outside help, be sure to fully commit to completing a goal once your plan is in motion. Trust your team, return to your goals often, and stay in frequent communication to get the best results.
For more information on nonprofit marketing, communication, and fundraising best practices, explore some of our other valuable resources:
Donor Acquisition: The Complete Guide to Attracting New Donors. Enhance your marketing plans with a detailed explanation of the top donor acquisition strategies.
Direct Mail Fundraising for Nonprofits: Tips & Top Providers. Direct mail is a crucial strategy for effective fundraising and donor engagement. Learn how to improve your direct mail efforts in this guide.
Top 11 Professional Fundraising Consultants & How to Choose. Looking to improve more than just your marketing efforts? These experts can help you develop all aspects of your operations.
