Insights
Our guest writer, Daniel Martin from ArcStone, explores the essential marketing strategies that charities can adopt to increase awareness
Awareness creation is critical for the non-profit sector. Charities must maintain top-of-mind awareness with target audiences and your messaging must also convince them to support or donate to your cause. It requires subtle cues that will inspire potential donors – and repeat donors – to take the action you desire.
Unfortunately, unlike e-commerce businesses, the budget for charities is often tight. The good news, though, is that there are plenty of easy and efficient ways to raise awareness without spending too much money.
Here we show you some fantastic strategies to kick-start your journey.
Any organisation operating in the digital space needs a website. They are not expensive to set up and they provide a fantastic avenue to showcase the work of your organisation. Websites also increase charity credibility.
Donors will most likely search the organisation before they can give you money. If you do not have an online presence, they may question the reputation of the charity and reconsider the donation.
Also, with a website, you can engage with existing and new donors by creating interactive content to capture interest from audiences. Through the creation of interesting and inspiring content, you can expand your reach and build your database. With the right integrations, users can make donations via the website, freeing charity staff from having to handle such tasks. It also allows for transparency, which is critical for building trust.
Content marketing uses blogs, videos, case studies, white papers, and much more. Pay attention to what you share. It should be relevant to the target audiences while promoting your cause as this is becoming a more relevant non-profit digital marketing strategy each year.
Focus on search engine optimisation with the use of relevant keywords. It increases your visibility to the search crawlers. Charities can benefit from good rankings on the search engines, especially Google.
Link building is also a powerful technique. It can help position you as an authority in your field and results in greater credibility. Link building can be challenging, though. Consider it an investment to hire outreach blogger services to do it for you. The aim is to land on high authority websites, resulting in higher traffic to your site.
Ensure you have a solid social media strategy to maximise potential. Decide on the platforms you want to use depending on where your audiences are and develop engaging and shareable content that suits the chose platform.
Link your social platforms to your website. It is a sound way of building an organic following. Ensure consistency with your posts so that your pages do not lie idle and consider investing in a platform that allows social media scheduling. Part of your budget should go to boosting some of the essential platforms, which will increase reach and visibility.
Platforms like Facebook have a Donate Now button for non-profits.
Invest in videos for better engagement and interaction. Finally, make sure you engage with the audience. Encourage them to like, comment, share, and subscribe to your platforms.
Email Marketing can be inexpensive and effective. Start by having a contact list. Segment it depending on the criteria you decide. Next, come up with relevant messaging that targets different audiences.
Do not bombard the recipients with emails. They could end up sending them to the junk folder. Come up with catchy content and compelling headlines to increase open rates. Keep the emails short and easy to digest.
Networking provides a way to meet potential donors face-to-face. Seek out social events that you can take part in, whether in the virtual sphere or in-person as social distancing restrictions are eased.
You can also host community projects, such as clean-ups, mentorship days, or sports activities.
Many business will want to partner with you for such events. Consider approaching them and demonstrating the value they will get by participating in such events.
Get to know local journalists who cover human interest stories. Become the go-to source for information. Share with them newsworthy material, press releases, and editorial.
The media may attribute the stories to you by mentioning your name and organisation, which helps to raise awareness of your work. One advantage is that an appearance in print and TV will likely lead to an appearance online, too. Using Earned PR provides great opportunities for non-profits.
Find a way to thank your donors for contributing to your causes. The reality is some donors may want some recognition for what they’re doing.
Help them to illustrate their philanthropic side by recognising their contributions. You can do this in various ways. Send out press releases that thank them, for example. Include them in the newsletters and email marketing content.
Give them a place of prominence on your website. Host special events for top donors. It may surprise you how well the donors receive such recognition.
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