Nonprofit organizations usually don’t like to talk about marketing or branding, but the truth is that successful nonprofit organizations are run just like major companies.

They spend a lot of time creating an attractive brand for themselves and employ some of the same marketing tactics major businesses use when trying to attract donors. 

If you refuse to use or learn about the latest marketing techniques, the people you are trying to help will eventually have to pay the price.

Let’s take a look at a few digital marketing techniques you can use as a nonprofit organization.

Marketing For Nonprofit Organizations: Best Practices

1. Donor database segmenting

One of the things you have to do as a nonprofit organization is to separate your biggest donors from the rest and approach them differently. You should not see this as being greedy, as big donors will be the main drive behind your efforts. So, you must nurture them and make them feel special to enhance donor retention.

Another aspect of dealing with big donors is defining how you communicate with them. If you speak to them as you speak to all your other donors, they might feel like you don’t truly value their donations, and they will start asking themselves if you’re a serious organization.

This is why you need to have a neatly organized database of all your donors and classify them based on how much they’ve donated and how often. This can be done by using Givebutter’s fundraising platform or the Donobox fundraising platform, for instance. However, there are also other specialized CRM solutions for nonprofits, such as Virtuous, which cater specifically to their needs. Virtuous not only provides innovative tools for donor management and fundraising but also helps align your team’s efforts with the expectations and preferences of your donors. With software like this, your nonprofit can create more responsive donor experiences and significantly boost giving.

Not only these platforms allow you to send personalized fundraising forms to your top donors, but it also has an integrated CRM that lets you track engagement, segment your list, and follow up correctly. It will also make managing your internal finances easier and allow you to manage help tickets from one single interface.

2. Master SEO

SEO is the art of making your website more visible on search engines. Some people think that SEO is about manipulating search engines, but it’s mainly about serving content that is highly relevant to what people are searching for.

Search engines used to rely heavily on things like keyword density to rank websites, but as they noticed that people were trying to game the system by using all sorts of iterations of different keywords, they started using artificial intelligence and machine learning to figure out the context in which certain keywords were used and sniff out sites that used them unnaturally. The datasets are analyzed by complex ML models operating with complex systems and activation functions.

Keyword research is still important, however, but you have to use your main keywords as a theme for your content and don’t try to stuff your pages full of them.

If you want your site to rank well on search engines, you have to focus on SEO writing and provide the best experience to your visitors as search engines use human behavior to gauge whether a site is relevant to their searches.

Your site also needs to be updated regularly and have fresh content. One of the easiest ways to do that would be to have an active blog and create high-quality articles. A blog can be an extremely powerful tool for a nonprofit. It can be used to form a direct connection between the people or communities that will benefit from your actions and the public. It can also be used to take people behind the scenes and show some transparency. 

Link building is also important for SEO, and you will have to do everything in your power to get your links on relevant sites related to your niche. This can be done through outreach marketing strategies, guest posting, press releases, and constantly releasing fresh content through the right channels.

3. Use PPC

Another tactic you should look at as a nonprofit organization is PPC marketing. PPC marketing is when someone bids on specific keywords and has ads displayed whenever someone searches for that keyword in a search engine. You can also elect to have your ad displayed on sites that are related to the keywords you bid on.

The best thing about PPC marketing is that you only pay when people click on an ad. The tricky part, however, is that you have to be able to tell how much you are willing to pay per donor and how many of the people who click on your ads will end up donating.

The good news here is that PPC is much more forgiving for nonprofits than for most companies as there is not as much competition in that space. So, start experimenting with the different networks out there and see what works. We suggest that you start with Facebook’s ad network since its advanced targeting features are perfect for nonprofits. 

Conclusion

These are tips all nonprofits should use to spread awareness through marketing. The key is to have clear objectives, monitor your efforts and their results, and replicate what works.