Nonprofits today face many challenges. With increasing numbers of organizations operating in crowded issue spaces and competing for shrinking funding, nonprofits must find ways to set themselves apart from the rest. Organizations that lack a clear marketing strategy will always have a hard time getting the attention of key stakeholders in the community and, more importantly, raising funds. Below are some quick tips to help guide your non-profit in the right direction.
Non-Profit Marketing Tips
- Build Your Brand– a brand can be anything involving your logo, slogan/tagline, mission statement, and/or spokesperson that represents the organization. Too many times have we seen a sloppy logo (that kills me) that doesn’t even represent what the organization does. It must be a clear and creative visual that the viewer can immediately understand. Great examples of this are the American Red Cross and Feed the Children. Each logo is simple and it is understood exactly where your money will go, should you decide to donate. Also, use a tagline to briefly describe the mission. Example: Computers in every classroom. In 4 words we know what their goal is and the work they do in the community. Be Creative.
- Effectively Tell Your Story– by this I don’t mean to write a really nice paragraph about the organization that includes some great statistics proving there is a problem. I mean really tell the story of the amazing impact you and your organization are making on a daily basis. Change lives? Great! Tell us about it! Create a video that shows real people with real problems, where your non-profit came in to make a difference. People love watching and reading about these stories and will either 1) share the story with others or 2) donate to your organization. If you are unable to do video production, you can always get written testimonials from your current members and use them on your website and social media. These are also great to share in a weekly email blast to remind people that you are continuously working hard in the community to make a difference. Testimonials are powerful for storytelling, use them!
- Show Your Credibility– donors want to know that you can be trusted and have solid management practices so that their money is put to good use. Create a cool way to display the amount of money raised or needed and what it will go towards. Infographics are very creative and can display large amounts of information in a design. You can pull information from your Annual Report, which also requires great creativity, to display in the infographic. Also, share who your Board of Directors is directly near your donation button. Don’t have a LARGE donation button on the homepage? Get one immediately.
- Create a Marketing Map– map out all of your marketing strategies to keep organized. Email blasts, social media, videos, annual report mail outs, public relations, events, etc. Marketing consists of many elements working together on a continual basis in order to achieve the overall goal. After creating your map, create a marketing calendar to write down when these strategies will be launched and delegate who will be in charge of executing what is on the calendar.
Should you need any help with your marketing strategy, we are here for you at HeartFire Media. From video production, branding, web development, we can take care of it all. We understand that a non-profit budget can be tight and make you feel unable to do creative marketing, but I am here to tell you, you can’t afford not to invest in it. We love helping the community in any way we can and would be more than happy to do over the phone consultations at any time. Please let me know how we can be of service.
Love Always,
Samantha Najera
1 Thessalonians 5:15-18 ” Be joyful always; pray continually; give thanks in all circumstances, for this is God’s will for you in Christ Jesus.”
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