Online Marketing Resources for Nonprofits
If you are a nonprofit organization, you know how difficult it can be to market your cause. You want potential supporters to know about your cause, but getting your organization noticed on the web can be difficult and expensive. Fortunately there are many options available to nonprofits to assist with their advertising and marketing efforts. If you have any questions or need assistance with marketing your nonprofit on the web, please contact us. We love working with nonprofits and being a part of a greater cause.
Google Grants for Adwords
Adwords is the primary advertising platform for Google. You have probably seen ads in the search results above the organic results and local listings. Adwords ad positioning is based upon a bidding system, with the highest most qualified bidder obtaining the best visibility (higher page position.) The bidding competition can be fierce and expensive. It can be difficult to find funding for marketing as a nonprofit, but Google will let you advertise in their ad space for free.
Google Grants allows qualifying nonprofit organizations to apply for advertising grants which allow a certain amount of free advertising each month. Your nonprofit can be advertised on the largest, most popular ad platform on the web free of charge.
Video Marketing and YouTube Advantages for Nonprofit Organizations
Showing your organization’s passion to the world through the effective use of video can really help bring your mission to life for people who may join your cause. Nonprofits have some advantages in the field of video marketing because the passion of their people, or the people they help, can easily be seen by viewers. There are a number of options available for nonprofits and charities on YouTube.
YouTube for Nonprofits has many options available to nonprofit and charity organizations who share their videos on YouTube. One of the biggest problems with video marketing is a lack of outreach. Your mission can’t gather a following if people don’t know about it, and if they never see your video you could have spent a lot of time developing a great channel with little return on your time invested. We can assist with video outreach and have experience using social media channels and other options to get viewers to hear about your cause.
YouTube for nonprofits also makes it easy to receive donations directly from your channel using the Donate card. In order to receive donations through your YouTube channel, you will need a Google Wallet set up and verified using the same account you use with your channel. Taking donations directly from your videos is a powerful way to gain funding for your cause. Google Analytics integration also allows you to easily track and monitor user interaction and donations over time, giving you viewer data and tracking your fundraising over time.
In addition to being allowed to set up a Donate card directly in your video, YouTube allows nonprofits to create calls to action directly within their videos which is normally a paid service for advertisers. The call to action can be a link to more information about your cause or can be a link to share the video on social channels such as Facebook.
If you are running an event or conference, you can also stream live video to your YouTube channel during the event which can be extremely useful for time sensitive fundraising or awareness events.
Donations and Social Media
Social media is a wonderful tool for nonprofits and charities. Having a cause that makes people passionate and supportive means that they will readily share your content to provide your organization with additional visibility which means your message reaches more potential supporters. More supporters means more donations and awareness to your cause.
There are many options available for receiving donations via Facebook. There are several Facebook apps like DonateApp and JustGiving that can assist you in taking donations via Facebook. However, keep in mind that some apps take a small piece of your donations to pay for the service so you will want to examine the fine print to find out what you are signing up for.
The best thing about marketing your charity or nonprofit on Facebook is that you can easily find people by looking at their interests. Their interests may closely align with your charity or nonprofit, and you can easily advertise to those users by interest group in Facebook. A better targeted ad group means a more effective marketing campaign at a much lower cost per conversion. It’s easy to test an ad in Facebook well, and analytics allows you to track how well it has performed quickly to know if it’s something you should continue.
Donations and the Mobile Market
There are some great resources out there you can use to receive donations via text. For example sites like JustGiving or Razoo make it relatively easy to set up a donation campaign. You can use many of these sites to set up text to donate. You can learn more about text to donate here.
Text to donate can be particularly useful to include in print materials or at conferences or events where people may not have access to a computer but will most likely have their phone. If you are marketing online only, it may not be the best choice for fundraising, but can provide an additional channel through which you can receive funding.
Exchanging Your Expertise for Visibility
If you provide some kind of expert knowledge or material that people may want, such as an ebook, guide, or other content that people could find useful, then you can leverage that for additional exposure. For example you can use something like Pay With Tweet to ask a visitor to share something via their Twitter account in order to get free access to whatever it is you are offering. This can be especially useful if you write guides, books, or other content related to your organization or cause.
Other Ways to Get Visitors to Share Your Content
One of the most shared types of content on social media channels is quiz content. It may seem a bit contrived or hokey, but it is effective at getting your organization or fundraising efforts greater visibility. For example if you were promoting an organization that focuses on cleaning the environment, you might create a shareable quiz like “How environmentally conscious are you?” When people share those results, others take the quiz. This is a great way to raise awareness to a new audience of potential followers. The key is in finding the right kind of question that piques interest and relates very closely with your nonprofit organization’s cause.
Need Help Promoting and Marketing Your Nonprofit or Charity?
Our team has experience promoting businesses through social channels, websites, YouTube channels, email campaigns and just about every other digital avenue available. Additionally we have experience building websites and creating a full campaign strategy to get our clients noticed. Please don’t hesitate to reach out to us with any questions you may have, and if you think we may be helpful in your campaign please contact us. We provide an initial consultation absolutely free of charge.