Friday Five 026: Creating a Digital Marketing Strategy

What is the Friday Five?

Each Friday, we will be answering your most pressing questions from our Digital Marketing for Nonprofits Facebook group. If we don’t cover a challenge that you or your nonprofit colleagues are facing, drop us a comment below or tweet us @CommunityBoost and we’ll add it to the queue. 

Let’s dive in! 

Nonprofit Marketing Challenges

1) Your Biggest Marketing Challenge: “Creating a digital marketing strategy.” – Esharan, READWS

Our Solution: We recommend the P.O.S.T. method. P stands for your persona, so really understanding the key audiences you’re targeting in this digital strategy. Next is your objective. What quantifiable goals are you trying to achieve? And then we get into strategy where you set the scope, the time of the campaigns, determine the costs, budgets and resources. And then really thinking through your T, which stands for tools. Do you need to be building certain things on the website and which channels, like Facebook, Google ads, email, etc. are most important? That’s a great jumping off point. Then from there it’s all about timelines and accountability, as well as checking in and pivoting as you see fit.

2) Your Biggest Marketing Challenge: “Engaging with new people through email and Facebook. ”- Jami,  Covone Ministries

Our Solution: Email is more about lifetime value and increasing retention. If you’re looking to build your email list, you’ll often need more traffic to your site from quality visitors that don’t know your brand. The best way to send non-branded traffic to your site is through the Google Ad Grant. And you can use that $10,000 every month to do that.

As far as engaging people on Facebook, it’s all about posting content on a regular basis and encouraging comments. If you’re looking to just use that overall channel the fastest way, it’s becoming a pay to play platform, but we would really look into investing in testing Facebook and Instagram ads. We’re seeing tremendous results. 

3) Your Biggest Marketing Challenge: “After connecting, how do we get the follow through for a donation.” – Merry, Shootout For Soldiers

Our Solution: Go back to the basics of storytelling. Focus on your messaging, the value proposition, and how you can create urgency. Think about the three Ts. Is your ask transparent? Is it tangible? Do they know what’s going to happen if they give? And then really taking control and telling them exactly how much, what we need them to do and when to give. And if you work on that, you know, that can be really helpful. Then you start to figure out what works, but it’s likely some improvements and messaging can go a long way. 

4) Your Biggest Marketing Challenge: “Getting started, knowing what is an appropriate budget, and understanding what kind of ad will resonate with our supporters.” – Amy, Baby Carriers Provided

Our Solution: Marketing is a fast-moving field, but there are tons of resources out there to help you. If you don’t know how to do something, there’s often an article online or a YouTube video that can explain how to do it. From there, you just have to be a practitioner. Practicing things yourself is the best way to get better at them and learn over time. As for an appropriate budget, start small. Test out a few different things to see what gets results. Facebook is a great place to start for this. You can use their hyper-targeting to reach a lot of people often with not too large of a budget. Don’t get discouraged! These things take time to figure out, but putting in the work and learning along the way will ultimately get you the results you are looking for. 

Cameron Ripley