Let Your Cause Be Heard! Digital Marketing for Non-Profits

Push10 has worked with non-profits of all shapes and sizes, creating compelling brands, websites, and marketing tactics, and one thing is for sure – these clients are passionate about what they do. However, the challenge is to communicate that passion in an effective way that ultimately advances their cause.

So, how can non-profits move from crafting their mission to marketing their mission? When an organization is working with a limited budget, or lacks the opportunity for a high-profile spokesperson or major sponsorship, leveraging digital marketing platforms can be a critical tool in reaching new supporters. Digital Marketing for non-profit organizations should be:

Informative

Each organization starts with a purpose to fight for something you know and love. But how do you get people to join your fight for a cause they know so little about? Information. Give the background on your cause – where did it begin? Who and where is affected by it? How did you get involved? Providing a background story on the cause beyond your organizations’ personal efforts, helps people to understand the magnitude of the issue at hand.

Accessible

In today’s world — people are always on the go. That’s why it is imperative that you make your NPO accessible! Having an up-to-date, responsive website is one way to be accessible. A responsive website means that the design and development of the website are created in a way that responds to the user’s behavior and environment based on screen size, platform, orientation, and browser.  In short, the usability, functionality, and look of your site should hold up no matter where it is accessed.
Don’t forget to have necessary call-to-action features that allow those interested to participate in minimal clicks! Common CTAs like donation buttons, landing pages, email newsletter sign-up boxes, and events calendars provide numerous channels for your visitors to interact with the website and commit learning more.

Engaging!

In addition to keeping your community up to date with an on-going blog, videos are a highly effective way to build visitor engagement. They can convey a lot in less than a minute or two. To get the most value from your videos, aim for a sharp imagery/photography and a good balance of text, visual, and audio that tells your philanthropy’s story. Additionally, hosting those video on an external platform like Youtube or Vimeo can keep from bogging down your server, and helps with your SEO as well! The below video, from the homepage of our client Geneva Global, serves as good example of how to utilize video for you NPO.

Engaging through social media is another potent way to get your cause noticed and build a community of supporters. Want proof? Take a look at local Philadelphia non-profit Emily’s Entourage. This incredible organization, started by friends and family of Emily Kramer-Golinkoff, hopes to find a cure for her and thousands of others suffering from Cystic Fibrosis.

In order to really connect with their audience, the founders of the organization – Emily’s friends and family – created a video. Through the promotion of this video and the recognizable EE purple t-shirts on social media and other digital platforms, Emily’s Entourage built an astonishing following and continues to grow – raising millions of dollars to find a cure for Cystic Fibrosis.

Whether it’s creating a Twitter account or uploading a video clip from your latest fund-raising event, there is no denying the power digital marketing has for non-profits.