The 52 Marketing Tactincs for NPOs:

The nonprofit world can be as exciting as any other entrepreneurial venture, so long you make the best use of marketing to grow your audience and boost fundraising to the max.

My team and I are happy to offer this special list of 52 marketing techniques to make your limited budget and resources last longer. Depending on your niche, audience and ingenuity, it is possible that your campaigns become viral. Going viral is the holy grail of marketing – put in $100 and get more than that back in the form of donations or any other revenue stream that is part of your service or offer.

Here we go:

Branding

1. Your name should speak out loud and clear. In case your NPO is already up and running, skip to #2. If you are just starting up – perfect – we have even more excellent materials to make your life easier – just sign up for our emails to start.
2. Have your unique branded tag-line. You need to be recognized easily and in a way that sticks into the minds of your website visitors or supporters. I know it’s trivial, but an excellent one-liner can make the whole difference.
3. The design of your brand logo is as important. You want to be recognized and your logo is usually the first thing that people see. In marketing, it usually take 7-8 touch points before your visitors open up their wallet – in the NPO world – for donations. Having a great logo that speaks out loud of your purpose can help shorten the distance. The best is to work on at least 3 versions of the logo and we strongly suggest test it out in real world conditions. The simplest way to go about it is ask people in the social network what they think.
4. Let the world know what you do best. This way they know for sure supporting you makes sense. If you are just starting out – test your message/offer in a trial campaign and then let the world know what you achieved.
5. Be as humane as possible. You don’t want to be an organization. You want to be a team – a collaboration – for the greater good. Let your team members engage with your audience – in social media, or elsewhere. Start by introducing the team and talking about your strengths, passion and background in a concise way.
6. Expand engagement with your story. Let the world know where you are coming from. Why you are tackling this specific problem. Tell them what your solution is and prove it works.
7. Keep the story going and flowing! Good storytelling can offset any other marketing tactic. Some of the best marketers out there that are for hire focus exactly on this – excellent storytelling. You have all the freedom of expression – text, video, visuals – your imagination is the only limit.

Website

8. Get a domain name that can do the job on its own. This is tricky as options can be numerous plus you need to decide whether to use a search friendly domain name or a brand name. You brand name should be easy to memorize and type and if you get people to remember you then they will always search your name or type your domain name directly in the browser. You can use a search-friendly domain name such as DonateComputerPower. This can potentially make it easy for people to find you in search when they type donate or donate computer or donate power. Think about it and do more research – keyword research and competitor research.
9. Keyword and competitor research. Keyword research is great to discover how many people are actually searching for what you offer as a Nonprofit. Competitor research will give you a better idea how to position yourself and maybe even consider more niche activities. You can use tools to simulate search result pages in a specific location, if your focus is local, not national or international.
10. Professional, cause-centric website with clear calls to action. Spy on your competitors (or in the world of Nonprofits – your colleagues). See what they do best, copy and improve with your personal brand and touch.
11. Optimize for conversions. I’m a big fan of landing page optimizations and can’t stress enough how important this is. Your main goal is to leave as few “clickable” distractions and emphasize to THE MOST IMPORTANT THING that needs to happen when someone visits your Nonprofit website.
12. Design is very important. Work with great designers or become a designer by reading, learning, testing and re-iterating. An excellent design does not have to be flashy, it has to make visitor/donor’s life: easy, happy, assured that you are doing good and you deserve his or her money. The design should convey feelings!
13. Copywriting. ULTRA IMPORTANT. Think of copywriting from a designer’s perspective (that’s just one way). Think of it from many perspectives! You can play with feelings as much as you like – as much as you can. After you make sure people trust you – make your website visitor reluctant to leave without doing the right thing. Test, repeat … until perfect.
14. Site speed & best practice. To get discovered more easily, make your site fast. You should look for tools or professional help to try and hit the golden middle between speed and needed functionality. There are many tools that measure site speed and give you recommendations on what to do.

Social media

15. Focus on the social media channels where your target audience is active. If your nonprofit is for example active with professionals volunteering for a cause, then you should focus on a professional network. If your audience is more general – then focus on the network with the most people.
16. Look for questions or engage these people! People may not comment or like, but they do read through the comments. This is a unique opportunity to convince your followers on the actual results you are doing or show your brand personality by being nice and helpful.
17. Welcome any critique and act upon it! This is a unique opportunity to turn any negative comment or person into a true loyal advocate of your cause or NPO. Actually, even if you can’t convert them others will read and appreciate that you are being engaged and transparent.
18. Share your progress regularly. Content is asset. The best content is motivational and result-based content. Send out your progress updates in every channel that utilize and engage your audience with questions or feedback requests.
19. Use visuals – VIDEO Works best! This may sound old, but a picture is worth a thousand words. Then video is worth so much more. The best content is video – period. It’s so much easier to consume content and learn from videos. Get every opportunity you to create these and engage your people. If you don’t use a professional video creation services – it will take time to improve your skills & style. There are a ton of free and paid tools to help on your journey – keep experimenting.
20. What makes your audience feel good? On your online marketing journey you will discover that there are particular topics and content that excites your viewers and makes them feel good. Research, experiment & discover what it is and talk to people about it!
21. Learn to engage your audience. Learn from your favorite brands and apply what they are doing! See what sparks conversations, what prompts likes and shares! Replicate and test with your own branding and cause. Getting direct feedback and advice from your followers is super important – the same principle applies for any entrepreneurial endeavor – discover the problem and find out the best ways to solve it!
22. Giving emotions! Your Nonprofit has a cause – you are passionate about it – your followers know that and follow you for the following: They need positive emotions and you can give them that! Doing your work successfully is just part of the deal – present what you did and test what works best for creating positive emotions. This can increase current or bring new donations timely.
23. Look for brand new social networks and media channels. There are numbers and numbers of new social networks – social concepts around niche topics. Some focus on audio, some focus on video, some are publishing networks. Go explore new and cool concepts and start experimenting. Getting early on this new social network is very important as you can benefit from additional promo exposure and actually build an audience easier than well-established venues.

Advertising

24. Never use the express start options! These are given to you to launch your ads quickly and easily, but it is bad for your wallet. Advertising is like science – you have to test and try multiple times and recipes. You need to test ad copy, visuals, calls to action – and once perfect – there is always more that you can do to improve your results!
25. A/B testing is very important. Testing can be overwhelming, but is the only way to improve results. Depending on which network you advertise you will have options to test different versions of your ads.
26. Optimize ad text. We, marketers know that a single word change can make the whole difference between a profitable and a non-profitable campaign. As usual – test, repeat, perfect.
27. Optimize text banners / images. Having a man or a woman in the picture you advertise? I can’t give you the answer as you also need to test and discover what converts best for your brand and audience. Marketers know this: Babies always win! Also cure animals do a great job!
28. Buy advertising space on websites your audience is likely to visit. Consider buying and testing native ads and ads on websites that attract your potential target audience. Display ads can also be a cheaper exposure than search ads. Test, repeat, perfect.
29. Sell products like t-shirts with your brand visible. You can even give these item free at events or as a thank you gift when you receive donations for your cause. To boost your Nonprofit’s revenue you can sell these items directly from your website or online marketplaces. It’s a great free advertising once you have these people wearing your branded products. It’s also an exposure outside of the virtual space.
30. Find the best audience. You get different options to discover your advertising audience. Depending on the venue you advertise, you have different options to nail down who are your best NPO supporters. Test how different audiences bring in results – donations or volunteers – and expand your reach or positioning.
31. Learn continuously. Take free online courses, take paid online courses, attend seminars, webinars, read and watch instructional videos. Experts continuously discover new techniques, test new ideas and reveal best practices. To learn even more on how to startup a Nonprofit – join our mail list for some very special resources.

Content

32. Repurposing of content. Sometimes it’s not easy to come up with good quality content. If you get stuck, see what worked for you best in the past – get that content and make it into smaller pieces, expand it if it was a large piece, create graphics around a text article or vice versa. Depending on where you are sharing this content there maybe benefits or drawbacks. It will be mostly benefits as you are not using the same content. If you use the same content to re-post, you can get additional exposure and in the most cases will not be penalized. Do more research on what works best in your desired media space.
33. Video content. Mentioned earlier, but I can’t stress enough how important it is to focus on video content. Social networks, when given a picture and a video, will always prefer to show videos. It has more weight in the algorithms and is the preferred media when deciding who gets served what.
34. Don’t go for stock photos. Use your unique pictures. What works best is presenting results in pictures. Have your co-workers in pictures, share pictures of the happiness your nonprofit creates. Share and send pictures that brighten people’s day and make them smile.
35. Infographics are even better than pictures, because they draw s more strategic picture for your readers or supporters. It is also more educational and clear as to how exactly you are achieving your noble goals. There free tolls and graphics online that you can use as templates or of course you can work with a graphic designer who can visualize your concept in a nice and catchy way.

Events

36. Giving Tuesday campaign. This is an international giving campaign – hash-tagged and branded as a large-scale initiative. It is the Tuesday after American Thanksgiving and you are more than welcome to employ this branding once a year for your fundraisers.
37. Offline events. Once you know who your supporters (donors and volunteers) are – and more precisely where they are located – you can start planning offline events. These can be pub crawls, cleaning or tree-planting initiatives or performances of all sorts. As a marketing tactic you can go outside of your main niche and organize an event that will help a needy group. This is a great way to get exposure to donors of other causes!
38. Online events. Online events can take many forms – online video interviews, video series, written interviews, webinars, podcasts and … be creative and create an initiative that will reach people online. Be resourceful and combine any event with exposure in your other channels and partner networks.
39. Create online webinars. This will help you engage people by showing progress, show how you use donations and being transparent. This is also a great way to create content that can later be re-purposed.
40. Match your Nonprofit cause with any upcoming national and international holidays. It can always be smart and pay off to schedule a fundraiser event or a campaign in the spirit of holidays and good mood. You can do schedule it well in advance with the right partnerships and even better – make it a yearly campaign for your fundraisers or volunteering needs.
41. Enable your supporters to organize fundraiser events. You can find online tools and service providers that will equip you with the digital tools to organize and promote a fundraiser for your cause. These platforms are also good because they can bring additional exposure to your NPO brand and if you carefully plan your campaign, you can get a real boost – if platform is algorithmically based and you manage to bring enough engagement.

Partnerships

42. Who are people in your vicinity that serve the same purpose? Staying focused within your niche target audience is as valuable as attracting donors or volunteers through affiliation with causes beyond your specialty. As you should already have some network of connections – ask your followers who they can refer. Getting people referred is the best way to converting them to donors or volunteers for your cause.
43. Do you know celebrities that support your cause? This was coming in naturally – especially if you plan to expand nationwide or international. Celebrities and influencers have the authority and power to easily convince people to join any cult – in this case a nonprofit initiative that helps people.
44. Reach out to influencers. This is exactly like working with a celebrity to promote your Nonprofit, but their reach tends to be smaller and more niche. Partnering with such people is more time consuming, but their influence is a great as that of a celebrity, just for their particular audience.
45. Reach out to businesses. Help them become more socially responsible. It’s a win-win strategy to get volunteers, donations, new brand ambassadors, while the corporation can also win for being cause-centric.
46. Bloggers. Bloggers are also type of infuencers. Even if you can’t strike a promo deal with them, it is easy to get a link referral, which can strengthen your Search Engine Optimization (SEO).
47. Vloggers. Similar to bloggers, but who produce video content. You can discover vloggers in video platforms, social networks that display video media or just do a search.
48. Exchange best practices with other organizations like yours from other regions. There are not supposed to be competitors in the Nonprofit world, because our goal is to influence a positive change collaboratively. It’s strategic to partner with and learn from others who have access to audiences in different geographic regions.
49. Discover potential partner nonprofits that complements your offering. Here is a super simplified example – you want to do offline promo, you decide to print branded garment like t-shirts – then you look for a nonprofit instead of a business that will fulfill your orders. Maybe this is a fair-trade supporter or someone who provides environment-friendly garments only. This makes it a win-win.
50. Find businesses or other NPOs that will cross-promote your Nonprofit brand. Be strategic. Look for new ideas and for businesses that show interest in being socially responsible. It’s becoming more and more lucrative for companies to present a socially- or environmentally-conscious behavior. Negotiate and find a way to partner and cross-promote each other. It’s a win-win again.

Even more

51. SUPER SPECIAL NPO offers – free or reduced cost services and tools by some of the largest marketing and software brands. We have prepared an extensive list of discounted offers if you already have established your NPO. Just sign up for our emails and we will send it your way.
52. SUPER SPECIAL NPO for starting up as an NPO. Thinking of starting up as a Nonprofit? This is awesome and you need all the support to achieve your goals and support your cause! Join our mail list and we will send you even more great tactics on how to do that in the most efficient way!