What Nonprofits Can Learn from Modern Marketing Programs

Just because an organization is a nonprofit doesn’t mean that marketing isn’t important for its work. In fact, marketing may be more significant because nonprofit organizations require every opportunity to amplify their causes, encourage donations, and attract volunteers.

Some nonprofits have salaried workers to keep the organization operational and sustainable in the long run. In further efforts to boost “livable wages” and attract talent, around 80% of nonprofits even expect to offer a cost of living wage increase to their support staff.

Efficient marketing is what raises funds, and this supports the organization’s members and its cause as a whole. Below are some tips that nonprofits can adopt from modern marketing programs.

What do Marketing Programs Cover?

Gone are the days when marketing was a secondary need for nonprofits. Instead, a post on the direct relationship between marketing and productivity labels marketing as a smart investment that contributes value in the future, especially for emerging markets. The field of marketing has thereby changed to maximize this relationship.

Philip Kotler, sometimes known as the Father of Marketing, explains how “marketing” in the 1900s simply described activities and institutions taking place in markets. Textbooks and curriculums used to limit themselves to this description, instead of understanding marketing's connection with economics, behavioral science, and even organizational science.

With the rise of big data, social media, and sophisticated e-commerce in the digital age, marketing programs had to adjust. A modern marketing degree covers several topics accordingly, from digital and interactive marketing, consumer behavior, managerial accounting, to even statistics. These skills are now seen as essential, especially in a competitive field.

A command of these different topics, as well as the ability to stay up-to-date on trends in the industry, is what sets successful campaigns apart from the rest. And a successful campaign is essential to keeping a nonprofit’s cause running.

The Importance of Digital Marketing

Once, digital was seen as an alternative way to market, as opposed to mainstream marketing. However, recent studies have shown an increased acceptance that digital marketing is now the norm. This led to transforming propositions, processes, and partnerships, as digitalization affects every aspect of a firm and its business model.

Why? In the digital age, most people are online. This has been emphasized under Covid-19, where students and working adults adjusted to the remote setup. A lack of digital marketing means that a significant amount of the target market will automatically be missed.

How to Thrive in the Digital Space

So, what is effective digital marketing? At the bare minimum, this means engaging on social media platforms. As of 2021, 93% of NGOs worldwide have a Facebook page, and while competition can be steep, a breakthrough is always possible.

An effective social media page requires strategy, lest your organization gets lost in the crowded digital world. This requires extensive research on consumer behavior, as modern marketing programs would emphasize. A good place to start would be the 70/20/10 rule: 70% value content, 20% shared content, and 10% promotional content.

Otherwise, take advantage of paid advertising. And don't be afraid to go outside of social media either. Google hits 8.5 billion searches per day, and with Google Ad Grants, your organization can access up to $10,000 per month in search ads — just make sure that you register your organization under Google for Nonprofits beforehand to access all of their benefits for free.

Exhausting these powerful and already available tools help maximize much-needed exposure for your event and would translate to supporters and more funds. Above all, you need to ensure that your brand messaging is clear and established. This allows your message to remain impactful and consistent through all the different platforms and sightings.

Event Marketing in the 2020s

Even if the 70/20/10 rule only delegates 10% for promotional content, there are other creative means to engage in event marketing. Our previous post explains the craftiness of promoting in your email signature — via an event image or a hyperlink — to take advantage of the multitude of emails an organization sends in a day.

Otherwise, there are always print materials to exhaust. With innovations in the digital era, QR codes linking to your event are printable, eye-catching, and accessible to all.

To boost your event and fundraiser even further, FundEasy offers an “Event Webpage” service complete with no-hassle registration and communication tools, a time-saving table assignment wizard, and quick check-in.

Modern marketing can seem intimidating at first glance, but once you get the hang of it, the new approaches to fundraising guarantee continued constructive change, development, and transformation for the nonprofit sector.

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Article written by Ricci Jo

Exclusively submitted to fundeasy.com