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marketing for non-profits is different from marketing for any other type of business out there it requires special care and a strategic plan and we know this better than anybody because we've helped non-profits increase their followers by tens of thousands on social media collect petition signatures drive post engagement at as low as 0.003 cents per engagement and a lot more [Music] [Applause] hey everybody it's brandy from life marketing the digital marketing agency that helps small businesses grow and if you own or operate a non-profit today's video is for you so this is what we're including in today's video a step-by-step breakdown of how to successfully market your non-profit to attract more volunteers funding resources and to see the needs of your nonprofit met so go ahead and like this video if you're excited to see some of the top marketing strategies for non-profits and subscribe to the channel for new digital marketing videos every single week okay jumping straight in with strategy number one invest in a solid website a common thought i've heard from some of our non-profit clients to date is that they often have a tight budget and struggle to justify investing in a website but in today's day and age your website is your storefront it's often the first impression people gain of your brand and you should consider it as the face of your nonprofit now when i say storefront here i'm not referring to an e-commerce store like i would for other businesses unless of course your non-profit has merch or something to sell but more so i'm talking about the online version of your brick and mortar location when people come to your website they should be able to gather any and all information that they would if they were to talk to you in person your website should answer questions like these when and where can people sign up to volunteer what's the closest volunteering opportunity near them where can they donate online what is your non-profit all about if they support you where does their money go i can personally testify that failing to have an informative website or a website at all will deter potential donors and volunteers here's how i know from personal experience last april when we were approaching earth day my friend and i wanted to contribute and find an environmentally conscious non-profit group to volunteer with back in our high school days we were in the environmental club and used to help pick up trash plant trees etc and so we wanted to find a non-profit close to where we live now so that we could do something similar for earth day well we googled to the ends of the earth trying to find something we looked on local neighborhood apps on facebook and more and the problem was that after a lot of digging we did eventually find the names of some non-profits to volunteer with granted these names were written on what looked like a random 1998 outdated web article but the bigger problem was that they came with no website link or phone number or email for us to reach out to the outcome we did not end up volunteering anywhere that year my point in telling that story is not just to show you embarrassing high school photos of me but to show a real life example of what often happens to non-profits with an outdated or non-existent website you lose out on potential volunteers and donors now having a website is only half the battle like i said the other half of it is that it needs to be updated helpful and functional people need to be able to find any and all relevant information about your nonprofit on the page let's look at this nonprofit as an example this organization is called compassion international and they are a christian group that allows you to sponsor children in poverty across the globe now from looking at their homepage we immediately see where we can click to sponsor a child ways to donate how to get involved more about their organization resources for current sponsors and their blog when i hover my mouse over all these tabs we get even more menu options so without even having to scroll or click anywhere yet the user can see a clear path to the answers of several questions they might have in coming to the site this is a good example of preemptively understanding the questions your target audience may have and answering them with a well thought out website this is ideal and will keep your visitors retained on your site for longer so where do you start well there are several website builders to choose from that all have different benefits and pricing plans depending on what you need and your level of expertise so i'll link a video here that we made going into depth with everything you need to know about websites and website design okay so once you've got your website set up let's move on to strategy number two seo or search engine optimization in my real life example i just shared of searching in vain for a non-profit to volunteer with did you catch where i went to look for information first well we googled to the ends of the earth trying to find something it was google google is one of the most if not the most powerful search engines in the world google gets over 3.5 billion searches per day and it's hard to even process that so here's another way to look at it google gets over 41 000 searches per second when people have a problem that they need a resolution to or a question they want answered or when they just want more information about literally anything in general people go to google and this behavior pattern remains the same when people want more information about your nonprofit so given this information what can you do to leverage all of the attention that google receives the answer is to make sure your website appears on google when someone searches non-profit near me or places to volunteer in atlanta or insert whichever city you serve there does your website appear the first five results on google receive 67.6 of all the clicks and it makes sense because think back to the last time you googled something have you ever scrolled to the second page probably not right most people just automatically trust google and choose from the top five websites google provides so the benefit to ranking in the number one spot on google is twofold it drives relevant qualified traffic to your site while simultaneously building brand trust because if google trusts your website enough to rank it number one people don't question your credibility okay so then the next question is how do you do it how do you perform seo marketing for non-profits well seo is a big umbrella term for a number of processes and it's an ongoing process at that we have an introductory video to seo which i'll link here but in short you'll need to make changes to your website acquire backlinks and create strategic content to rank for relevant keywords keywords are the words or phrases people are searching on google so how do you know which keywords to plan your seo strategy around well since the term keyword is synonymous with the terms people are searching in google i'm sure you're already thinking of some that you want your website to appear for but i always recommend doing a little research first google ads has a tool called keyword planner that you can use to research relevant keywords or phrases that people type into google for example let's look at what the monthly search volume is for the keywords non-profit near me and non-profit volunteer opportunities near me you can change your settings around as well when you research here i've got mine set to look at the amount of times these searches are happening within the united states on google and in the last 12 months you can see the monthly search volume here and this will tell you if these keywords are worth ranking for or not one technical note you'll need to keep in mind when researching keywords is to put the proper symbols around them because there are three different match types on google including broad match phrase match and exact match we have a video that very clearly explains all three of those match types and how to enter them into google when you're doing your keyword research that i'll link here for you to watch next another thing you'll need to keep in mind in regards to keyword research is relevancy versus search volume for example the keyword fun fun-friendly non-profit for women in ducktown tennessee might be very relevant and specific to your business but it may have little to no searches meaning nobody is typing that into google for month to month this is where google's keyword planner becomes extremely helpful and showing you exactly how often any given keyword is being searched now the only other thing to note is that performing seo takes time so if you want to know a quicker way you can show up at the top of the search results stick around because i'm gonna share a faster method here in a little bit for now let's keep going with strategy number three content marketing the content marketing institute says content marketing is a strategic marketing approach focused on creating and distributing valuable relevant and consistent content to attract and retain a clearly defined audience and ultimately to drive profitable customer action the benefit to publishing content on your website is twofold a it goes hand in hand with your seo efforts and helps to boost your seo rankings and b it provides the value and information your potential supporters are often looking for to help them decide which non-profit to work with let's look back at the non-profit i shared earlier of compassion international if you remember one of the main tabs on their home page was their blog right out of the gates we see that they have relevant news as it relates to their work and their sponsors after that they have a mix of informative blogs lighthearted blogs and updates and they have posts separated by categories on the right hand side to help readers find information by topic or by the country their sponsored child is from this immediately signals to their visitors that their blog is current is regularly updated easy to navigate and will provide helpful pieces of information to readers so what kind of topics can you include in your content marketing well here are some content marketing ideas for non-profits to get you started write about your volunteers or staff and how they help write about the people you're helping or the problem you're solving recap your events or big volunteering opportunities break down where donations go and how they're used to help others or highlight any testimonials or positive outcomes that have happened as a result of your efforts once you have some relevant content published on your website you can link to it from your social media and on that note let's move on to strategy number four social media marketing social media is a powerful tool for generating awareness and building trust in your brand now we have tons of videos on social media marketing social media management social media updates and more that go over all of the introductory things you need to know about social media to get started so those will be linked here and in the description for you but in this video i'm specifically going to cover social media marketing for non-profits when it comes to laying out a social media marketing plan for non-profit organizations the first thing you want to think about is who your target audience is because that will help you identify which social media platforms you need to be on for instance pinterest is predominantly used by women so if your target audience is mostly women that may be a good place to start i'll link our social media platforms video here if you want to watch more on that to help you pick your platforms but once you've completed your research and know which social media platforms you want to use to market your nonprofit these are the top four things you want to make sure that your social media marketing strategy includes number one unified branding across all your platforms sometimes we see business owners making the mistake of using their own personal accounts to promote their nonprofit especially when the nonprofit is smaller or brand new but this can confuse and ultimately deter people who are researching your nonprofit so make sure all of your accounts look official and professional and contain the same branding across the board number two regular postings one of the biggest ways to lose out on followers and engagement on social media is for your account to look like it has virtual cobwebs meaning when the most recent post is from months or years ago social media is a real time resource so if you haven't posted on there in a while it could look like you're not operational anymore that fact combined with society's ever decreasing attention spans means people will keep scrolling without giving your page a second thought so show potential supporters that your nonprofit is still alive and well with regularly updated social media accounts number three videos ing to statista 27 of people 18 and older worldwide watch more than 10 hours of online videos a week hubspot said 72 percent of customers would rather learn about a product or service by way of video and listen to this one and sivia said viewers retain 95 of a message when they watch it in a video compared to 10 when reading it in text those are just three of many statistics out there that show how and why video is so important in your marketing and the numbers just grow every year videos are a great way to accomplish all the goals that we talked about in content marketing but via video aka via a medium that is likely to retain people's attention and help them retain the information now one hesitation we hear a lot when it comes to non-profits making videos is lack of budget or know-how but let me assure you you don't need a hollywood film budget to create effective videos especially not on social media if you have a smartphone you can make videos a lot of social media platforms like instagram have built-in video editing tools so that you can record edit and publish your videos all right there within the app as an example here's a quick look at compassion's instagram where we can see all of their igtvs which are long form videos on instagram and lastly number four social media advertising i won't spend too long on this just because we already have quite a few videos on social media advertising but the key thing to know as a non-profit is that social media advertising platforms like facebook ads manager for example usually have non-profit interests that you can target meaning you can pay facebook to push your content to people who are specifically interested in non-profits and volunteering you can show them content that directs them to your website the results i showed at the beginning of this video were from social media advertising and beyond just targeting based on interest in a non-profit or volunteering you can target based on interest in your specific cause furthermore if you already have a sizable email list of say 1 000 or more subscribers who support your non-profit you can upload that list to facebook and facebook will find more people who look like your current volunteers and what's called a look-alike audience facebook says a look-alike audience is a way to reach new people who are likely to be interested in your business because they're similar to your best existing customers this is often a quick and inexpensive way to acquire new donors and advocates for your nonprofit all right now let's move on to our final strategy number five ppc marketing remember earlier when i said there's a faster way to show up at the top of the search results well because you made it this far in the video i'm going to tell you how it's through ppc or pay-per-click marketing ppc is also synonymous with sem or search engine marketing and it's another method to help your nonprofit appear at the top of the search engine results so what makes it different from seo well ppc puts your website in the search results faster and at a cost look at the google results that appeared for us when we typed in social media management company these first few results that have the ad label beneath them are ppc ads the first organic result that is not marked as an ad as a result of seo you'll want to perform all the same keyword research that we talked about for seo for ppc but this time you'll also want to pay attention to the competition bidding and average cost per click because you're paying google to show your website instead of performing all of the seo efforts organically on your own a recent article said 41 of clicks and google searches go to the top three sponsored ads so it's definitely worth looking into as a non-profit marketing method now you may be asking which is better for your nonprofit seo or sem so i'll link our seo versus sem video here to help you answer that question but in short neither is really better than the other it just depends on your needs your timeline and your budget alright guys those are my top five non-profit marketing strategies but of course there are so many other digital marketing strategies you can leverage outside of just these five so comment below if you want to see more nonprofit marketing videos from us and tell us what you'd like to see otherwise make sure you hit that like button before you go subscribe to the channel and we'll see you next time [Music]