Online Fundraising Strategies: Nonprofit Marketing Link Roundup

In this link roundup, we’re taking a look at articles that are all about online fundraising strategies.

Whether you’re fundraising, selling a product or providing a service, the way in which you market to people really isn’t all that different.

As Guy Kawasaki puts it, you have to create meaning if you want to take steps towards innovation.

1. Three Steps To Getting Your Followers To Say Yes

Marketing is a weird mix of social sciences meets data sciences. We rummage through troughs of data to tweak campaigns, make minor adjustments to landing pages, and obsess over A/B testing email subject lines all in the name of incremental improvement. The truth is that marketing, whether online or traditional, is all about putting yourself out there. We can create plans to guide our marketing and minimize loss of opportunity, but at the end of the day, planning is not the same as doing. Persuasion on the other hand, as Kivi Leroux Miller puts it, is key to running successful nonprofit marketing and fundraising campaigns. I couldn’t agree more.

2. 7 Quick Ways To Keep Your Content Marketing On Track

Content marketing is at the heart of many online fundraising strategies. The marketing process looks something like this:

1. Identify an audience pain point
2. Create content that satisfies that pain point or answers an objection
3. Promote content across multiple channels
4. Attract traffic to your website
5. Collect email addresses via newsletter subscription or a content upgrade

However, the biggest deterrents to creating a content marketing strategy that works is the time investment required to see measurable results. In this article, Classy gives 7 actionable approaches to keeping your content on track to reaching your goals. #3 is our favorite.

3. Ending The Stigma: Fundraising Is Sales

I’ve been involved with nonprofits and associations since my internship years working for what was once the last nonprofit hospital in Pennsylvania. In that time I’ve slowly seen the community accept, whether they like it or not, that fundraising, online or otherwise, is sales. This stigma comes from salespeople being viewed as employing aggressive or shady tactics. And some of them do. But, the best salespeople I know all have one thing in common: They listen to their prospect’s pain points and then over deliver on value to solve it. The need to disassociate ourselves from sales could actually be hurting us in the long-run. When you think about it, we’re all involved in selling ourselves in one way or another. You did have to interview for your job, didn’t you?

4. How To Run Your Most Successful Year-End Fundraising Campaign Ever

Did you know 31% of annual online giving occurs during the month of December? Can you honestly say you doing everything you can to promote your organization to meet year-end fundraising goals? If not, then this post is for you. Media Cause has thrown together a list of 6 steps nonprofits can take to cut through the noise and grab the attention of donors.

5. How To Leverage Your Giving Tuesday Event As A Springboard For Year-End Fundraising

#GivingTuesday is one of the most successful year-end fundraising events in recent history. Year-over-year we’ve seen the power of exponential growth at work. In 2012 the event raised a little over $10 million and by 2016 that figure has spiked to over $180 million, most of which is being attributed to social media and the rise in popularity of online giving. Scheduled for November 28th, this year’s Giving Tuesday is anticipated to shatter all of those records, and John Haydon has a few actionable steps your nonprofit can take to maximize its impact.

6. 3 Inexpensive Ways To Raise More Money Online

What do you think about when you hear the word web design? An updated look? Adding new functionalities?

How about growing your online fundraising?

Conversion rate optimization is a big talking point right now in the world of digital marketing.

It only makes sense then to leverage some of these tactics for your nonprofit, especially with the pressures to meet yearly fundraising goals.

This article explores 3 simple, inexpensive and highly effective ways to boost fundraising results on your website with minor design changes.

7. How Effective Are Text-To-Donate Services?

Marketers are obsessed with mobile first… EVERYTHING! Mobile responsiveness, ease of use through mobile design and now mobile donations. Text-to-donate has become a popular method of giving across all generations as people shift to making donations online. But are text messages effective at getting a response? Consider this: When we receive a text our body floods us with the chemical dopamine, which can cause addiction to our phones similar to that of alcohol. In other words, it makes us feel good and we crave more of it. This means people are excited when they receive a message, which in turn can make them more receptive to your ask. When we look at the data we can see the average donation from a text is $107. But does our mobile addiction have anything to do with it? Maybe not, but we are glued to our devices because of it. If you’re like me you experience a small bout of anxiety if your phone isn’t at arm’s reach. That’s what makes text-donations so effective; we’re always on and always wired.

8. 6 Mistakes To Avoid When Creating Your Next Google Adwords Campaign

Online advertising is exploding right now. Don’t believe me? Facebook has seen a year over year growth in revenue of 72% in 2015, which is attributed to businesses spending more on their advertising platform. Likewise, nonprofits have begun to incorporate online advertising into their online fundraising strategies. Google Adwords has been a driving force in this arena, by providing detailed reports to measure returns on investment. Making it even more attractive, eligible nonprofits can receive up to $10,000 in Adword grants. While this all sounds great, running a successful campaign doesn’t happen overnight. Avoiding these 6 simple mistakes in your next AdWords campaign could save you a lot of headaches, time, and money in the long-run.

9. Promoting Fundraising Efforts Via Advertising?

While on the topic of advertising, I recently came across a Reddit thread discussing the potential of promoting fundraising efforts online. There’s a lot of good insight from fundraising professionals and I encourage you to take a look and join the conversation.

10. Monthly Giving Part 2- Setting Goals And Getting Started

This two part series provides a wealth of information you can use to run a successful online fundraising campaign. Here are a few of the resources from the article that we found helpful:

• How To Double Revenue With Fewer Donors
• Monthly Giving Calculator
• Monthly Giving: The Sleeping Giant
• Monthly Giving: The Key To Big Gifts From Young Donors
• The Art And Science Of Retaining Digital Donors

Related Articles:

• How To Get More Online Donations With Content Marketing
• 15 Online Fundraising Ideas And Strategies (That Will Get Results)
• Master These Email Marketing Strategies For Fundraising Success
• 5 Tips For Steering Your Organization Toward Online Fundraising
• How To Get Started With Mobile Giving To Reach Fundraising Goals

---