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3 Strategies For Improving Your Nonprofit Marketing Plan

Marketing your nonprofit can introduce you to new supporters, bring in more dollars, and increase awareness about your organization and cause. 

But does your nonprofit have a marketing plan?

If the answer is no, you’re in good company. For many nonprofits, creating a marketing plan is perpetually on the to-do list, while marketing activities continue to be ad-hoc. 

If you do have a marketing plan, are you happy with how it’s working? Want to give it a boost?

Whether you’re hoping to get more out of your existing plan or starting from scratch on your first one, use these three strategies to improve your efforts and get better results.

Strategy #1: Know Your Audience

Before you jump into producing marketing materials or writing a line of copy, ask yourself this question: Who is my audience? 

Who are the people who support your cause and love your organization? Who are the people who would love your organization, if only they knew you existed? Your marketing plan is simply a guide to how you plan to connect with these two groups.

Wait, but don’t we want everyone on earth to support our organization? That would be nice, but “everyone” is not an audience. There’s no way to appeal to everyone all at once, and if you try, you’ll end up appealing to no one specific. 

Instead, start by considering your current supporters. Examine your data and experience and look for trends. Ask questions like:

Do your supporters share interests or lived experiences? 
What are they most passionate about? 
How do they talk about your organization and cause? 

For example, if your nonprofit animal rescue is supported primarily by women aged 30-60 who live in your city and have at least one pet, you’ll want to aim your marketing plan at 30-60 year-old urban female pet-owners. These are your people. Your marketing messages and images should appeal to them. You can decide to market to new groups, but don’t try to hit everyone at once.

Strategy #2: Set Goals

What do you hope your marketing will achieve? Without a goal, you have no way of knowing how successful your plan is or where you need to make adjustments.

If you’re just getting started, the first goals that come to mind may be things like, “Do more marketing activities” or “find more donors.” You’ll have better results if you get more specific and intentional.

You may be familiar with SMART goals. SMART goals are: specific, measurable, attainable, relevant, and timely. A SMART goal for your marketing plan might be “increase traffic to our website by 10% this quarter” or “acquire 300 new social media followers by June 1.” 

Strategy #3: Experiment and Test

Your audience is unique, and so is your organization. While it’s great to start with best practices, the only way to know for sure how something is performing with your audience is to test. Instead of writing your marketing plan in stone, consider it a series of experiments that you’ll continue to learn from as you go. 

Build opportunities to see how things are going and make adjustments into the plan itself. Whether it’s a once a week check-in during an active campaign, monthly reviews of your marketing data, or quarterly evaluations of how the plan is working, the key to getting real results is to stay flexible as you get new information. 

Small Changes Make a Big Difference

When you aim at a specific audience, set goals, and take an experimental approach, your marketing plan will become more than a list of activities. It will be a useful tool for raising support, connecting with your community, and spreading the word about your cause and organization.