Implementing a Successful Nonprofit Marketing Campaign

As if implementing an effective marketing campaign wasn’t already difficult enough, if you are a nonprofit organization, you are sure to face an additional set of challenges. Not only do you have to have your name be recognized by the general public, but you also need to convince them that your cause is worthy of their support.

Fortunately, implementing a successful campaign is still quite possible, and for many nonprofit organizations, a creative campaign is what enabled them to get off the ground and running. By implementing a well-organized, multi-dimensional, and goal-oriented campaign, your organization can be poised for long-term success.

Have a detailed, scheduled plan of attack

Very few successful campaigns are created and implemented on the fly. Instead, they are well-thought out and organized in a way that allows the entire marketing team to moving in the same general direction.

It’s okay to change your plan as new challenges emerge. But planning far in advance will make you much more poised for success.

A good marketing plan will enable the team to know not just what they need to be doing today, or even this week, but several weeks down the line. Because implementing certain components of your campaign will take an extended period of time to coordinate, the further in advance you can begin preparing, the better you will be able to execute.

Generally, it is good idea to schedule as many components of the campaign as you possibly can up front. Timing your social media posts, contacting partners and donors well in advance, and having an organized calendar that can be accessed by all involved will make implementing your campaign much easier as time goes on.

Diversify your course of actions

When it comes to implementing a successful marketing campaign, diversity is very important. If your organization becomes entirely dependent on a single event, action, or message in order to get known, you are risking failure from putting all of your eggs in one basket.

But if you can be reaching out to potential donors through multiple different social media platforms, multiple different events, and multiple different mediums of communication, even if one method is unsuccessful, you can still be poised to succeed.

Consider using a program that allows you to post on multiple social media accounts at once, and consider contacting as many different publications as you feasibly can. If you ask any fisherman, they will surely tell you, the more lines you have in the water, the more likely you are to get a bite.

Be persistent

People are naturally resistant to altering their course of action or going out of their way to do something. Because of this, many people are likely going to ignore or decline your first effort to communicate with them.

But if you can keep being persistent, and continue finding new and creative ways to communicate your message to your target audience, you can effectively change their minds over time. Sure, you don’t want to be spamming their inbox with constant emails every day, but it is certainly true that the more efforts you make to communicate over time, the more likely that one of them will be successful.

A good marketing campaign is one that isn’t just trying to get results immediately, but is also willing to work to get results over time. If you are willing to begin by carefully planting the seeds of an idea in the mind of a potential donor, even if they do not immediately decide to act, you may be able to reap what you sewed in the future.

Always be ahead in the game

When implementing your marketing campaign, you always want to be thinking several steps ahead. Not only do you want to be getting the best results you can today, but you want to be thinking about what you will do in response to these results in the future.

What is most likely to happen if we pursue x, y, and z course of events? What is the best case scenario? What is the worst case scenario? How can we most effectively choose to act?

Remember, when it comes to marketing, there is no such thing as being too prepared.

No matter what the future may hold, if you were able to anticipate it in advance, then you are much more likely to be able to act effectively. Implementing a successful marketing campaign isn’t something that happens instantaneously. It happens gradually over the course of time, and because of this, you do not want to blind yourself from seeing the bigger picture.

Have a tangible method for measuring your success

In order for your marketing campaign to ever be considered to be successful, you are going to have to begin by creating a tangible definition of success. Creating an objective goal—whatever you define such a goal to be—can help guide you through the remainder of the implementation process.

With any given action your organization may be engaging in, it is important to ask yourself: am I moving closer to or further away from achieving the goal of this campaign? Though you may not always know the answer to such a question, it is a useful sort of compass that can at least guide you along the way.

For example, if the goal of your campaign is to encourage at least 100 different people to go to a given fundraising event, think to yourself is doing this action the most effective way to encourage people to go? If it seems that it is, you may be moving in the right direction; if it seems that it isn’t, then it may be time to go back to the drawing board.

Implementing a successful marketing campaign is quite possible and within the reach of even the smallest non-profit organization. If you can objectively understand where you are, what you want to achieve, and the surest path to get there, then success will be inevitable.

To read part one in this series, ‘Planning a Successful Nonprofit Marketing Campaign,’ click here.

To read part three in this series, ‘Evaluating the Success of Your Nonprofit Marketing Campaign,’ click here.

Tags: Ally360, business, campaign, creative, executing, exposure, ideas, implementing, interest, marketing, Non-profit, plans, Social Media, success