So you’re wondering why you haven’t been able to fundraise on Facebook like so and so, and build the Tik Tok following of that nonprofit over there. 

I’ve got the remedy for your nonprofit envy, and it’s called a game plan.

Successful nonprofit marketing and communications do not need to be complicated, but they do require a great deal of thought and planning. 

If you don’t have a nonprofit communications plan in place, press the pause button. Take the next day or two to follow these steps. When you market on purpose, you’re going to start seeing powerful results. 

I’ve created countless marketing and communications plans for the nonprofits I support. I use these five steps:

1. Define Your Audience

2. Do Your Research

3. Create Ambitious but Doable Goals

4. Set Key Performance Indicators

5. Have An Evaluation Plan

STEP 1: DEFINE YOUR AUDIENCE 

Taking the time to discover your target audience sets the groundwork for all your marketing activities. You’ll be able to focus your marketing efforts and create relevant communication to attract the right people. The best way to do that is to create audience personas.

An audience persona is a fictitious person that represents an audience group. Creating audience personas is an exercise to research and reflect on an audience member’s goals, values, and challenges.

Having specific audience members in mind will help you create personal, relevant, and compelling communications. You’ll also have a better idea of the best marketing channels to focus on.

STEP 2: DO YOUR RESEARCH

Your communications plan should be data-driven and evidence-based. 

Every December I scour the internet for upcoming marketing trends and credible marketing reports. My first stop is usually the M+R Benchmarks report.  

What I uncover becomes the foundation for both my clients and my own communications and marketing plans.

I did some of this work for you. Here are 2021 Digital Marketing Trends to Help Your Nonprofit Thrive.

STEP 3: CREATE AMBITIOUS BUT DOABLE GOALS

Successful business and nonprofit owners have defined digital marketing goals and objectives. Instead of chasing the latest trends, every goal you set should be laser-focused to help you amplify your message and find your loyal clients and donors.

Start each communications plan with your mission statement. Each communications initiative should tie into the reason your nonprofit exists. If your objectives start veering off course, your mission statement should help you recenter.

Your Goal Is Your Why

The key to creating clear and actionable goals is to know your “why.” Ask yourself why this goal is important. A quick exercise to help you reach your why is to write a “so that” statement with your goal. 

For example:

I want to increase brand awareness so that more people benefit from our services.

I want to establish thought leadership so that we can influence policy. 

I want to improve our client experience so that they refer us to their family and friends.

Make Your Objectives SMART 

Objective setting is where you will build out measurable marketing tactics to reach your goals. 

How will you know if an objective is worth your time? Filter each one through the SMART grid.

Specific:  What exactly do you want to do?

Measurable: How will you know you’re succeeding?

Achievable: Is it a reasonable goal? 

Relevant: Does it tie into a broader goal and vision?

Time-bound: What’s the timeline?

STEP 4: Set Key Performance Indicators

When you keep track of metrics, you’ll learn what is working, what isn’t, and what exactly your return on investment is. As a small team, every marketing initiative is a huge investment of your time and resources. 

A KPI is a key performance indicator. This is a specific metric you will set as a goal you want to reach through your objectives. As you choose KPIs, you not only want to track your main goal (e.g., an increase in clients), but the success of your chosen marketing tactics (e.g., email conversions). Therefore, the KPIs you set should be a combination of general marketing and platform-specific metrics.

STEP 5: HAVE AN EVALUATION PLAN

Evaluating your communications plan is just as important as creating and implementing it. 

Take the time to dive into the data to determine if your marketing objectives and initiatives were successful. Here are a few questions to ask yourself every quarter:

Did I successfully carry out the objective? If not, why not? (challenges and roadblocks)

Did I reach my KPIs? If not, why not? (challenges and roadblocks)

What was my return on investment (ROI)? Consider both time and resources.

What was the response from target audiences? Can I ask them directly?  

Is this still a worthwhile goal and objective?

If yes, how can I pivot a problematic objective to make it work?

If the objective was a success, can I scale it?

Are my upcoming objectives still relevant?

If you’re not reaching the metrics you set, or a new opportunity or incredible challenge has come up, it may be time to focus on different messaging, different channels, or consider doing a paid campaign. Goals are important, but so is flexibility and adaptability.  

All Together Now

So what does this all look like on paper? Here’s a snippet of a communications plan:

Mission Statement: We help busy parents thrive by supporting them to create and maintain a healthy lifestyle.

Goal 1: Increase members so that we can support more parents

Objective 1: This quarter, we will increase referred members by 25% from last quarter by creating and implementing a member referral program. 

Target Audience: Busy parents

Platforms: Website and email 

KPIs: Referred members, email conversions, landing page conversions

After a communications plan comes a content plan! Head over to the Create a Purpose-Driven Content Plan post for a step-by-step guide to content planning. 

Once you’ve got your communications plan, put it up everywhere. Share it with your boss, team, husband (I’m looking at you nonprofit team of one), anyone who will hold you accountable to implement it. Put your objective tactics on your calendar. This year I invested in a huge plexiglass wall calendar that has all my goals, objectives, and tactics plastered on them - right next to my desk to keep me on track every day. 

And then: focus. You got this.