marketing.
Unsolicited direct response marketing is using mail, email, phone calls, and other communications tactics to communicate directly with people who have not previously opted in to communications with you. It is often used in direct mail acquisition fundraising with purchased or rented lists of names.
Location-based marketing is using mobile phone location data to provide messaging to people when they are physically near specific locations or when they use apps to check in at specific locations. It may also be called geomarketing and proximity marketing. We most often see this strategy used by nonprofits that run large public facilities like parks, zoos, and museums, where visitors can find detailed information about what they are seeing in front of them based on where they are standing.
THE MOST COMMON NONPROFIT MARKETING OBJECTIVES
Objectives are actions or steps you take to implement a strategy. These actions or steps are also what you measure to know if you are meeting your goals. Of all the goals, strategies, objectives, and tactics discussed in this chapter, we find the most diversity in the nonprofit sector when discussing marketing objectives.
That's because of the abundant opportunities to customize objectives to be SMART: Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Resourced, and Time-Bound. If you focus on creating objectives that are measurable and time-bound, you are usually also being specific. Ensuring that your objectives are achievable and resourced helps you stay within your capacity to actually accomplish the work.
In many cases, you should also add some reference to the who (your participants, supporters, or influencers) and sometimes to the what you are communicating about (your messaging or call to action) in order to customize the objectives in a meaningful way.
After coaching hundreds of nonprofit communications directors and teams, I've found that discussing, agreeing upon, and prioritizing specific objectives is the missing piece in the nonprofit marketing strategy puzzle. I strongly encourage all nonprofit communicators to spend more time working through the objectives in their plan than on goals, strategies, or tactics.
Our research at Nonprofit Marketing Guide first identified the 12 objectives most often used in the nonprofit sector in the 2020 Nonprofit Communications Trends Report. Let's start by looking at the five most popular ones. Financial gains and participation levels are most common, followed by expressions of loyalty; change in knowledge or understanding; and people joining, subscribing, or following.
Financial gains or savings. To create a specific objective in this category, you might work to increase the percentage of 5K walk or run revenue raised via peer-to-peer fundraising by 20 percent. Or you might work to decrease your cost of acquisition for new donors.
Participation levels. A participation levels objective can be set when you are trying to increase registrations, donations, RSVPs, etc. For example, you might wish to sell out 90 percent of your workshops this year. Or you might wish to decrease the amount of time between when someone gets on your mailing list and when they take a specific participatory action like advocating for a policy change with their elected officials.
Expressions of loyalty. Loyalty is often judged in the nonprofit sector in terms of retention or renewals. Specific objectives could include maintaining a 75 percent donor retention rate this year. Or perhaps you would like to keep 50 percent of your email list highly engaged, according to a lead scoring tool in your constituent relationship management database.
Change in knowledge or understanding. This objective is best customized by being specific about changing knowledge or understanding within a specific group of people. For example, perhaps you desire to move 75 percent of beginners in your program to the intermediate level in six months. Website metrics, such as the amount of time returning visitors are spending on certain pages, could also indicate a change in knowledge or understanding.
Joining, subscribing, or following. This objective helps you measure list growth. It can be customized in many ways, such as increasing newsletter subscriptions by 20 percent this year, or optimizing email sign-up forms on your website to convert more visitors to subscribers, for example.
Nonprofit communicators may also consider additional objectives that attempt to measure the impact of their communications on how people think and feel.
Increased levels of influence. This objective would assess the extent to which your communications are increasing your influence with specific groups of people or increasing your share on the public conversation. For example, you might seek to get invited to speak at five industry events. Or you might try to improve your search engine rankings on 10 keywords. Or you may try to get your policy positions covered in five prominent media outlets.
Increased satisfaction. Perhaps you want your program participants, supporters, or influencers to feel more satisfied about their work with or relationship with your nonprofit. In this case, you might customize your objective to raise the Net Promoter Score for a specific program to +60. Or, if you use a lead scoring system to measure engagement of your email list, you might want to keep at least 35 percent of your list at a five-star engagement level.
Expressions of trust. You might wish to track whether your communications are leading certain groups of people to say or do things that demonstrate their trust in your organization. For example, you might want three new organizations to agree to partner with you on a new project. Or you may want 100 new participants to trust your nonprofit to help them address an especially difficult challenge.
Change in tone or attitude. You may be interested in tracking the extent to which communications help change the tone, sentiment, attitude, or preferences expressed by a group of people. In this case, you could work to move the majority of social media comments you receive from negative to positive. Or you could use feedback surveys or polls to gauge changes in attitudes or preferences over time.
Finally, nonprofits may also choose objectives that help measure the impact on how people behave.
Increased demand or desire. Are communications increasing requests, demands, or desire for something the nonprofit offers? For example, a health clinic may create a marketing plan to increase appointment requests by 30 percent next quarter.
Increased readiness or empowerment. This objective would help measure whether communications were helping certain groups of people be more ready or empowered to take a specific action. For example, you might develop a plan so that 70 percent of petition signers continue to open educational emails six months later. Or you might track the percentage of people who move from being aware of an issue to acting on it.
Change in behavior. If you want your communications to lead to measurable changes in how people behave, you might set an objective such as 50 percent fewer students engaging in behavior resulting in suspensions next semester.
It's worth noting that attributing some results, including behavior change and change in tone, specifically to a nonprofit's communications plan can be extremely challenging or expensive. It's unlikely that you'll be able to connect your communications directly and exclusively to those results.
Instead of drawing a direct link between your communications work and achieving an objective, we often speak instead in the language of Key Progress Indicators or Key Performance Indicator (KPIs). These are indicators of progress toward your goals and mission.
The tactics you use – the channels or type of content – can also influence how you phrase your objectives. I do caution you against only using objectives that are directly tied to a specific tool or communications channel. Ideally, you are using multiple tools or channels to achieve an objective.
THE MOST COMMON NONPROFIT MARKETING TACTICS
Tactics are easier to understand: it's all about the content you make and the channels in which you distribute that content.