Marketing Strategy
The Art of Charity relies on having a successful image and trust. Digital/Online Marketing is the term used for the targeted, measurable, and interactive marketing of services using digital technologies to reach the viewers, turn them into donors, and retain them. The Art of Charity understands that the marketing plan is a very important tool that will create awareness. The Art of Charity will design a strong quarterly marketing strategy and promotional campaigns. We will adopt the following marketing techniques to increase its supporters, volunteers, and donors that will help the organization to achieve its objectives.
Blogging
Blogging is a free publicity tool that provides opportunities to share information with people, who might be potential donors and/or volunteers, and as a way make the nonprofit an authority on the subject. Another benefit of regular blogging is that it provides more content for search engines. With a blog, nonprofits can tell their story, their way, but also doesn't focus solely on the organization. The Art of Charity will think creatively and strategically about ways to share the story from multiple angles, such as:
- Share milestones
- Post about breaking news and our organization’s take on it
- Promote upcoming or past events
- Share stories, behind the scenes and highlight those in the forefront
- Feature stories about supporters that have helped our nonprofit’s cause
- Embed videos
- Share stats in digestible infographics
Newsletter
Newsletters are a cornerstone of the marketing strategy. Organizations can gain extremely valuable benefits from developing a monthly newsletter. To maximize our results, The Art of Charity will ensure that our newsletter is tailored to reach targeted recipients. For that purpose, our newsletter will cover the following content.
- Upcoming Events
- Blog posts
- Powerful images
- News about volunteers
- Updates about the cause or those affected
- Always include call-to-action buttons
- Don’t shy away from creating a sense of urgency for time-sensitive donation requests
Market Development Strategy
The Art of Charity will use various tools to increase its audience. Some of these techniques are listed below for this strategy.
- Networking — Participating in various networking events and conferences to develop strategic business relationships and alliances which will ensure the longevity of the organization and brand.
- Branding — Hiring a specialized branding agency and staff to ensure that brand equity is created. Further, efforts shall be made to ensure that brand awareness is sustained at levels that would yield Net Surplus to the Organization.
- Word of Mouth — By ensuring high-quality services, we expect that our marketing and promotions can also be conducted by word of mouth.
Outbound Marketing
A key component of our outbound marketing efforts will be to display our exceptional value proposition to our donors, this will include the use of cold calling, media buys, and direct lead emails to help put our value proposition in front of our target stakeholders. Developing relationships with key industry stakeholders is also a way for us to gain strategic relationships within the industry, allowing us to generate leads and onboard donors.
Referral Marketing
The nature of professional referrals services has changed and this has major implications for organizations. Studies of referral marketing strategies have revealed an important new facet of the practice that the majority of providers have received a referral from someone who wasn’t a donor. The vast majority are based on the firm’s reputation for specific expertise. By using content marketing in conjunction with other tactics, we can build a brand with a widespread reputation for the specialty in our area and an understanding of our expertise even among the audience that haven’t worked with us directly. This brand recognition can lead to referrals and new donors.
Online Marketing Plan
In the age of the digital market arena, the online market is increasing its share day by day so with a physical presence an organization must invest in an online marketing strategy. Our strategy will consist of four components that are discussed below.
Website Design and Layout
In today’s professional service marketplace, the website is one of the most crucial assets. It is much more than a digital billboard or brochure, as some firms believed in the past. A successful website is the hub of an organization’s online presence and information-rich projection of its expertise into the marketplace. Our website will be a critical tool for building visibility. Potential donors search online to find service providers, and they need to be able to find our firm’s website for us to have a chance to win their donation. Plus, our website will enable us to demonstrate our firm’s expertise and become well-known throughout the marketplace.
Search Engine Optimization
Our target audience must be able to find our website for it to be effective. That’s where search engine optimization comes in. This is such a key piece of the online marketing puzzle that in our studies, high-growth firms list it as the most effective engine for generating marketing leads. Though SEO is a complex and evolving discipline, it ultimately consists of two primary components.
On-site uses targeted keyword phrases to communicate the concepts on our site that matter to our audience. These keyword phrases typically focus on services and expertise. The purpose of on-site SEO is to communicate to search engines what the website is about. This allows search engines to produce more relevant results for searchers. And when the audience searches for insight on your area of specialty, they will find Off-site takes the form of links to our website, either through outside engagement or guest articles in other publications.
Social Media
Research has found that over 60% of people check out new service providers on social media, making it a most commonly used source of information than formal referrals and recommendations. Even the nature of referrals has changed in the wake of social media. A recent study on referral marketing has found that 17% of expertise-based referrals are made based on interactions on social media. Common characteristics of social media are personal user profiles, filtered newsfeed, and reactions to information by sharing, liking, and watching media. Advertising is a visual communication between a brand and a possible user. The core idea of advertising is to promote a product or service via messages and visual aids.
Email Marketing
Email is one of the most effective marketing strategies because it taps into a captive community, whether for a business, brand, or cause. Investing time into an email campaign and a monthly newsletter can go a long way to increase brand visibility, engage with supporters, find new supports and raise donations. At The Art of Charity, we will remove any hard bounce emails and review reporting data to find out what recipients are responding to and ways to improve the newsletter and its content. Email and newsletter design are vital to audience engagement as users size up an email in less than a second.