The ultimate nonprofit marketing guide: Strategies and tools for success

Nonprofit organizations play a critical role in addressing societal issues and making a positive impact on communities. In today’s competitive landscape, effective marketing strategies are essential for nonprofit organizations to raise awareness, engage supporters, and generate the resources necessary to fulfill their missions. Whether you’re a nonprofit professional, a volunteer, or someone interested in the nonprofit sector, this guide will provide you with valuable insights and practical tips on how to create and implement successful marketing campaigns. 

From defining your nonprofit’s unique value proposition to leveraging digital tools and storytelling techniques, we’ll explore what nonprofit marketing is and how to create a nonprofit marketing plan. Also, we’ll dive into the best nonprofit marketing strategies and discuss how Infogram can help improve your nonprofit marketing efforts.

Click to jump ahead:
What is nonprofit marketing?
How can nonprofit marketing help your organization?
Creating a nonprofit marketing plan
Best nonprofit marketing strategies
How Infogram can help improve nonprofit marketing efforts
Conclusion

What is nonprofit marketing?

Nonprofit marketing is the process of creating a strategy to promote a nonprofit organization’s goals and objectives. It involves a range of activities, from creating and distributing promotional materials to building relationships with potential supporters. The aim is to increase awareness of the organization, attract donors, and ultimately, achieve the nonprofit’s mission.

How can nonprofit marketing help your organization?

Nonprofit marketing can be a vital tool for your organization that helps to raise awareness about your mission, increase donor support, and ultimately achieve your goals. The benefits of nonprofit marketing include the ability to communicate effectively with stakeholders, including donors, volunteers, and beneficiaries, and to build rapport with them over time.

Effective marketing can also help you differentiate from competitors, increase brand recognition, and attract new supporters. Additionally, it can help nonprofits stay accountable to their donors and supporters by demonstrating the impact of their work through compelling stories, data, and testimonials. 

Ultimately, nonprofit marketing can help organizations make a positive impact on society by reaching a wider audience and inspiring them to take action.

Creating a nonprofit marketing plan

Creating a nonprofit marketing plan is a critical step in achieving your organization’s goals. A good nonprofit marketing plan should include the following components:

Define your goals

The first step in creating a nonprofit marketing plan is to define your goals. What do you want to achieve? Do you want to increase awareness of your organization, attract new donors, or build stronger relationships with existing supporters? Whatever your goals are, make sure they are specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time-bound (SMART).

Identify your target audience

The next step is to identify your target audience. Who are you trying to reach? What are their needs and interests? What motivates them to support your cause? Understanding your audience is crucial in creating a marketing strategy that resonates with them.

Develop your brand

Your nonprofit’s brand is your organization’s personality. It’s the way people perceive you, and it’s crucial in building trust with your supporters. Develop a brand that reflects your values, mission, and goals. Create a logo, tagline, and other visual elements that represent your nonprofit.

Create your messaging

Once you have defined your goals, identified your target audience, and developed your brand, you can begin to create your messaging. Your messaging should be clear, concise, and compelling. It should communicate your nonprofit’s mission, values, and goals in a way that resonates with your target audience.

Choose your marketing channels

There are numerous marketing channels available to nonprofits, including social media, email marketing, direct mail, events, and more. Choose the channels that best fit your goals and target audience.

Develop your budget

Once you have identified your marketing channels, it’s essential to develop a budget. Determine how much you can afford to spend on marketing and allocate funds accordingly.

Create a timeline

Finally, create a timeline for your nonprofit marketing plan. Determine when you will execute each component of your plan and set deadlines to ensure you stay on track.

Best nonprofit marketing strategies

Now that you understand the components of a nonprofit marketing plan, let’s explore some of the best nonprofit marketing strategies.

Storytelling

Storytelling is a compelling and influential marketing strategy that holds immense power for nonprofit organizations. By harnessing the art of storytelling, you can effectively showcase the profound impact of your work. Through poignant narratives, you can vividly portray the lives of those who have benefited from your organization’s efforts, bringing your mission to life and resonating with your audience on an emotional level. 

These stories serve as powerful testimonials, illustrating how your nonprofit has positively transformed the lives of individuals or communities in need. By sharing these stories, you can create a connection between your supporters and the beneficiaries of your work, forging a sense of empathy, understanding, and relatability. 

Furthermore, with storytelling, you can also highlight the impact of your supporters, shining a spotlight on the selflessness and generosity of those who have contributed to the cause. Ultimately, storytelling can inspire others to get involved, donate, or volunteer, as they witness the tangible and meaningful change that their support can bring about. 

To bring your organization’s stories to life, use impactful visuals like infographics, reports, social media posts, and more – all of which you can design on Infogram. Whether you want to create a presentation, a social media post, or an infographic, simply select a template or design it from scratch on Infogram. Remember to add photos and videos, and make it an engaging story with interactive visuals and animations.

Social Media

Social media has become an indispensable tool for nonprofits to effectively reach their target audience. With popular platforms like Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok, you can leverage the power of social media to amplify your mission. You can also engage with your supporters and highlight the positive impact you’re making.

One of the key benefits of using social media is the ability to share your mission and raise awareness about your cause. Through compelling posts, captivating images, and engaging videos, you can effectively communicate your goals and values. This helps in creating a sense of community and rallies support for your cause among like-minded individuals.

Additionally, social media platforms provide an opportunity for you to actively engage with your supporters. By responding to comments and messages, you can foster meaningful connections and build a loyal community of supporters. This interactive approach helps in strengthening the relationship between your organization and your supporters.

Furthermore, social media serves as a great platform to showcase your work’s impact. By sharing success stories, testimonials, and visual evidence of your work, you can effectively demonstrate the tangible difference your organization is making in the lives of its beneficiaries. This helps to build credibility, inspire more support, and attract potential donors, volunteers, and partners to join your cause.

To create visually appealing social media posts in a matter of minutes, discover a range of eye-catching social media templates on Infogram. Spice them up with data visualizations, stickers, GIFs, videos, images, and animations, and download them in any format necessary. 

Email Marketing

Email marketing serves as a powerful tool for fostering communication with your dedicated supporters and keeping them informed about the impactful work carried out by your nonprofit organization. Through email marketing, you can easily share regular updates, heartwarming success stories, and compelling calls to action to inspire engagement and support from your audience. 

By leveraging the reach and accessibility of email, you can establish a direct and personal connection with your supporters, enabling you to nurture relationships, cultivate a sense of community, and ultimately drive positive change for your cause. Whether it’s updating your supporters on the latest achievements, sharing heartwarming stories of how your nonprofit has made a difference, or rallying them to take action, email marketing serves as a versatile and effective means to engage, inspire, and mobilize your supporters toward your nonprofit’s mission.

To make your emails more engaging and visually appealing, make sure to add an email header. If you want to save time on designing it from scratch, simply select one of the email header templates available in our template gallery and edit them as necessary.

Events

Organizing events can be a powerful and effective means of connecting with your supporters. It’s also a great way of generating awareness for your nonprofit’s cause. Events like fundraisers, galas, and community gatherings offer unique opportunities to engage with your target audience, build meaningful relationships, and highlight the mission and impact of your nonprofit organization.

Fundraisers can provide a platform for donors to contribute to your cause while enjoying a memorable event. From charity auctions to benefit concerts, fundraisers create a festive atmosphere where supporters can come together to make a positive difference in the community. These events also offer an opportunity to share updates on your nonprofit’s work. Moreover, you can educate attendees about the issues you address, and express gratitude for their support.

Galas are another impactful way to engage with your supporters and raise awareness about your nonprofit’s mission. These formal events can include speeches and presentations, providing a platform for you to showcase the impact of your work. Galas often attract influential individuals, including philanthropists, business leaders, and community members, creating opportunities for networking, partnership-building, and donor cultivation.

Community gatherings, such as volunteer events and workshops, allow you to connect with your supporters on a more personal level. These events foster a sense of community, encourage participation, and provide opportunities for education and empowerment. By organizing events that align with your nonprofit’s mission and values, you can strengthen relationships with your supporters. Plus, you can demonstrate the positive change your organization is making in the community.

To effectively promote your events, you’ll need eye-catching visual materials like posters and social media posts. Luckily, creating a post or a poster is easy on Infogram – simply select a blank canvas or a template and add all the necessary information about your event. Take inspiration from the poster examples below!

Influencer Marketing

Collaborating with influencers can greatly enhance your nonprofit’s outreach efforts. It provides an effective and strategic approach to connecting with new audiences and generating awareness for your organization’s mission. The key is to carefully identify influencers who align with your nonprofit’s values and mission. 

By leveraging the influencer’s reach and influence, you can tap into their engaged audience and amplify your message to a broader demographic. This collaborative approach allows you to leverage the influencer’s unique voice, creativity, and connection with their audience. This results in increased visibility, engagement, and potential for meaningful impact. Through joint campaigns, content creation, and advocacy efforts, the influencer can become a compelling advocate for your nonprofit. They’ll help you raise awareness, drive donations, and build long-term support. When done right, influencer collaborations can be a powerful tool in advancing your nonprofit’s goals and creating a lasting positive impact in your community and beyond.

How Infogram can help improve nonprofit marketing efforts

If you’re looking to create impactful and eye-catching visual content like infographics, presentations, reports, and more, you don’t need to look any further. With Infogram, you can create highly engaging data visualizations and projects that effectively communicate your mission and goals. Here are some ways Infogram can help:

Create compelling visuals

Visuals are an essential aspect of delivering a message and persuading people. That’s because they have the power to capture attention and convey complex information quickly and efficiently. Most people are visual learners, meaning that we process and retain information better when it’s presented to us in a visual format. According to research, the human brain processes visual information 60,000 times faster than text.

When it comes to delivering a message on your nonprofit’s mission, compelling visuals can help to clarify and reinforce the key points. This also makes it easier for the audience to understand and remember the message. For example, a graph or chart can help to illustrate data in a way that is much more impactful than a written description, allowing the audience to see the patterns and trends at a glance. 

When it comes to creating compelling visuals, Infogram is the perfect data viz tool that’ll help you communicate your message in a clear and engaging way. With a wide range of customizable templates, you’ll be able to easily create stunning infographics, charts, and graphs that are tailored to your specific needs and audience. So whether you want to showcase your mission’s impact or highlight important statistics and data, you’ll find a variety of design options and features on Infogram that’ll help you effectively convey your message.

Increase engagement

In 2019, a study revealed that interactive content receives twice the level of engagement compared to static content. Additionally, the Content Marketing Institute conducted research that demonstrated an increasing number of marketers are opting to use interactive content to captivate their audience. The reason why interactive content generates greater engagement than static content is due to its primary goal of transforming passive viewers into active participants through the use of reciprocal elements. 

With that in mind, Infogram is an excellent tool for creating visually stunning graphics, charts, and infographics. By using Infogram, you can easily transform your data into interactive visuals that’ll make your supporters take notice and become more invested in your cause. To make your visualizations even more engaging, you can present your data interactively, using either interactive charts or maps.

Interactive charts enable us to present data sets through visualization, comparison, and classification. This 7-page report provides hover-over functionality for different charts, revealing new data. On the second page, you can modify the pie chart by clicking on the icon labels to remove or add data. Similarly, table charts can be rearranged by clicking on each data label. 

If you want to visualize the location and demographic data, opt for interactive maps. In the example below, you can hover over countries on the map to discover additional information. With over 800 maps of different regions, countries, and cities available in our library, explore how your project might look on an interactive map. 

Track progress

What’s progress if we can’t measure it, right? 

While you can measure site engagement following metrics like page depth and session duration, you can also evaluate the performance of each data visualization project individually using Infogram engagement analytics. 

Using Engagement Analytics (available to Team and Enterprise accounts), you can determine the number of views your project has received, the geographical location of the viewers, and the devices they used to access it. You can also track the interaction rate and the number of times your project has been shared. For a more detailed analysis, Infogram’s in-depth analytics display the number of people who have interacted with your tooltips and clicked on legends, tabs, and other elements.

Use templates 

Not everyone is skilled in graphic design, but that shouldn’t prevent you from creating visually appealing infographics. Spending countless hours learning and experimenting with color schemes can be a drain on your energy and productivity. That’s where pre-designed templates come in handy, especially when time is limited.

Infogram provides a wide variety of templates for infographics, presentations, reports, social media posts, dashboards, and more. These templates can be used by anyone on your team, even those without prior graphic design experience. For example, if you need to create campaign materials, simply select a poster design and edit the content. Or, if your team is working on educational infographics about your organization’s cause, choose from a range of templates and modify the content as needed.

Moreover, you can create customized templates based on your organization’s design guidelines and use them whenever necessary (available for Enterprise and Team accounts). By utilizing templates, you can increase team productivity while saving the time and resources needed to create captivating content.

Conclusion 

In conclusion, nonprofit marketing is a critical component of a nonprofit’s overall strategy. A good nonprofit marketing plan should include defining your goals, identifying your target audience, developing your brand, creating your messaging, choosing your marketing channels, developing your budget, and creating a timeline. The best nonprofit marketing strategies include storytelling, social media, email marketing, events, and influencer marketing. 

To make this easier, Infogram can help you in various ways to streamline the creation process of visual materials like posters, infographics, social media posts, and more. With Infogram, you can easily create compelling visuals that boost engagement and attract attention from your target audience. By following these best practices and leveraging the power of Infogram, your organization can increase awareness, gain supporters, and ultimately, achieve your mission. Discover everything Infogram can offer to you and your team! 

Interested in discovering how Infogram can enhance your team’s work? Join a brief Zoom session with our Infogram representative to explore key features, get answers to your questions, and understand how we can assist. It’s quick, informative, and just like a coffee break chat. Schedule your call now!