6 Marketing Tips for Nonprofit Organizations

by Andrea Taylor | Jun 5, 2018 | AAA Needs Updating, Facebook Ads, Google AdWords, Marketing Strategy | 0 comments

Here at Clix, we love nonprofits! They are doing some of the best work in our communities.

Over the years, we have worked with several nonprofit organizations and that has given us a list of suggestions that NPOs should consider when advertising online.

Google Ad Grants

This is a program for nonprofits to get in-kind advertising dollars each month, courtesy of Google. There are some stipulations – These can only be text ads (no video or images), they will appear below paid advertisers ads, and you’re capped at a $2.00 USD CPC, but you can receive up to $10,000 of in-kind advertising each month.

There are a few recent changes to the Ad Grants program that you’ll want to know about. Our team here at Clix wrote about the good side of these changes as well as about advertisers who haven’t been as lucky with these changes.

If you need a rundown of how to get started, check out our high-level how-to guide.

A Tip for Experienced Ad Grants Users

If you have tested Google Ad Grants before, but haven’t seen a lot of traffic due to the strict clickthrough rates and CPC caps, we would recommend having two separate accounts. The Ad Grants account can be used for the keywords that meet Google’s requirements. For keywords that fall outside of the rules (for example, 1-word keywords are considered too broad and cannot be bid on by Ad Grants accounts), we would recommend putting those in a separate paid account. This will allow the organization to get the most bang for their buck while also taking full advantage of Google’s free advertising dollars.

Link Google Analytics and Google AdWords

This is something we recommend for all of our clients, but I have found that it really comes in handy for non-profit clients. Sometimes, their conversion funnels are different than normal eCommerce or lead generation clients, so I want to be able to track each and every valuable action that happens on their website.

I like to use the Goal Import feature that can replace traditional conversion tracking, if the client’s site for some reason doesn’t allow that. Google Analytics Goals can be created without making changes to the website, which is handy for organizations who may not have an in-house developer.

Want to see more reasons why you should link Google Analytics and Google AdWords? Here are 4 more great reasons.

Shared Budgets

For one of my non-profit clients, they have specific budgets for different states and different business goals. These budgets change on a monthly basis and can quickly spend too much budget or end up with not enough traffic. Enter: shared budgets.

This budget type is not something I typically utilize because I like to be very granular with my budgets and account structure. But for nonprofits, I have found that these can be a lifesaver that can help meet goals when budgets are low and traffic fluctuates.

To set these budgets up, head to Shared Library > Shared Budgets in the wrench button dropdown.

Click the plus sign button to set up a shared budget that will be split each day between multiple campaigns.

Name your shared budget, enter the average spend for each day and select your campaigns. I also recommend reviewing delivery method and evaluating if it would be worth switching over to Accelerated ad delivery.

Facebook Boosted Posts & Events

For nonprofits who may have limited resources for social advertising, Facebook Boosts are a quick way to get the word out and work around the recent changes to Facebook’s organic newsfeed results. Our clients have found that Facebook Boosted Events work great for one-off events like the fundraisers and charity events that nonprofits depend on.

If you want to know more, here is the when and how to boost Facebook posts.

Facebook Fundraisers & Charitable Giving Tools

A nonprofit can get started with using Facebook’s fundraising and donation tools by meeting these qualifications. Note that these features are currently only available to organizations based in the U.S. (including Puerto Rico) and some countries in Europe at the time of publication.

Facebook recently introduced new tools to make fundraising more impactful on their platform. Here is a quick rundown:

People can pledge to match donations to their nonprofit fundraisers.
Users can now create personal cause fundraisers, allowing them to use this feature similar to a platform like GoFundMe.
Removing the platform fee on all fundraisers for personal causes, which means that folks will likely be able to raise more money for supplies and support for nonprofits in their communities. This fee was previously 2.6% + $.30 USD (For nonprofits collection donations on Facebook, there is no fee and 100% of money donated goes to the charity – more information on fees here.)