Nonprofit Marketing Goals & Objectives
Summary
Setting effective nonprofit marketing goals and objectives can be a daunting task. There are so many numbers to look at!
In this video, I’ll show you the three big types of goals you should look at and outline what numbers you can safely ignore.
“When you focus on consistently gaining new followers, email subscribers, and website visitors, you open up the potential for your nonprofit to grow, to serve more people, and to have more of an impact on the issue that you serve.”
If you want to know how to measure the effectiveness your nonprofit communications plan and manage your marketing budget dollars well, you need to focus on three big areas: growth, engagement, and conversions.
Before you start looking at every number under the sun or put together reports for your board, take time to learn what goals and objectives you should set so you’re focusing on the numbers that will make a difference for your mission.
“Engagement metrics are a much better indicator of how well your audience is responding to your marketing messages, engagement metrics for your website include time on page.”
In this episode, learn how to evaluate the success of your social media strategy. Plus, you’ll discover the most important metrics for email marketing that will help grow your donor base.
Watch the video to get the full training.
If you’ve learned something from this episode, take a screenshot or post and use the hashtag #marketyourmission so I can celebrate you on social media!
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Transcript
If you're not diving deep on these three big marketing objectives, you're wasting your marketing budget. Hey everyone. Today I'm talking about nonprofit marketing goals and objectives, and what really matters. You know, there's a whole lot of numbers out there and there's somebody who will tell you that every number under the sun is important, but I've distilled it down to just three big ideas that you need to be tracking across your marketing communications. So let's get into it.
How to set effective nonprofit marketing goals and objectives
First off, how do you set effective goals and objectives? It's not as easy as just saying, you know, "Hey, we want a thousand website visitors every month." Of course you definitely want to look at where you're at. If you're starting out and you have no idea, that's okay. Talk to some friends, talk to some peers and colleagues, see what their website visitors may look like or see what their social media engagement may be like.
How many folks do they have on their email list? Whatever number you're trying to set a goal for, do a little bit of research. There's a lot of benchmark reports available on the internet to give you a rough idea of what you can expect for your marketing investment, but also be really mindful of your time. Marketing doesn't happen overnight and effective, modern marketing takes a good plan and takes execution that happens over the long haul. It's consistency. There's a lot of consistency that you've got to build up in order to really benefit from modern marketing channels that in a way that will impact your mission. So, if you've taken a look at where you're at now, think about where you want to go, think of what will be a reasonable increase or target for you to set for whatever number you're trying to evaluate. But also I wanna warn you to beware of the vanity numbers.
You know, it's very easy to, to say, "Oh, we have 2000 Facebook followers, or there's 500 folks who are following us on Instagram." That's nice, but I'm gonna show you these three big numbers or three big categories where it's better to focus your attention. Why is that? Because the vanity numbers such as likes, followers and even website visitors, those are just folks doing their thing browsing on the internet. But what they're not doing is engaging, growing, or converting. Those are the three big ideas, growth, engagement, and conversions. Let's break them down one by one.
1. Growth
The first nonprofit marketing goal and objective I want you to pay attention to is growth. How are the people who are interacting with you and aware of your nonprofit growing?
It's one thing to say, Hey, we've got 2000 followers on Instagram, but if that is growing 10% month over month, wow, that's fantastic. That means that your marketing is effective and you are drawing new people to your mission. I've talked a lot about how you can attract more folks to your mission. But growth is an important objective because it shows that your marketing is actually working and drawing new people towards you. If your numbers are flatlining or staying the same, it doesn't give you anywhere to grow. It doesn't give you anywhere to go. Now, imagine if you keep emailing your same email list of a thousand people week after week after week after week, and there's no growth, you don't have any lead capture. There's no way for new folks to join your list. Well, eventually the folks on that list, you will reach their maximum contribution, whether that's their time, their treasure or their talent, eventually they'll just say, you know, "Hey, I, I can't give you any more." And that could be disastrous, or that could mean that you're in a maintenance phase, but I want you to focus on growth. On your website, I want you to focus on growth in website visitors. I want you to look at the percentage of new visitors you get every month.
And I also want you to look for growth in time on page. Now you can see that in your Google analytics, which is what I recommend. And if you want to guide to how to use and what to look at in Google analytics, click here. I will walk you through step by step, how to set it up, and also what metrics to look at. So growth on your website, growth on your email list. As I just mentioned, you need to have an email marketing strategy, which I will talk about in another video a little bit later. But the bottom line is you want your email list to continue to grow because as people change, as their interests fade, some folks even just forget why they signed up on your list. Folks will leave your email list. So you need a constant flow of new folks joining your email list.
Of course I love email because it is a permission-based channel. And that means that folks have to give you permission to send them an email, but then once they do, there's no algorithm like on social media, that's stopping them from getting your email. It is one of my favorite marketing channels. So you wanna see constant growth in your email list. On social media, you wanna see a growth in the number of followers, in those other metrics of engagement and likes and shares. It's okay if they stay the same for a little while, but the idea is that by gaining constantly new followers or new email subscribers or new website visitors, you open up a potential for your nonprofit to grow, to serve more people and to have more of an impact on the issue that you serve.
2. Engagement
Number two, for my big ideas of nonprofit marketing goals and objectives, and what really matters: engagement. Now I talked about vanity metrics, you know, likes and follows for email that's open rates, even a lot of 'em, they don't really have a direct correlation to your nonprofit's ability to raise money or inspire volunteers or deliver your programs and services. The engagement metrics are a much better indicator of how well your audience is responding to your marketing messages, engagement metrics for your website include time on page. How long are people spending on the pages of your website? If they're here for 30 seconds and gone, hmm, they maybe they didn't like that content. But if you can have that number grow steadily by producing better content or writing more compelling stories, that opens up more opportunities for them to join your email list or donate or volunteer. Engagement on your website also of course includes downloads and clicks and form submissions, all the things that you want them to spend time on with your website. Engagement for social media, comments and shares are social media gold.
The algorithm wants folks to comment and share on your posts more than anything else. Those are the best indicators to whichever platform's algorithm that your content is something that should be shown to other people. And the more engagement you get on your content, the more likely it is the algorithm will show your post to new people growing your audience and your impact. And of course, engagement for email. That's your click through rate. Now it can be a little bit tricky because Apple's latest privacy settings allow or prevent email marketing providers from always getting an accurate number of folks who click on links in your email. So it's important to also look at your Google analytics or your website analytics to see how many folks are coming to your site each week through email. Again, I've got a guide all about Google Analytics for you down below.
Freebie: Google Analytics for Nonprofits
Learn how to use and get the most out of the industry-standard online analytics tool so that you always know how well your marketing-communications are performing.
3. Conversions
And the third big goal or objective that you should keep in mind for your nonprofit marketing are conversions.
Now I got a little bit ahead of myself. When I started talking about websites, conversions on your website are downloads, donations, completions of a volunteer form. Conversions is just a fancy marketer way of saying someone has stepped up and put skin in the game. They've said, "Yes, I am willing to do a thing. Here's my email address for your email list" or "Here's my credit card information for a donation." "Here's my phone number so you can call and schedule my volunteer orientation." "Here's the form I'm submitting so that you will call me and I can get services from you." Conversions are everything in marketing because that's the end result, right? We're trying to get people to sign up for your programs and services. You're trying to get folks to volunteer. You're trying to get folks to join your board or make a donation during your annual campaign.
So conversions are the most important marketing goal and objective. In social media, conversions are often folks clicking a link and either joining your email list or contributing in some other way. Depending on what your products and services are, you may have a little store on social but usually social media for marketing for nonprofits involves sending someone away from the social media site to your email sign up page or to your donate page. These are a little bit trickier to handle, but I will mention how you can see that in your Google analytics in the freebie below and conversions for email is very similar to social, it's that click through it's when someone clicks an email or clicks a link in an email and goes to your website, and then they make a donation, or then they fill out a form or sign up to volunteer.
So your marketing channels are ultimately feeding folks to your website where you can track conversions. And of course, you want those conversions to increase every single month.
So there you have it. My three big ideas, all about the nonprofit, nonprofit marketing goals and objectives, and what really matters. Remember if you're not diving deep into these, you're missing a lot of the important metrics that you should be following. And the goals that you should be setting for your nonprofit marketing. Number one was growth. We want to see our followers grow our email list, grow our website, visitors grow. Number two, we want to see engagement. We want folks spending time on our website pages. We want to see what content on our website is most popular and where the bulk of visitors are going and what they're reading. On social, of course, we want them commenting and sharing our content because that is gold for the algorithms. And in email, we want them reading, opening our emails, and ultimately clicking through. And then the final marketing objective for you: conversions. This is the end result. This is what we're trying to accomplish with your nonprofit marketing communications. We want donations, volunteer signups, client services. Those are the conversions that you should be tracking across your entire suite of programs and services. I hope you found this helpful. If this type of training would be helpful for you, I go live every month and teach and train on the latest nonprofit marketing topics. You can learn more about my monthly program at marketyourmission.co/monthly. Until then, every day is a great day to SHINE. So go out and Serve with Heart, Integrity, Nerve, and Excellence. I'll see you in the next video.
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And if you like training like this, I'd love to have you join me at my monthly training program, where I go live and teach and train on the latest nonprofit marketing topics. You can find more information about that at marketyourmission.co/monthly.