Nonprofit organizations rely on many marketing ideas that are often ineffective, and although the organization is well aware that adopting these ideas does not add value to the organization, it continues to employ them.

In this regard, busy marketers can better prioritize their efforts, dedicating time and budget to changing failed strategies. By distinguishing between successful strategies and ineffective ones, the organization will be able to adopt promising projects and ideas.

Below are the common marketing mistakes that the organization should stop making, based on research and best practices for nonprofits.

  1. Planning projects without setting concrete goals:

According to the Digital Forecast report, 32% of nonprofit organizations have a written strategy for their digital marketing program. Without a solid strategy that defines clear goals, your projects and marketing campaigns are likely to fail. Accordingly, it is essential to learn how to set effective marketing goals by defining both general and specific organizational objectives, in addition to considering marketing methods.

  1. Success evaluation metrics:

Recent reports indicate that many nonprofit organizations believe that their communication methods are ineffective. It should be noted that organizations should not fall into the trap of using numbers, such as the number of followers, when making decisions about determining useful plans. Instead, the organization should assess the effectiveness of its marketing strategy by determining the number of followers who make online donations.

  1. Organizing web pages based on your needs:

It is often observed that there are websites used by the nonprofit organization sometimes to inform staff of various decisions, but employees do not represent the target audience. This means that internal decisions are not important to donors. Accordingly, potential donors should be prioritized when designing the website. When you make visitors one of your priorities, you will have a better chance of conveying your message.

  1. Disorganization and hiding the organization’s homepage:

Organizations can obstruct access to their homepage pages by breaking the link that allows entry to them, but this is actually an obstacle to achieving their goals, as this link is important for users who intend to donate to the organization.

  1. Using your blog and emails to share boring internal news:

It is not advisable to send a press release to the email list; the same goes for employee announcements, office adjustments, and newly granted funds. In this context, a study focusing on donor loyalty has shown that 71% of donors prefer to engage with a nonprofit that offers content relevant to them personally and is of interest to them.

  1. Trying to spread quickly and reach the “general public”:

If your nonprofit organization has already set effective marketing goals, spreading should not be a real problem. However, the main issue is that these campaigns do not offer lasting success for ordinary profit-making organizations. Instead of focusing on spreading, the organization should concentrate on a strategy that motivates the audience to support your cause.

  1. Rushing to dominate social media:

The 2017 Global Online Nonprofit Information Technology Report stated that most nonprofit organizations worldwide have social media pages. However, despite this widespread use, only 32% have a written strategy. To keep your target audience engaged, you need to develop an effective strategy for how to use social media and commit to satisfying your audience by providing quality content.

  1. Keeping inactive subscribers on the email list:

It is essential to create email lists for nonprofits, as they provide significant returns for the organization through effective marketing. However, keeping inactive subscribers for too long can cost you money and complicate the evaluation of how effective your email strategy is concerning active donors. Therefore, it is advisable to remove them from the list.

  1. Contacting supporters only when needed:

Although many nonprofit organizations hesitate to communicate continuously with donors, doing so can lead to losing them by only contacting them when needed, such as soliciting donations. Therefore, it is better to engage them through compelling stories and emails focusing on donor retention.

  1. Relying solely on the digital world for fundraising:

Many prefer to interact with nonprofits online, but there are many donors who prefer to engage with them outside of the digital sphere. Since online fundraising accounts for 6.2% of total donations for small nonprofits, organizations should navigate between these two methods.

Location: Wired Impact