Friday Five 041: Our Last Friday Five

What is the Friday Five?

This is actually the last Friday five we’re going to be doing. It’s been quite the journey. We’ve answered hundreds of questions for nonprofits, but the good news is we’re actually just editing the format. Instead of once a week for five to eight minutes, we’re going to be doing a daily show answering one organization’s question every single day about digital marketing. This will be dropping as soon as possible. We wanted to freshen things up for you in 2020. We hope you’ll continue to join us for the Daily Boost! 

Be sure to join our Digital Marketing for Nonprofits Facebook group to submit your digital marketing challenges!

Now let’s dive into our final Friday Five. 

Nonprofit Marketing Challenges

1) Your Biggest Marketing Challenge: “Managing our Google Grants Account and introducing the Grant to other Veteran related organizations.” – Russell, Veterans 4 Veterans

Our Solution: We’ve talked a lot with organizations about doing the Ad Grant well and to be honest, sometimes we see content from people out there saying it doesn’t work and it takes too many resources. While our team has proven success managing Ad Grants, we are not rocket scientists. It truly can be figured out and done well by anyone and everyone. It doesn’t matter what your budget is, it just takes being a practitioner. It can be difficult to learn if you’ve never done paid Google ads and if you’re new to digital marketing, but the good news is we do have our Ad Grant Academy. It is currently in beta and is fully free. Our team put hours and hours into producing it, and it’s content that walks you through how to do your Ad Grant. From there you just have to keep putting in the work and if you do that, your Ad Grant can succeed. It can be such a strong, consistent part of your marketing mix. 

2) Your Biggest Marketing Challenge: “Currently I’m an admin on our Facebook page and I’m always so afraid to post anything. So I’m pretty new at this.”  – Kayla, Benjamin’s House Emergency Shelter

Our Solution: We know what it can be like with supporting boards that say everything has to be perfect and can be pretty hard on the creative. However, at the end of the day when it comes to social, we encourage all of our nonprofit clients from the biggest brands in the world to up and coming nonprofits to just post more. There is not an organization out there that’s putting out enough content and the goal here is not perfection but consistency. So that’s how you get good. That’s how you figure out what people like. You have to put things out there and it’s going to be okay. Don’t post your content solely for the likes. Think about your audience and if it helps one person, that’s amazing. Keep practicing. It takes time. Consistency is most important for the vast majority of nonprofits we work with and see out there, so don’t be afraid and it’s not about perfection.

3) Your Biggest Marketing Challenge: “Two-fold. Ticket sales and donations.”  – Jessica, Old School Square

Our Solution: We’ve worked with a lot of theaters and the good news is that there is a channel here that produces and that is Facebook and Instagram advertising. This channel is incredibly successful and you will likely see a very strong return on ad spend. You have the ability to hyper-target people in your area that like the arts. You can even take a list of past attendees and create lookalike audiences or just run ads to them so they know about your new events and new shows coming up. The Google Ad Grant is great as well. $10,000 per month in Google ads, so when people are searching for things to do here or things to do with the family, you’re showing up there as well. Those two channels combined are some of the highest impact when it comes to moving the needle on tickets. And then with donations, run those donation campaigns to the people that you’ve provided value to that have seen a great show. That’s when they should be kicking in a little extra because they believe what you do for the community is enriching and have already proven to support your organization.

4) Your Biggest Marketing Challenge: “Meeting so many deadlines at once.”  – Alan, Anima Glen Ellyn Children’s Chorus

Our Solution: We’re really big on systems and processes here at Community Boost. Things like Basecamp or Asana for recurring task management, but it really comes down to the rhythms. Meetings can be toxic, but meetings can also set you free when they’re done really well where everyone is prepared and you’re making strong decisions and committing to deadlines. Slack is also a great communication tool if you’re managing in house stakeholders. So really just focusing on those systems and thinking about those workflows.

Cameron Ripley