Inbound marketing in the B2B world is focused on attracting visitors to a website, connecting with them through valuable content, engaging with them so they turn into customers, and then inspiring them to become brand advocates through follow-up communication. This same four-step process that transforms strangers into loyal customers for businesses can work to convert potential donors into lifelong supporters of your nonprofit organization and cause.
Yes, inbound marketing can be used to successfully enhance your nonprofit fundraising efforts and results. In fact, it’s a methodology that should be used, and here come seven reasons why.
1. Employs Metrics that Truly Matter
High numbers of website visits, page views, downloads and followers can boost morale, but they don’t tell you anything about the donations coming in. Instead of focusing on so-called vanity metrics, nonprofit inbound marketing employs metrics that matter.
These include things like the number of donations resulting from downloaded content, the number of monthly donors, and the number of conversions from subscriber to donor, or from one-time donor to recurring donor. These are the type of metrics that matter to your bottom line, and ones you can use as benchmarks to continuously improve.
See Also: What Data Should You Monitor for Your Nonprofit Website
2. Drives Nonprofit Donations through Website Optimization
Optimizing your website needs to be part of your nonprofit inbound marketing plan, as an optimized site can effectively attract new donors, increase awareness and make it incredibly easy for people to contribute to your nonprofit fundraising. Optimization tips include ensuring your website:
- Is mobile friendly, allowing people to donate on any device
- Includes mobile-friendly donation landing pages that reflect your web branding
- Is rich with valuable content that encourages visitors to return on a regular basis
3. Is Cost-Effective
Nonprofit inbound marketing can be significantly less expensive than traditional outbound marketing. Part of its cost-effectiveness comes from the ability to distribute content to a wide range of target donors at no additional cost.
Sure, you have to invest in creating the content. But once you have a solid stock of blog posts, e-books, infographics and other valuable assets, you can then distribute, re-purpose and otherwise get extensive mileage out of them.
4. Increases Engagement
Because nonprofit inbound marketing focuses on creating educational and useful content your target audience members want to read, they are more likely to engage with your organization. Your nonprofit becomes viewed as a helpful source of information rather than a pushy or aggressive entity bombarding people with fundraising pleas.
Consistently giving information instead of always asking for donations can go a long way toward keeping engagement high.
5. Uses Content Geared toward Each Donor Type
Inbound marketing lets you target different donor personas, or different types of people most likely to give, rather than casting a wide and expensive net to prospects that may have no interest in your organization. Creating specific content geared toward each type of donor helps to build relationships while increasing engagement even further.
6. Re-Engages Past Donors
Many donors are apt to give a one-time contribution and then disappear. Nonprofit inbound marketing ensures your organization stays on their radar. Nonprofit inbound marketing is an ongoing process, delivering relevant, valuable information over an extended period of time. This ongoing communication helps to establish stronger relationship that can eventually result in subsequent or even recurring donations.
See Also: How to Run a Recurring Donation Campaign
7. Produces Higher ROI
Your blog content, social media shares and other online nonprofit inbound marketing content has the potential to be viewed by millions of people all day, every day, for as long as it remains online.
Actively distributing your inbound content through a variety of different channels can increase the amount of traffic to your website, where you can then connect, engage and inspire visitors to transform into ongoing supporters. This perpetual cycle of donations can easily outweigh your initial investment in inbound, as well as the ROI typically seen by other nonprofit fundraising strategies.
With the power to increase engagement and ROI on an ongoing basis, inbound marketing can serve as a crucial component in your nonprofit fundraising strategy. Now that you know the reasons why your organization should take advantage of it, your next question may be how. Schedule a consultation with LyntonWeb and we’ll guide you through guide you through the process.
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