What’s keeping nonprofit marketing professionals up at night? The challenges of content marketing.
The Nonprofit Marketing Academy asked nonprofit marketers what was their biggest content marketing challenge. Strategy, time and capacity took the lead as the top three challenges.
Here’s what they shared. Thirty-six percent of respondents struggled with developing a content marketing strategy. Marketers also felt they didn’t have sufficient budget or resources to create high-quality content. Just over 50 percent of respondents said they struggle with having enough time to create content effectively and efficiently, and also with having sufficient capacity (staff and/or skills) to create content. Other contenders for biggest content marketing challenge included generating revenue from content marketing, and knowing where to start.
Since nonprofits operate in a business sector that is known for working with shoestring budgets, insufficient staffing, and high employee turnover, the results aren’t surprising. The good news is that fixing these challenges is highly doable, and doing so will help you far exceed your current outcomes.
Where to start when developing a nonprofit content strategy
If you are struggling with developing a content strategy, it could be because you’ve missed some important preliminary steps. A content strategy is not the starting point of nonprofit marketing. The content strategy falls at the sixth step in the overall process of building an Integrated Nonprofit Marketing Plan. Below is a quick list of the steps leading to the content strategy, and the steps that follow.
1. Define the nonprofit business goals. Marketing efforts must tie directly to one or more business goals. The nonprofit’s business goals are the foundation of the marketing plan.
2. Define Marketing Plan goals. For each business goal, identify two to three measurable marketing goals that will support the business goal.
3. Conduct research to create your nonprofit baseline. It’s time for a nonprofit health assessment. If you want to get better, you have to know where you need to improve. To move forward, we need a clear picture of how we are performing today. In this step, gather data about how the organization is performing internally. Look for areas where departments are aligned and where they are working in silos. How is this impacting your marketing? Then, look at the external environment of your sector (competitor analysis, audience research, evaluating regulations or laws that affect our nonprofit operations). The research phase also includes auditing all current marketing and communications assets. It’s important to conduct an organization-wide audit looking closely at every way the nonprofit communicates internally and externally.
4. Identify key audience(s). When applying Integrated Nonprofit Marketing, audiences are divided into three different segments (Organic, Business Partners, and Revenue Generation). General messaging will never work because each segment is different, and the audiences in each segment have a different relationship with the nonprofit.
5. Develop the messaging for each audience. By segmenting our audiences, we can identify our business goal for the audience, identify our marketing goals, and then look closely at what type of messaging will be most impactful for each audience. Our messages should be tailored to the audience’s informational needs.
6. Develop the content strategy. Now you’re ready to develop the content strategy! A content strategy is essentially a buyer’s journey, and we need to develop a journey for each audience. When a nonprofit asks someone to invest or make a donation, attend an event, or just to get involved, the person being asked will go through a decision-making process. In marketing, this is called a buyer’s journey.
There are specific steps on the nonprofit journey, such as awareness, engagement, conversion, and advocacy, and each of the steps needs content to support it. The content should address any concerns the audience may have when they are on that particular step. We also need to determine the best marketing channel for delivering the content and precisely when to deliver it.
7. Identify marketing resource needs. Look at the information that was revealed in step three. It’s now time to find the resources needed to carry out the marketing. Consider the following questions to guide the process.
- Is the nonprofit capable of carrying out a content strategy?
- What resources do you need? Conduct a broad search for free nonprofit marketing resources.
- What technology platforms are other nonprofits using? Is there free technology available?
- Do you need to train your staff on content development?
- Would it be more cost-effective to outsource any of the content development?
- Do you need a funder or sponsor to help with these operational needs?
8. Train staff, board members, and volunteers. We want our team members to advocate for the nonprofit at every opportunity, but do they know about and understand the Marketing Plan? The Marketing Plan and all its content are resources everyone on the team can use to support the nonprofit’s marketing goals.
9. Measure plan success. Marketers can manage and measure a plan, so the nonprofit only spends money on marketing that is working. Plus, what’s even more valuable with having accurate reports about marketing outcomes is that this data is especially attractive to funders, foundations, donors, and other investors.
10. Modify the plan. Business goals change. The external environment will also change, and the nonprofit will have internal changes. Additionally, some marketing tactics won’t produce the desired outcome, while others will exceed outcomes. For these reasons, we need to evaluate the plan regularly and modify it based on the outcome measurements and other business changes.
How Integrated Nonprofit Marketing solves budget-draining nonprofit marketing challenges
Integrated Nonprofit Marketing uses a documented and measurable content strategy that is tied to organizational goals. By developing an Integrated Nonprofit Marketing Plan, nonprofits follow an organization-wide approach to marketing. This approach fully maximizes resources, and it also aids in employee development and the overall sustainability of the nonprofit.
Let’s look at those biggest challenges our nonprofit marketers shared and see how Integrated Nonprofit Marketing resolves the challenges.
Strategy and Resources – Applying Integrated Nonprofit Marketing resolves the challenge of creating a nonprofit content strategy because it places strategy-building appropriately within the overall planning process. When we use a nonprofit marketing plan like that outlined above, we have a clear understanding of the nonprofit’s business needs and goals and how to support them. We complete the planning process with a fully funded Integrated Nonprofit Marketing Plan. Additionally, Integrated Nonprofit Marketing centers on team development, maximizing resources, and generating new streams of revenue, so marketers have the resources they need to create relevant content.
Time and Capacity – Developing a plan provides the opportunity to be very strategic in our approach to marketing. Marketers can manage and measure a plan, to ensure they produce the desired outcomes. When we plan, we are no longer wasting time on tactics that do not produce. We strengthen our capacity because we now have a marketing system in place with technology, templates, planning calendars and content curation. Nonprofits that follow an Integrated Nonprofit Marketing approach benefit from developing the entire team using free and cost-effective training, and learning how to use technology to streamline marketing.
