Keys To Nonprofit Paid Media Success

The Ultimate Guide to Nonprofit Social Media Advertising

As a nonprofit, if you’re not investing in paid media ads, you are behind the powercurve. According to the latest available data, just over 75% of registered nonprofit agencies are investing in paid ads, and that number is constantly growing. Of those who are already investing, overall nonprofit ad spending is currently increasing 69% year over year.

Deciding to invest is one thing, though, but making sure you get solid returns on that investment in the form of donations, fan building, and web traffic is a whole different ball game. Below, I’ll layout a 5 step process that will bring you up to top speed on paid social media ads for your nonprofit – from deciding which platforms to use, to how to craft goals that translate into hyper-targeted campaigns that reach the right people at the right time. Hang on tight, let’s dive in.

1.  Before you do anything, set your goals

This seems a bit obvious, but you’d be surprised at how many newcomers to the paid media world gloss over this key step. Pressing the boost button on random organic facebook posts, or putting $20 behind a “donate now” post pushed to a cold audience is a recipe for disaster. Literally Burning money has more redeeming qualities; at least that can keep you warm in the winter.

Before you spent a single cent on any platform, you must have clear, confident, and concise answers to the following questions:

What end action do I want my user to take?

Is your goal for the viewer to make a donation, opt-in to an email newsletter, or “Like” your page? This is totally up to you and whoever makes these high level decision in your organization.

Who am I marketing to?

Demographics and psychographics? Ask yourself, what do they care about? What do they value? How do they see the world?

If you have an active non-profit, you should already know the answer to this before desiring to dive into the world of paid media. If you don’t, creating audience personas are the best way to zero in on your ideal users. Based on your intuition as an integral member of your organization and/or historical data, you can build out 2-4 personas that include:

• Age, gender, and other demographics
• Challenges (What might stop them from completing your end goal for them?)  
• Goals (What do they want / value?)

Where does my ideal user live online?

What a surprise, that’s what we’re diving into next.

2.  Learn which platforms are best suited for your goals and audience personas.

The platform that’s best for your nonprofit paid media goals is usually the one where your audience personas live. Even if you’re just dipping your toe into paid media for the first time, your nonprofit is most likely active on social media. You can use historical data to pinpoint where you get the most engagement, or even invest evenly over many platforms and optimize your budget allocations based on your respective results.

If you’re staring at your computer screen with a blank stare right now, here are some rules of thumb (https://sproutsocial.com/insights/new-social-media-demographics/#facebook):

• LinkedIn: 467 millions daily active users – skews professional and male – a majority of users (61%) are between 30-60, and a very significant 44% of users have incomes over $75,000/year.
• Facebook: 1.2 billion daily active users – user base includes (of the American population) 88% of 18-29 year olds, 84% of 30-49 year olds, 72% if 50-64 year olds, and 62% of those 65 and older – of those Americans who make between $30,000-$75,000+ yearly, anywhere from 75-84% have Facebook accounts.
• Instagram: 600 million daily active users – skews female and urban with an even proportion of income levels – from $30,000-$75,000 yearly.
• Twitter: 330 million daily active users – skews 18-29 years old – even split of males and females, as well as an even split between urban, suburban, and rural locations.

3.  Understand UPSYD

UPSYD (pronounced “upside”) is a framework originally conceptualized by Gene Schwartz in his book, Breakthrough Marketing. This concept is much like the idea of a “sales funnel”, but I’ve found that this perspective on how audiences interact with your brand is much more intuitive.I’ve translated the language to fit nonprofit organizations, but the concepts are exactly the same, and used to describe where a person may fall in relation to your brand and their willingness and ability to fulfill your marketing and advertising goals:

1. Unaware: No knowledge of anything except, perhaps, their own identity or opinion.
2. Problem / Desire Aware: Your audience senses they have a problem, but doesn’t know there’s a solution.
3. Solution Aware: Your prospect knows the result they want, but not that you provide it.
4. Your Solution Aware: Your audience knows what you offer, but aren’t sure it’s right for them.
5. Deal: Your prospect knows your product, and only needs to know the specifics of what you’re offering.

You can visualize UPSYD as a staircase – the lowest step being “Unaware” and the top of the step being “Deal”.

Via https://www.digitalmarketer.com

You’re going to create unique content (ads) and specific messaging for different audiences that that are all spread out over these various stages. It is your ultimate goal to use your content to move your audience up these steps to “Deal”. A little confused? Don’t worry, in the next section, we’ll go into more detail with some examples.

4.  Create content using UPSYD

After you’ve wrapped your head around UPSYD and understand the flow of a hypothetical user from the bottom to the top step, you can begin to create messaging and ads that speak directly to combinations of your audience personas and UPSYD stages. Let’s say you have 3 audience personas. A matrix that you can use to organize and visualize what content you need to create may look something like this:

As you can see, each audience not only requires their own messaging based on their persona, but also based on their current step in UPSYD. In this case, we would have at least 15 different messaging concepts to create.

Once you’ve gotten organized, it’s time to be creative with your imagery and copywriting. Let’s work through an example of a persona x UPSYD message:

Persona #1:

• Female
• 25-35 years old
• $40,000 – $50,000 yearly income
• Urban
• Challenges: Cares about your cause deeply, but doesn’t have the time to research and compare all of the different nonprofits that are involved in this space.

UPSYD:

• Solution Aware

So, to sum it up, we’re speaking to a younger woman who’s relatively established in her career, has disposable income, cares about your cause, and knows different nonprofits with that same mission, meaning she’s solution aware. The problem is, she’s not aware of your organization.

Ideally, here, you’re aiming to overcome her challenge and push her to the next step, “Your Solution Aware”, or even better, all of the way to “Deal” (Yes, multiple steps can be conquered with a single ad). Your messaging might look something like this:

“Want to support [your cause] but don’t know which nonprofit is the best to give to? Click below to download our 2018 [Your Cause] Report, where we lay out every [your cause] nonprofit, including how and where your donations are spent. Make the best decision for the cause you care about, and download our report now.”

Of your audience of a million Persona #1’s, a certain percentage will download your report (which will include and highlight your organization), making them “Your Solution Aware”.

If they provide their information when they download, such as their name and email address, they can now be added to your email list for future marketing. Another option would be to target them later with different ads, after they land on the web page that the above ad directs to (this is referred to as “retargeting”). With these options in hand, you can then move them into the “Deal” phase with a more direct proposition.

5.  Match your content to audiences (targeting)

I know exactly what you’re thinking right now: well, that’s great, but how am I supposed to find and target people on social media who match my personas and UPSYD step?

It’s all in the targeting.

Let’s use facebook as our main example here, which by far is the social media with the most robust targeting options. In general, the only way you’re going to get the best handle around Facebook’s targeting options is to get to know them yourself. Explore Ads Manager frequently and absorb your options, experimenting with different targeting options and keeping in mind how they may correlate to your personas and UPSYD stage.

For example, on Facebook, you could target by:

• Interests
• Demographics
• Users who visited your website (as well as users who spent a lot time there, or went to your website multiple times in a given time span)
• Users who interacted with your page
• Users who interacted with another other public page on Facebook

Matching up Facebook targeting options with Personas and UPSYD stages can be difficult, but it takes an intuitive knowledge of how people’s actions on FB correlate to their UPSYD stage. Let’s go back to our Persona from the messaging example above. If I were targeting this Persona’s audience on Facebook, I would target the following:

• Female
• 25-35 years old
• $40,000-$50,000 yearly income
• Geo-target major metropolitan areas
• Interests: [your cause], non-profits in your space
• Has interacted with, or “liked” other nonprofit pages with your same mission

Because this Persona has an interest in your cause, and has interacted with other nonprofits in your space, this audience can be considered “Solution Aware”. It’s now your job to make them “Your Solution Aware” with your ad messaging.

If you want to target an audience that’s already “Your Solution Aware”, and move them into the “Deal” stage, you can target people who visited your website multiple times in the last month, as well as people who have interacted with your page recently. This audience knows you exist and that you have a solution to their desire to get involved, and now, you can target them with the perfect message (“Sign-up for a $5 monthly donation for one year and get a free calendar and your name engraved on our donation wall at our HQ for everyone to see!”).

Final Thoughts

You did it! You now have the knowledge you need to go out there and crush some nonprofit social media ads. A few final tips: remember to research, research, research, and always test ads with different headlines and images. If you are consistent and work smart, you can achieve even your most lofty quarterly revenue goal.