Marketing for Charities: 5 Digital Marketing Tips To Get Started

Digital marketing for charities is a growing area in marketing. And many charities and nonprofits are seeing the many benefits of targeting their audiences on search engines, social media, website and app placements and more.

Targeting donors and volunteers online can be a challenge. You need to know where they hang out and how they will be able to respond to your charity. There are many tools and platforms that will help but some are more effective than others.

In this blog post I’ve made suggestions based on my experience providing marketing services for nonprofits and charities. And I’m confident this will help you get started effectively.

1. Invest in Google Ads

Google Ads is one of the best advertising platforms for charities. The main benefit is that charities and nonprofits are eligible for free advertising budgets and that is $10,000 or £7,000 per month. You can apply for this grant through the Google Ads Grant programme.

First, create a Google Ads account and then apply for the grant.

However, you will have to meet certain policy rules and you will only be able to run Search campaigns in the account. The good part is that Search Ads are the most important and will help you to target people who are actively searching.

2. Review your landing pages

A review and analysis of your landing pages will help you spot any problems that may prevent people from converting. Carrying out this review can be a challenge at times, and it may help to have someone with experience do it for you.

However, there are some affordable tools that you can use. And they will provide you with detailed information of what people are doing and looking at on your website.

One of the good ones is Hotjar, that records visitors on your website and you will see what content they focus on and which paths they take on your website. This will help you tailor your content to your visitors and increase engagement.

3. Conduct market research online

There are ways you can research your market to see the potential size and the returns you can expect. A good place to start is with the Keyword Planner tool in Google Ads.

This will help you carry out keyword research so you can see what your audiences are searching for. And you’ll be able to see what the average cost per click is for those keywords. And you’ll get an idea of what budgets to set for your campaigns.

4. Track your sales or leads

Marketing in Google Ads for charities requires that you have conversion tracking in place. This is one of the compliance requirements to be able to continue using the grant with free funding.

In your Google Ads account in Tools & Settings you’ll see the Conversions link. In there you’ll be able to set up conversion tracking and then add the code to your website. There are full instructions to help you with the set up and a web developer can help you add the code to your website if you’re not able to do it yourself.

If you have a Google Analytics (GA) account you should consider setting up goal tracking instead. That’s because you’ll be able to track all your traffic sources and not just Google Ads. Visit the admin page in your GA account and go to Goals and then use a template to set up goal conversion tracking.

5. Hire a PPC consultant

You should consider hiring a PPC consultant if you need help setting up your Google Ads campaigns. They’ll help you with keyword research, ad copywriting and all other campaign features to help you reach your audiences as they search on Google.

But check that they have experience with other nonprofits and charities. Ask for case studies, testimonials or reviews and check if they are a Google Partner.

Case Study

The Royal Parks is a registered charity with a noble goal to get many more people enjoying the beautiful parks in London that they manage. They approached me with a challenge with their Google Ads account. They had been suspended because of a failure to meet the strict Google Ads Grants requirements. I helped them to fix this and their account is now in regular standing and achieving a conversion rate above 5%. Read the full case study.

Get in Touch

Want to know more about digital marketing for charities? Contact me below to discuss your requirements and to find how I help charities and nonprofits promote their organisations.