Having worked for a number of non-profits over the years, I’m no longer surprised when there is no budget for advertising. It’s a blessing when leadership understands the importance of branding, design and the value of outreach. But even when you have great leadership, there is still little room in a non-profit budget for advertising. So what steps can eager professionals take who have the awesome responsibility of marketing a brand with no money?
I’ve been blessed to work with amazing colleagues who have energy and ingenuity, so I won’t take credit for all of the ideas I might share, I’m merely passing on my assessment of what worked and what didn’t work.
Ideas that worked:
Free advertising exchanges. Several groups I have worked with publish academic policy journals, or publications of one form or another. Generally, these publications are distributed at events once completed or subscribers are sought for recurring publications and the like. Since these publications are being printed and marketed, they contain valuable advertising space throughout, for groups interested in reaching your readership. Think about who those groups might be, and whether there is a similar publication or advertising opportunity that someone can give you in exchange for ads placed in your journal or publication. This is a little unconventional, and while some people that you solicit may be wary of this new approach, I’ve built great partnerships with this strategy.
Event fliers. Especially if you work in a busy metropolitan area like Washington, DC, there are plenty of opportunities to take fliers to events advertising your latest book, event, publication, policy memo, et cetera. This only takes a little time to find the events willing to let you put out materials at their event. If organizers might say no, you can always go mingle with people before or after events and hand them materials as part of a short conversation. If there are large conventions outside your metropolitan area, think about asking the organizers to include one of your publications as part of an introductory packet, or with meeting materials, and offer to provide free copies.
Online Social Networking Activities. There are a number of free online social networking strategies that non profits can explore, including building Facebook communities, LinkedIn groups, starting an AdWords campaign with an AdWords grant, starting a blog, and/or commenting and writing for other blogs. There are so many free tools available to help nonprofits market themselves on the web, it’s sometime overwhelming to pick and choose the ones that give you the most return on your time investment. Establishing a Twitter following might take you 20 hours a week, but is that worth it if your target audience doesn’t use Twitter?
Email newsletters. This is a great way to build an email contact list. You can use a number of low-cost programs like iContact (the cheapest), to more robust e-mail newsletter services like Bronto or ConstantContact. But before you decide to send out a weekly or monthly e-newsletter, think carefully about what services the newsletter will provide and why people might want to subscribe to it. Think about how to make a niche for your newsletter that isn’t already offered by other competitors.
Write Press Releases and build a media list. This relates to my point below under “what doesn’t work”… The best free advertising is from news stories that other people write. Try to think from a reporter’s perspective and tell them what your group is doing that’s newsworthy.
Create RSS Feeds. If you’re using a content management system (CMS) to power your website, chances are you can easily create RSS feeds with your content. RSS feeds allow your content to be easily syndicated to other website, so people can re-use and re-post your content easily. RSS feeds allow people to subscribe to your website, so when you post something new, they are alerted to come back. If your website doesn’t generate feeds, you need to start!
What didn’t work:
Radio underwriting. I know radio advertising isn’t free, but I have tried it. The problem with doing this on a non-profit budget is that you really need a pretty substantial amount of money to make an impact with radio advertising. You CAN get heard on the radio for free though, and this CAN be a great strategy. If your target audience listens to your local NPR station, you need to think about how to pitch the topics you work on to the appropriate radio reporters who cover your issue and make your experts and staff available to speak with them. This is great free exposure and is much more meaningful than a 15-second spot that you purchase.
Do you have some free marketing ideas that have worked for your nonprofit for little to no money? I’d love to hear them!
Background: Six years ago I designed candidate Nicole LeFavour’s website as she was running in her first primary for the Idaho District 19 House seat. She is now a State Senator in the same district. I volunteered six years ago to design her website (it’s my way contributing to political campaigns that I support!). Back in 2004, we designed a static website mostly around the needs of the campaign, but as you can imagine, after 6 years the information on the site had outgrown its original structure. This winter, I volunteered to give the site a face-lift.
This weekend an unknown number of websites hosted by the widely-used Network Solutions hosting provider were “hacked” by a group claiming support for the Palestinian cause. Websites that were targeted had their homepages replaced with a very simple website (sometimes called “defacing”), generally they were black, with some flags, and messages in both Turkish and English. Some have pictures, and I saw several variations like the one to the left. There are some speculative reports that there is “drive-by malware” installed on these pages that will automatically try to download when you visit the site, so be cautious about visiting sites hosted by Network Solutions in the coming weeks!