Talk of “new year, new goals” is in the air, and even though these conversations are generally aimed at business owners and geared towards increasing sales targets, it’s important for non-profit organizations to take note as well.
Setting annual digital marketing goals can help you amplify your impact as a non-profit.
While you likely already have an ambitious mission established for your organization, this is often too ambiguous to inform your daily or weekly action items.
Breaking your vision down into tangible action steps can provide clear objectives for your team to work towards.
Whether you hope to grow organizational awareness, boost donations, or increase volunteer support, setting achievable targets is imperative.
Below, you’ll find a comprehensive guide to establishing clear goals for your non-profit this year.
01: Audit Your Current Non-Profit Digital Presence
In order to set accurate targets for your organization, it’s important to establish an understanding of where you stand.
What is your digital presence like currently? Review your website, social media channels, paid ads, and email campaigns.
Website
A website provides a key informational hub for those interested in your non-profit.
Do you have an active website? Is it up-to-date? Does it accurately describe your organization and mission?
If you have a website already established, review metrics such as visitor numbers, bounce rate, page loading times, and frequently visited pages to see how your website is performing.
Audit your web presence as well. Consider:
- Is your website functional? Is everything working as it should?
- Is your website mobile-friendly? Many users are likely visiting on their mobile devices!
- Do you have a website form so volunteers can easily reach out?
- Can website visitors easily make single-time or recurring donations online? Do you accept multiple payment methods? Are donors automatically sent a tax receipt?
I have an entire blog post that goes into more detail on how to audit your website here.
If you don’t have a website built yet, this is a great goal for the year ahead. I’d love to chat about this with you if you’re looking for support or direction.
Social Media
Does your non-profit have an active social media presence?
- Which platforms (if any) are you currently active on?
- Who is your target demographic? Where are they spending their time online? Are their social media tendencies aligned with the platform(s) you’re on?
- Do you have a clear content strategy? A content calendar can help you to focus your messaging and stay consistent with posting.
- How is your content performing? Look at engagement on posts, as well as follower numbers to get a feel for the current state of your accounts.
Social media can be a great way to expand reach and increase brand awareness, but there needs to be intention and strategy behind your efforts.
Online Advertising
Have you run ads for your non-profit in the past? Whether through Google Ads or social media, paying for exposure can be a helpful way to get your organization in front of new potential supporters, volunteers, or donors.
Assess how well previous ads performed (if applicable), and consider if there is any budget for advertising moving forward.
Email Marketing
Do you have an established email list with your donors, volunteers, and others interested in your cause or work? Assess your current email marketing strategy and analytics to get a feel for where you stand.
- How many subscribers do you currently have?
- What are your average email open and click-through rates?
- Are you regularly sending emails?
- Do you have an email content strategy that balances promotional emails (like asking for volunteers and donations) with informative, educational emails (that share about your mission and impact, for example)?
Having a clear understanding of your current online impact through a comprehensive audit like this will help you to make more informed decisions moving forward.
02: Look Beyond Marketing Metrics
Beyond digital marketing, take some time to audit your organization as a whole.
Bring together department leaders to openly discuss how you’re currently faring when it comes to donations, volunteers, and impact.
- How many volunteers did you have this past year?
- How much did you bring in, in terms of donations? From how many donors?
- What other successes have you seen that can be celebrated?
- What are some potential areas of improvement?
- Are there any industry or economic trends that you need to be aware of that might impact your work?
Getting all of your key players on the same wavelength is extremely important to align your efforts for the year ahead.
03: Develop SMART Goals for Your Non-Profit
After you’ve established an understanding of your current status as a nonprofit, it’s time to look towards the future.
What are you hoping to achieve this year? Setting clear goals can help you determine where to focus your efforts and resources.
The most effective way to do this is with SMART goals – a common but comprehensive method of goal setting that helps ensure the objectives you set are specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time-bound.
S: Specific
Your goals should be clear and easy to understand so that you can effectively focus your planning and efforts. What needs to be accomplished?
M: Measurable
Your goals should be able to be quantified. This gives you a clear focus to work towards, and lets you track progress along the way. Putting specific numbers or percentages can help you know exactly when you’ve reached your goal.
A: Achievable
The goals you set should be realistic. It’s no fun for anyone if your goals seem designed to set you up for failure. Of course, goals should stretch you. But they also need to take into account your current non-profit status, resources, and any other projects you have on-the-go. Ask yourself, can this objective be reasonably achieved within the expected time-frame?
R: Relevant
Your digital marketing goals should be aligned with your organization’s mission, vision, and overarching goals. Think about the big picture so you can set goals that make sense.
T: Time-Bound
When do you hope to achieve your goal? Setting a deadline will help you with planning, allowing you to break down each step of the process based on the time allotted. It also allows you to set up benchmarks so you can check progress along the way.
Let’s run through a couple of relevant examples.
01: Overall Objective:
Increase new donors.
SMART Non-Profit Digital Marketing Goal:
Increase the overall number of new donors by 25% by December 31, 2025, by optimizing our donation landing page, providing additional payment options, boosting security on our website, and providing more secure payment processing. We will assess conversions on our donations page and filter by new donors to track progress, checking in monthly for an update.
02: Overall Objective:
Grow website traffic (note that this goal will also support the above new donor objective and, therefore would work well in tandem with it).
SMART Non-Profit Digital Marketing Goal:
Increase website traffic (the number of people coming to our website) by 35% by December 31, 2025, through the use of Google ads, SEO best practices on our website, and blogging once a month to improve our organic search rankings. Google Analytics will be used to track monthly website visitors.
Set Your Own Goals
Sit down with your team and hone in on some relevant digital marketing goals for the year ahead.
Depending on the size of your team and your budget, you can decide the number of goals that make sense for you. I generally recommend 2-3.
The above are just examples, but they are very relevant to nonprofits! Feel free to take them and tweak them for your organization.
As you craft your own goals, take into account the size of your team (and allocated hours of work), your budget, your audience (including their demographics, motivations for supporting you, interests, and preferred communication channels), and your current stats (based on your audit above).
Remember that each goal will have a lot of moving parts within it, so it’s best not to overwhelm yourself. You can always move your benchmarks further down the line or add an additional goal later in the year if you desire.
04: Build Your Strategy
Now it’s time to break these goals down even further so that you have a clear plan to achieve them.
Break these larger, annual goals into quarterly, monthly, and even weekly goals so you can ensure you’re making regular progress on them.
For example, if your goal is to increase new donors by 25%, and that looks like 200 new donors over the course of the year, you need to secure approximately 50 new donors each quarter, or 15-20 each month.
Once you know these targets, determine the action steps you’ll take to hit them.
Let’s take the goal of increasing web traffic as an example. We decided that this was to be achieved through the use of Google ads, implementing SEO best practices on the website, and blogging once a month to improve organic search rankings.
Consider,
- Who will be in charge of your Google Ads? When will you start running them? What is the budget for them? How often will you check-in or tweak them? Will they run all year?
- Who is in charge of your website SEO? Will you hire support or do you have someone in-house who is knowledgeable on content writing and best practices (or can DIY it)? If you’re hiring someone for support, what is your budget? What will the implementation timeline for these website edits be?
- Who will write your blog posts? How will the blog topics be decided? What will the review, approval, and posting process look like?
In the example, we also mentioned that Google Analytics will be used to track monthly website visitors. Who is in charge of pulling these stats and analyzing them to draw conclusions?
Set your budget and allocate resources towards your digital marketing efforts accordingly.
Make sure to take into account:
- Paid advertising costs like Google or social media ads
- Staff time as well as potential outsourcing for content creation, campaign management, or consulting
- Software and tools needed for email marketing, social media management, and analytics
- Website build and management costs, as well as the price of website hosting, security software, and domain renewals
Setting a clear budget will help you prioritize initiatives and make the most of your resources.
05: Leverage Digital Marketing Tools for Greater Reach
Digital marketing tools like social media, email, SEO, and website platforms offer great opportunities to expand your reach and hit the goals you’ve set.
Based on your budget and allocated resources, consider where you might be able to focus additional efforts on content and marketing strategies.
For example,
- Creating a consistent posting schedule for 1-2 relevant social media platforms
- Writing blogs and using storytelling to share about your impact as an organization
- Auditing and updating your website regularly with SEO friendly practices
- Creating personalized email campaigns with segmented lists
Plan a content calendar for the year outlining key themes and campaigns so you can stay on track and remain consistent.
Ensure your content aligns with your goals and is designed to engage and inspire your audience.
06: Measure and Adjust
Digital marketing isn’t something where you can “set it and forget it” (at least not if you want your efforts to be as effective and optimized as possible).
Your goal setting should be an ongoing process, where you regularly check progress and monitor results.
Look at metrics like:
- Website traffic and conversion rates
- Social media engagement and reach
- Email subscribers, open rates, and click-through rates
- Donations
- Volunteer sign-ups
- Press and publicity
Scheduling regular check-in meetings with your team can also help ensure alignment, transparency, and clear communication.
Finally, remember to ask your audience for feedback. Why are they supporting you? What are their motivations for donating? What content is resonating most? What do they feel like they’re missing from you?
Listening to those who are already in your community is a great way to gain insights.
Expand Your Non-Profit’s Impact With Digital Marketing
Setting clear digital marketing goals for the year ahead will help your non-profit amplify its impact and make progress towards your mission.
Following the guidelines we’ve laid out will help you ensure you’re setting goals that are not only achievable, but powerful too.
You’re doing incredible work, and that deserves to be seen! So, here’s to wishing you a year of growth and meaningful impact for your cause.
