Content Marketing Campaigns

4 Steps to Smarter Content Marketing Campaigns

Crafting smart content marketing campaigns is a necessary task for any nonprofit. Whatever the goal—fundraising, lead acquisition, or just increasing brand awareness—content is a vital step to getting there. Keep these four steps in mind when crafting your next content marketing campaign:

STEP 1: Analyze Your Audience.

The first and most important step in developing a campaign is to put your researcher hat on. Your goal is to develop a deep understanding of your audience. Consider which resources you have at your disposal that may help you gain better insight. It can be data from your CRM platform or a short survey sent out to your community. If you haven’t built an audience yet, consider utilizing third-party market research tools to aid in your analysis.

TIP: Dive into both quantitative and qualitative research methods. While demographic information and platform usage data are key factors for establishing targeting parameters, the subjective anecdotes that divulge passions and interests will become useful for campaign messaging.

STEP 2: Craft the Ask.

The findings from your analysis in relation to your campaign’s goals will dictate your campaign’s call-to-action, and how it gets delivered. For example, if your goal is recruiting volunteers for your organization, and you discovered that current volunteers are motivated by a sense of responsibility to give back to their community, then it’s wise to incorporate this motivation into the call-to-action. “Looking to give back? Become a champion for your community.”

TIP: This is also the step where testing comes into play. The more variations of language, imagery, and targeting parameters you use, the more data you will have to determine which strategy will accomplish your goals in the long run.

STEP 3: Track and Measure Your Content Marketing.

No campaign is effective without tracking in place and monitoring metrics related to success. Running social media ads to a landing page for visitors to sign-up? You’ll want to measure every step in the process, from the first click to the last conversion. Or are you posting your organization’s new mission videos with the sole goal of brand awareness? Monitor how different types of audiences are engaging with your content and the impressions each video gets from organic shares.

TIP:  Identify the primary and secondary goals for your campaign and how they relate to one another. For example, your primary goal may be to drive volunteer signups, but you’re also seeing a big spike in website visitors, essentially creating your retargeting pool. This information is valuable for your next campaign launch and optimizing your current one!

STEP 4: Rinse and Repeat.

Remember that part about getting smarter? This is where it happens! Review, reflect, revisit, re-analyze. Have a quick look at how we used this approach to TRIPLE qualified leads.

Looking for an agency partner to help you get started? Contact us.