Mobile Advertising in the Nonprofit World
Many nonprofits are utilizing social media sites like Facebook and Twitter, print materials, and websites for all of their marketing needs. While all of these tools are great, organizations that are only using those tools are missing the key to success: mobile marketing.
While this post is mainly directed at nonprofits, there are many points that would be helpful for any type of business to incorporate into their marketing campaign.
How Can Mobile Marketing Help Nonprofits and Charities?
Nonprofits rely heavily on regular people (the general public) to support their cause, and therefore do not have a lot of money to allocate to marketing. However, building a strong mobile marketing campaign will pay off rather quickly.
1. Raise more money by providing an easy messaging and response system.
[Tweet “Did you know that 1 in 10 American adults have texted a charitable donation from their phones? “]Pew Research found that, of those that contributed to the January 2010 Haiti earthquake relief, 73% of these contributed on the same day they heard about the campaign, and 56% continued to contribute to other disaster reliefs using their mobile device. Your nonprofit can see the same success.
2. Build a relationship and a community.
Courtney Spence, a nonprofit executive at Students to the World, said,
[Tweet ““Causes are about building #movements, and movements take people.” – @CourtneySpence”]See her entire interview here. She makes a fantastic point. Your nonprofit or charity will not go far without people supporting it, donating to it, and spreading the word. Using social media is a great way to build contacts and spread the word, but SMS marketing works to solidify that bond between you and your supporters. It creates a movement, and that movement creates a community.
When you build a subscriber list for your SMS messaging, you are gaining direct access to potential donors. Instead of waiting for them to take action on your Facebook page, or send a check in the mail, you can make the process easy for them, which means they will be more willing to contribute to your cause.
3. Guarantee number of viewers.
[Tweet “Did you know that only 2% of your viewers are likely to see your message on Facebook, but 98% of subscribers to your SMS marketing will read your message?”]Just in case that statistic isn’t enough for you, we’ve got a few more:
- It takes 90 minutes for the average person to respond to an email. It takes 90 seconds for the average person to respond to a text message.
- 70% of all mobile searches result in action in 1 hour.
- 91% of all U.S. citizens have their mobile device within reach 24/7.
- Mobile coupons get 10 times the redemption rate of traditional coupons.
(We got all of these statistics from a great infographic on mobile marketing. Check it out here.)
How Can Nonprofits and Charities Use Mobile Marketing?
1. Host fundraising via SMS
Simply send out one message to the subscribers on your list. It can promote your cause and link to your website, and you can also say, for example, “Text ‘donate’ to 12345 to donate $1 to support single mother’s”. It is easy for the donor, takes little time, and will see a lot of success.
2. Offer event reminders
If you are hosting a charity auction, fundraiser, gala, or other event or activity, send out a reminder to your subscribers. Many people simply forget to attend things they are interested in, or don’t know about them. This is a simple way to remind people that you exist, and that you want them to be involved.
3. Send links to videos and stories
Building that community and movement that we discussed earlier starts with getting people to feel something. You can easily use SMS to send links to your recent blog post, a recent video, or even the testimonial of a person that your organization helped.
4. Host live Question and Answer sessions at conferences
This is another way to get your community involved and build a movement. People can simply text their question to the number you provide, and you can have an open discussion with your supporters, and the people you want to help.
BONUS: SMS marketing won’t take a new team, or even a new person on the payroll. One person can easily manage the messages and subscriber list using the tools that Txtwire offers.
How Can Nonprofits Afford Mobile Marketing?
Let’s run down the list of what other marketing avenues would cost. You can always read more about other types of marketing here.
- Print Campaigns cost between $170-$200,000 per 1,000 (this is depending on the size and circulation of the magazine or newspaper). It is hard to tell how many people actually view print ads, and how effective they are.
- Radio ads cost can cost as much as $20,000 just to run a test on the ad, and measure its effectiveness.
- Facebook ads cost $0,01-$3.50 per 1,000 but only 3% of brand users read the ad or message, and only 1% of them are influenced to make a purchase.
- SMS text marketing with Txtwire costs $0.01-$0.05 per 1,000 and 98% of messages are opened and read. It doesn’t take as much time or manpower to create the content for your messages, and it only requires one person to send the message.
So What Does That Mean for My Nonprofit?
You are now aware of the benefits of mobile marketing for nonprofit organizations. Not only is the cost minimal, but so is the time required to produce the content. The returns are also much higher than any other form of marketing, and used in conjunction with social media marketing, you can build a strong community of supporters, and create your movement, which results in more money for your cause. So the question, then, is this; how can Nonprofits afford not to use mobile marketing?
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