Finding The Right Platforms To Reach Your Donors

Why should you reflect on the best platforms to reach your donors?

In today’s post, this is the question we are asking. We will also dive into the process you need to go through in selecting a platform, as well as some that you should consider.

Let’s get started.

Why You Need To Use The Right Platforms To Reach Your Donors

The fact is, the internet is a big place. There are tons of websites and platforms out there. Your audience has never had more of a choice where they spend their time online.

If you want the biggest bang for your buck, you need to devote your time to finding your donors where they are. This means researching (and spending time on) their favorite platforms.

Think about it. If your company was trying to sell its own brand of dog food, would you advertise your product to people that were members of “cat owner” communities?

Probably not. 

It’s the same concept with non-profits. The kinds of people that are most likely to donate money to your organization likely have a few things in common. Their beliefs, their everyday routines, the kinds of hobbies they have…and yes, the platforms they spend their time on.

It’s your job to find them.

Finding The Right Platforms

With the importance of finding the right platforms to reach your donors, it helps to have a gameplan. A checklist that you can follow to increase your odds of better fundraising.

While each business will look slightly different, there are definitely a few actions you need to be taking – regardless of what your organization does. Here are three steps you should consider:

1) Conduct deep online research.

Most of the information you need to select the right platform for reaching your donors is already out there – you just need to go looking for it. Thankfully, this process can be quite easy. Here are two ways you might do online research:

• Find where most of your donors found you. You probably already have a good idea which platforms your donors come from. These will be the platforms you interact with them the most on. Pinpointing this answer will help you understand the “journey” that people take to find you – valuable information for appealing to more people.
• Find where most of your competitors’ competitors found them. There is likely an organization that gets donations from the exact people your own mission would appeal to. In this case, it can be quite useful to run campaigns on the platforms. After all, if people on these websites are donating to organizations that have similar missions, they’ll likely be interested in supporting your own cause!

2) Post your content on different platforms. 

Content is important because it provides value to your audience. This educates them and turns them into potential donors (which we cover in our ultimate guide to content marketing). 

Of course, you aren’t done when you have clicked “Publish.” The main point here is to compare the engagement rates across different platforms. For example, maybe you put up the same piece of content on both Facebook and Instagram. If there are substantially more likes, comments, or shares on LinkedIn, this is a good sign that it’s better than Facebook for finding your next donors.   

3) Test paid ads. 

If you have the budget for it, paid advertising can be a great tool for finding the right platforms. That’s because of the quick feedback loop. Paid ads get you fast results (whether positive or negative) in a way that organic content simply can’t. This gets you valuable insight fast, and let’s go make corrections on the go.

And how exactly paid ads are relevant for a non-profit? Well, they show you what kind of message people respond to. If a certain type of wording or creative image gathers a ton of clicks, you can consider building an entire fundraising campaign around it.

As for the exact platforms you will consider? That’s up to you. As I said, each organization is different, each cause unique, and because of that, each donor will have slightly different online behavior. 

Still, implement the three tips above, and you are well on your way to choosing the right platform to reach your donors! 

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Are you an enterprise, nonprofit or small business looking for help on your website? Give us a shout! We provide a free consultation. Email us at info@lughstudio.com or call us at (718) 855-1919!