Non-profits operate in a world of scarcity. They usually have inadequate budgets, small audiences, and little money or time to advertise their cause. Yet they are responsible for some of the most effective charitable work in the world. How do non-profits accomplish so much with so little? The answer is audience development: strategies and techniques that enable non-profits to efficiently grow, regardless of budgetary limitations or marketing budget. Audience development methods are also known as “secondary audience” strategies because they build people outside your organization, as opposed to growing audiences from within your organization. This article will introduce you to the principles of audience development and ways you can use these principles to build audiences for your non-profit.
What is Audience Development?
Audience development is a term used to describe the process of growing your readership and online following outside of your organization. This article is not about growing your audience inside your website but instead focuses on growing your audience through other channels — through guest posting on other sites, for example, or by producing content on third-party channels like YouTube. Audience development is used to extend your reach and help you connect with more people. It’s a great way to find new supporters and create new opportunities to spread your message.
How Can Audience Development Help Non-Profits?
There are several key advantages of audience development over other strategies like in-house content marketing. First, it’s cheaper. Non-profits don’t have the resources to hire a marketing team. Instead, they use partnerships to promote their cause with little or no out-of-pocket cost. This allows a non-profit to spend its money on other important things, like supplying aid to those in need. Second, audience development enables non-profits to reach new people. By partnering with other online properties, non-profits can reach new people. This diversification reduces the risk of relying too heavily on a particular audience. Third, audience development enables non-profits to focus on what they do best. By outsourcing the work of finding new audiences, non-profits can focus their efforts on the core activities of their organization — such as providing aid. Fourth, audience development creates relationships between non-profits and other organizations. This increases the amount of goodwill between the two parties, increasing the likelihood of future cooperation.
Finding the Right Audience for Your Cause
Finding the right people for your non-profit is the single most important factor in audience development success. If you partner with the wrong audience, you likely won’t see any impact from your promotion. You’ll be like a fish swimming in the desert: it won’t get anywhere. But if you partner with the right audience, you have the potential to scale your reach to millions of people. When choosing the right audience for your organization, the best approach is to first identify the type of content your audience is looking for, then determine if your non-profit has something to offer in response. It’s important to identify the type of content your audience is looking for because audiences often have conflicting interests. By delivering something your audience is actively searching for, you help them solve a problem and are more likely to drive clicks, shares, and conversions.
Establishing a Solid Content Production Strategy
The best way to ensure you’re creating content your audience wants is to do some research. Conduct surveys, interviews, or read comments on the channels where your audience hangs out online. There are many ways to do this research, but one of the best methods is using Google Surveys. Google Surveys is an extremely affordable tool that allows you to create simple surveys and send them to a targeted people, then view the results in real-time within the tool. Another important part of establishing a solid content production strategy is deciding what type of content you’ll create for your target. At a high level, there are three major categories of content: informational, educational, and entertaining. These are not mutually exclusive categories — many pieces of content include elements from more than one category. But these categories offer a starting point when deciding what type of content to create.
Plan to Fail (and Succeed) with Ads
Even if you’ve followed all the steps above, you’re not guaranteed to attract new people through partnerships. Some partnerships won’t produce any results. That’s OK. It’s inevitable. There are no hit-or-miss strategies in marketing. Every strategy you pursue has a built-in expectation for how often you’ll succeed and how often you’ll fail. The only way to have a consistent track record of success is to accept occasional failure. The best marketers expect to fail more often than they succeed. They know that these occasional failures are the cost of doing business. When you’re pursuing audiences development, expect to fail. Plan to fail. Expect that some partnerships will produce nothing. But when they do produce something — even if it’s just one click or one share — celebrate.
Leveraging Existing Relationships and Events
Many of the partnerships you pursue will be one-off deals, where your non-profit partners with another organization for a single piece of content. However, there are many ways to leverage long-lasting relationships. One strategy is to leverage existing relationships with other non-profits, universities, or government organizations. As a non-profit, you likely partner with other non-profits. After one partnership ends, don’t end the relationship. Keep that person in your network and stay in touch. If you have a good relationship, you can easily ask for future help or refer them to a colleague who could use their services.
Wrapping Up
Audience development can help non-profits grow their reach, attract new donors, build goodwill, and accomplish more with less. To succeed, non-profits must identify the right people and create the right content. The good news is that they are eager to be engaged, so they’re more likely to respond to your message than ever before.
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