Do you use Facebook to attract donor prospects?

The reason social media works well for nonprofits is that it delivers value for what we like to do in our businesses: connect with prospects. I’m not sure if you have looked at Facebook’s mission statement before. It reads: “Facebook's mission is to give people the power to build community and bring the world closer together. People use Facebook to stay connected with friends and family, to discover what's going on in the world, and to share and express what matters to them.” 

Worth noting, I’m not a superfan of the overall Facebook business these days, but it does provide a really good service to connect people. 

To boost your Facebook channel’s performance, the company shares some tips on maximizing lead (donor) generation for your business. In this post, I’ll share how this translates to nonprofits and how we can use Facebook’s suggestions for a better process. I also share some quick tips to keep it simple :-) You can read the full article here.

Lead Capture 

Capturing leads (prospects) is exactly what your nonprofit seeks to achieve every day. Social media channels can be a perfect place to share your nonprofit’s value proposition and showcase how you benefit your community. You can use this action to share the stories of your cause. 

#QuickTip: Social media is a powerful acquisition tool so ensure you provide your social media managers with the right tools to achieve the goals.  Also, reconsider placing this role into the hands of your student intern. 

Facebook suggests that we give before asking. Just like in fundraising, it’s essential to build a relationship with people before we “ask.” This step provides an opportunity to give away some information in exchange for your prospect’s email address. (You’ve heard me say this before - email is still the most important way to communicate with your audience). This establishes the “know, like and trust” factor between you and your potential donor. 

#QuickTip: Create an email welcome sequence to follow up the giveaway. This will remind them of your service and that they signed up. Develop a series informing them more about your cause and encouraging giving by sharing stories about how giving helps.

You’ve seen so many of these pages. When you click on a service you are interested in, i.e. a course, the person selling the course sends you to a landing page. Design your page with a clear call-to-action and convert your audience when they “land” on the page. You can test different landing pages and see what sticks. You can measure this via your website analytics. 

#QuickTip: Think about who your ideal donor is and shape your landing page with that person in mind. 

As your prospects take advantage of the free resource, you’ll begin to see more leads coming your way. As your potential donors start to show interest, you can provide them with value - call this your linkage, ability and interest measuring score card. Checking the scores and listening to what your donors want can play a significant role in your acquisition strategy. 

#QuickTip: If your fundraising team is not in sync with the staff members who manage the marketing, it’s time to find a way to share these resources and become one team. 

Facebook also shares some ways to optimize your ads. I’ll get into that in a future post. Let’s start with the tactics and tips above and once we have that dialled in, we can get going with Facebook ads. 

Want to chat about how I can help you get started? Click here to set up a free 30 minute consultation.