3 Advocate Targeting Tips for Nonprofit Marketers

Content marketing is a marketing tactic that involves the development and distribution of content that appeals to your target audience. For marketers at an advocacy organization, the key to successful content marketing is found in the deep understanding of what both concerns and motivates the group’s supporters to take action.   

The key pillar of content marketing for advocacy purposes: tailoring content to specific segments of your audience.

Employing this content marketing technique to support digital advocacy efforts can lead to greater reach of online advocacy campaigns, advocate acquisition, and better engagement of existing supporters. In this blog post, we’ll introduce three ways that your advocacy organization can use content to strategically target current and prospective advocates online. Our three suggestions are:

1. Develop topic-specific landing pages
2. Share a variety of call-to-action graphics on social media
3. Create advocacy issue area email marketing (newsletters)

1. Develop topic-specific landing pages

Your organization likely engages in political advocacy across a wide variety of issue areas. Your website should provide your audience with comprehensive information on each policy area with opportunities to learn more or take action. Sierra Club does an excellent job of providing interested visitors with multiple landing page options, each one describing in detail an advocacy issue area. Having different pages on your website with individual areas of focus provides an opportunity for your organization to organically attract new supporters by increasing the chance that your web pages will appear in search results. For example, if you search for information about the endangered gray wolf population, one of the first links that Google serves is a web page hosted by EarthJustice, a nonprofit environmental law organization, that outlines the history of legislation impacting gray wolves and provides a clear call-to-action to participate in a digital advocacy campaign. Topic-specific landing pages allow organizations to educate digital visitors and provide an outlet for the group to grow its supporter base.

2. Share a variety of call-to-action graphics on social media

During an advocacy campaign that requires grassroots participation, a powerful way to uncover and activate supporters is through social media. Share a variety call-to-action graphics that connect with your audience. What do we mean by a variety of call-to-action graphics? You know the segments of your audience better than anyone - use this knowledge to your advantage. Create calls-to-action where the copy varies in terms of the readership message. Distribute a variety of calls-to-action where the copywriting is catered to your supporter personas and you will better attract advocates. Keep in mind that social media is accessible by those who fall outside of your target audience and may not have an understanding of the issue, so keep social media effective by using language that can be also understood by a wide audience with different experience and from different backgrounds.

3. Create advocacy issue area newsletters 

Advocates may be hesitant to sign up for a nonprofit's email marketing list because they don't want to be overwhelmed by dozens of emails that may not be of interest to them. However, if your nonprofit provides opportunities for advocates to sign up for topic-specific newsletters, they will be more inclined to subscribe. This strategy pairs well with Tip #1 - develop topic-specific landing pages! On each landing page, include a form where interested individuals can sign up for a newsletter that deals with that advocacy area. For example, the advocate may have found your landing page from Googling "protecting marine life" and only wants to receive advocacy material about this subject, and not necessarily the other advocacy initiatives your nonprofit conducts. Allowing grassroots advocates and other interested supporters to sign up for content-specific email marketing is a great way to attract and engage your target audiences.