Steal These Marketing Practices from Tech Startups

Startup strategies to steal

When it comes to nonprofit marketing, channel your inner tech exec: Leverage data, technology, and digital content so your people can focus on strategy, sales, and growth.

Make data-informed decisions

Before you embark on your next volunteer, fundraising, or outreach campaign, research your audience’s preferences. Which emails, social posts, or web pages are people viewing and interacting with? What’s your most popular newsletter or blog? How are people finding out about you? 

Yes, you should ask this in one-on-one or general staff or board meetings. More importantly — and more quickly — you can get a comprehensive picture using one of the following marketing tools:

• Google Business Profile (free): How many people interact with your profile, what device they’re using, and what they’re searching for when they find you.
• Google Analytics (free): Your most popular web pages and how people are landing on your site.
• Google Search Console (free): Your website’s speed and performance, its most popular pages, what countries your audience is from, and the number of clicks and impressions your website is getting. 
• Email marketing platform reports (varies): How many people are opening and clicking your emails, and which emails are most popular.
• Social media platform analytics (varies): How many new followers you have, and which posts they like most.
• Ahrefs Webmaster Tools (free): What people search for before they land on your site, how much traffic your website gets, your site’s main competitors, and other sites that are linking to yours. 

Once you have the data, use it to craft your content, ads, and fundraising talking points. 

Sound complicated? Sure. Yet, it might surprise you to know that in every startup I’ve worked with, even execs know how to use Google Analytics and SEO tools. No matter how strapped for resources, they want to keep their finger on their business’s pulse so they can pivot quickly when needed, and they won’t invest in a strategy if it doesn’t promise to deliver growth.

Startups know that research pays off. Case in point, I wrote a guide for a fintech startup that still ranked on page one of Google Search results a year later.