Digital Advertising for Fundraising
In today's digital world of social media dominance, google search optimization, and targeted ad campaigns, the importance of incorporating digital advertising into your fundraising strategy cannot be overstated. Digital not only allows you to reach a broader and more diverse audience but also provides invaluable tools for tracking, analyzing, and optimizing your efforts. We're sharing successes in the community and strategy tips to elevate your fundraising endeavors, making your mission not only more visible but also more impactful than ever before.
Pledge Per Win
Capitalizing off of the anticipation and excitement of the 2023 Football Season, K-State Ahearn
Fund launched a Pledge Per Win/Touchdown campaign to help drive incremental donations throughout the football season. Their targeting strategy includes remarketing to evenue page visitors, Social Engagement audiences, CRM FB Purchasers Data, as well as high-performing Fanbase profiles Invested Professionals, and Suburban Blue Collar lists and lookalikes.
Capital Projects
“Your Ross-Ade Stadium” is a unique capital renovations campaign Purdue launched across Meta, YouTube and Google Display channels. They leveraged graphics, videos and banner assets to drive incremental awareness and donations from high-intent Boilermaker fans. All efforts drove fans to a central and clear landing page with an embedded interest form and prominent donation call-to-action buttons.
Giving Challenge
Who doesn’t love a little competition? West Virginia University went live with a Giving Challenge campaign on Meta targeting Mountaineer fans in a Giving challenge against neighboring foe, Pitt.
NIL Fund
Use digital to reach more fans and add more touch points to your NIL Fund awareness. In addition to an email campaign, Virginia Tech launched a paid social ad that linked to their official NIL hub, JumpStart. Their targeting was broad to hit anyone showing interest in VT on social, on the website, and in their data base, with additional lookalikes to reach likeminded fans. With a clear message in the creative, they were able to gain hundreds of additional site visits for the hub!
Giving Day
Whether it's campus wide, athletics focused, 24 hours, or 48 hours - Giving Day campaigns put a lot of pressure for your team! Here's a few tips to stay ahead of your digital ad plan for your next giving day.
Schedule your call-to-action messaging to fit the timeline of the campaign.
Start an awareness phase leading up to the giving day. 1-2 week ahead of the actual Giving Day, start running ads with an informative message.
Switch to "Give Today" for the giving day time frame. Make sure that landing page aligns with where those donations take place online.
Build a multi-channel media plan if your budget allows. Having a presence in multiple media channels gives you a better chance of expanding your reach to spread the message far and wide!
Meta, Search, YouTube, Display, Performance Max - the more the merrier! Each platform has it's own strengths in reaching different audiences and capturing their attention with unique creative.
On a tight budget? Search and Meta ads are a very common combo that has proven successful for many.
Reach and impressions are important to spread the word and get as many donations as possible. So we're typically looking at a bidding strategy to increase web traffic. Bidding for high reach or increased web traffic will get you the most impressions and clicks, which is especially important in the awareness phase.
Targeting is key! Use the data that you have available to create a solid target audience.
Use your first party data for a direct target as well as a lookalike audience. Tap into your existing donors database, school alumni, and even ticket purchasers.
Identify the right locations. Maybe you have a list of hot zip codes or a few cities that are big for alumni to expand your out of market targeting.
Create custom interest audiences for fans, alumni, or similar interests.
Plan ahead. You'll want to have creative assets ready ahead of launch and work through any tracking set up in advance of the launch date.
Start planning your next digital ad campaign now! Reach out to your Pac Digital rep to discuss these strategies and create a plan that fits your fundraising campaign.
