Digital Marketing in the Social Service Sectors and its Challenges
The pandemic has altered the way that Social Service Agency (SSA) and Non-profit Organisation (NPO) deliver their services to the community. It has paved the way for innovation in the care sector and encouraged the adoption of digital technologies for improved efficiency.
In the care economy, SSA (including NPO) are established to promote the well-being of people and communities. It seeks to help individuals or families to be self-sufficient, and able to successfully function in society (National Council of Social Service, 2015).
With the continuous evolution of community needs, comes a higher demand for more resources to support the SSA’s and Non-profit operations, as well as to connect with stakeholders to rally for their causes.
Source: Healthserve
The shift from offline engagement to virtual format has posed a greater challenge for SSAs, especially in creating effective engagement strategies to connect the stakeholders with their mission.
Today, more people are spending their time online. This evolving digital consumerism has shaped the demand for implementing digital marketing in the SSA and NPO’s operations. Digital marketing provides countless opportunities to attract and gain supporters.
However, there are at least 5 major challenges that Social Service Agencies and Non-profit Organisations are facing:
- The struggle to enhance awareness of the programs/causes that they are promoting
- With a very broad audience, it is hard for these organisations to reach the most relevant audience who resonate with their missions
- The constantly updated internet marketing tools and processes require SSAs and NPOs to keep up with the rapidly-changing trends
- The lack of structured and clear marketing strategy
- The cost constraints in implementing the desired strategy
How Digital Marketing Can Help the Social Service Sector?
Digital marketing is a form of modern marketing that utilises digital technologies such as the internet, and its channels to promote a service. Yet despite being widely associated with for-profit organisations, Digital Marketing has become a universal tool used by organisations worldwide, regardless of its form.
It helps SSA and NPO to promote their programs through all available digital platforms, with an objective to gain supporters and convert them into donors. Since Digital Marketing relies on a data-driven approach, it can be the lynchpin of a successful outreach strategy.
Digital Marketing Helps to Enhance Awareness and Presence
Marketing is not about a contest, but it is the act of helping someone solve their problems with a unique superpower. Great organisations must understand that building a digital presence is more than just creating a platform that the public can visit.
By having a strong digital presence, organisations’ values and missions can appeal to people — thus increasing the chance of getting more engagement and support from the stakeholders.
Here is how digital marketing can help SSA and NPO to increase their brand awareness.
It Connects Values to Like-minded Audience
Today, consumers are more aware of the information that they received. Disruptive and one-way marketing communication is no longer effective. Through leveraging some digital marketing tools, it allows SSA and NPO to target relevant people who resonate with the organisation’s mission.
It Helps Captivate the Target Audience
When promoting community service, initiative, or program, the goal is to make people interested and involved in the mission. The format of content that a marketer uses plays a huge role in the impact of a campaign.
By articulating the value proposition using the right format, the messaging can captivate the target audience, donors, volunteers and other stakeholders — making the organisation be at the top of mind.
It Helps Boost Credibility and Trust
Credibility and trust can be built by sharing powerful stories about the Social Service or Non-profit Organisations and their missions. Each digital marketing tool will help these organisations to spread their stories to the respective stakeholders.
Digital Marketing Helps to Collect and Analyse Data Effectively
Source: Healthserve
Organisations could extend their reach to a wider audience and drive greater impact for the community when actions are backed by data. Digital marketing allows organisations to track performance in real-time and encourages agility in decision-making.
Data That Can Be Acquired Through Digital Marketing:
- People who signed up on a website
- The audience who engages with a social media account
- Number of donations generated from certain channels including the donor’s detail
- Audience lifetime value
- Detailed performance of a marketing campaign — from the number of people reached, down to the number of converted audiences who have become our supporters.
With resource and cost constraints, the key is to effectively allocate the marketing budget to the best-performing channels. Consequently, having quality historical data will allow SSA and NPO to maximise the true potential of their marketing campaign.
Planning an Effective Digital Marketing Strategy for Social Service Agencies and NPOs
Step 1: Define the People and Purpose
Identifying the people means understanding the people that SSAs and NPOs really serve — who they are, what they need, and what are their interests.
SSAs and NPOs also need to identify the main purpose. Do the organisations serve the beneficiaries? The clients? Or meeting the requirements of a grant? These organisations also have to carefully point out what the target audience really needs.
After defining the people, the next step is to connect the purpose with the people. Define: why is the organisation here to help? And why should people trust the organisation?
“In the digital space, we are not just here to make noise, we are not just here to tell people we exist, but we really want to ultimately connect with purpose.”
Reuben Png, CEO and Founder of IndegoX
The important note is to point out the difference between the targeted group of audience. Connecting to different audiences means using a personalised and unique approach to captivate them.
Step 2: Create a Plan Based on the Objective
As SSA and NPO, they are required to define their goal — what they are trying to achieve by doing digital marketing. A clear digital marketing plan presents a better picture of which aspect needs to be optimised for more efficiency. A plan helps organisations to allocate their budget to the specific channels and invest in the manpower needed.
However, many organisations are having difficulty to begin with. As an example, SSA and NPO can begin by doing these processes:
- Identify the objective
For example, if a Non-profit is keen on attracting donor funding, this defined goal will direct most of its marketing activities. If a Social Service Agency aims to promote a new program, this goal will be the starting point of its digital marketing plan.
- Start by building exposure
A goal can take many forms, but at the top of the list is brand exposure. In this step, the key point is to spread the organisations’ values and missions to as many audiences as possible. Digital marketing tools are able to match the message with relevant audiences.
- Reflect the plan with S.M.A.R.T goals
It is important to reflect on the strengths and weaknesses of a marketing initiative from the perspective of the S.M.A.R.T goals. Ensure that the goals are Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Relevant, and Timely.
Step 3: Create a Key Message and Use the Right Medium
A key message helps the campaign get noticed. It must be powerful and compelling enough to gain the audience’s attention — with the hope that it will gain audience’s interest and they will take action.
Source: Ray of Hope
Since there are many options to use, the best way to start is to utilise the most important and common medium. For example:
Landing page
Landing page is a great medium to showcase a Non-profit Organisations’ or Social Service Agencies’ available services and programs.
Through a landing page, organisations are able to land visitors to the relevant page from a variety of sources — e.g. from any social media platforms, email, online newsletter, or other mediums.
Best Practice to Create a Relevant Landing Page:
- Structure the landing page based on the needs:
For instance, if an organisation is promoting an online webinar to educate people about certain topics, the landing page can contain every detail of the program — from the rundown, speakers, date, and other relevant details.
To increase webinar sign-ups, the organisation can provide an additional form to allow people to register.
Below is a good example of a landing page for Social Service Agencies or Non-profit Organisations.
Source: Ray of Hope
Social Media Content
There are several types of social media content that organisations can create and each type has its own advantage and purpose.
“Call to Action” Content
A content that urges the audience to do certain actions. In SSA’s and NPO’s context, it is a content that drives supporters to donate to a certain cause, sign up to a program, or simply engage with the content.
Educational Content
It covers useful and actionable insights with the aim to solve people’s problems. When creating educational content, organisations need to ensure that the content aligns with the cause that they promote.
Remember that educational content is not limited to only images or carousels, but it can also be in different forms, such as infographics or videos.
“The Happenings” Content
It consists of content that showcases the organisation’s activities, whether it is a volunteering activity or behind the scenes of the SSAs and NPOs.
This type of content allows SSAs and NPOs to tell the audience that they are active. At the same time, it also helps build credibility and trust in front of the stakeholders.
Step 4: Choose the Promotion Channels
Promotion helps Social Service Agencies and Non-profit Organisations to discover, engage, and convert large audiences that share the same interests and aspirations. The key takeaway is by identifying distribution platforms that may likely boost the campaign performance
Here are some of the best practices in choosing a promotion channel:
- Choose the popular digital marketing channels — such as Social Media Ads, Google Ads, or Email Marketing. The key is to choose the channels where most of the target audience are hanging out and have a huge audience base.
- Looking at the other Non-profits or Social Service Agencies. What are the majority channels that are used by similar organisations? If those organisations have a well-established presence, it means that the platform has the relevant audience base.
Step 5: Spread Out the Message
Once the steps 1 to 4 are performed, SSAs and NPOs will be able to define the relevant audience that they want to target, the format that will be used, and the relevant channels to begin the marketing campaign.
The next step is to spread the message and mission to the people out there. Remember to be consistent and always keep up with the trends happening around the community and the digital space.
Step 6: Measure and Optimise
Once a campaign is running, the homework is to carefully measure and optimise the marketing performance.Find out whether the campaign has reaped a desired result or not. Remember to always measure the performance based on the metrics that are relevant to the initial marketing goal.
Here are some of the best practices to measure performance:
- If the goal is to gain exposure, SSAs and NPOs should focus on the Key Performance Indicators (KPI) such as: people who viewed the content (impressions) and numbers of people reached.
- If the objective is to bring more engagement to the social media account, the focused KPI will be: social media visitors or traffic, total followers gained, and number of engagements (like, comment, or share).
- If the objective is to bring leads, people who signed up for a certain program, or total amount of funds raised in a charity campaign, the focused KPI will be: the number of conversions (total numbers of people who sign up through the ads) or conversion value (the amount of funds raised through the ads).
Project Showcase: Content Strategy for Digitalisation in the Social Service Sector
Our agency, Epic Dialogue, was tasked by Social Service Institute (part of the National Council of Social Service), to develop #GoDigitalForGood — an online community to help the Social Service Sector embark on their digitalisation journey.
The community was made to provide solutions for the rapid digitalisation challenges experienced by organisations in the Social Service industry. The initial objective was clear: to help Social Service professionals gain knowledge related to high-demand digitalisation topics and rally more members so that they can connect to other like-minded audiences.
To boost the engagement within the community, our agency came up with two main initiatives: developing a content strategy and conducting webinars featuring tech experts across the care and corporate industries.
As a result, our work has gained traction from many Social Service professionals and has helped more than 500 members gain comprehensive knowledge related to digitalisation challenges.
All available materials within the community also aimed to help Social Service Agencies and Non-profit Organisations grow their resources, improve communication strategy and organisation’s efficiency — thus, helping them to adapt and thrive in the digital transformation age.
Looking Forward to Perform a Digital Marketing Campaign for Social Service Agencies or Non-profits?
Contact us to find out how we can help your organisation embark on digital transformation.
