5 Ways Nonprofits Can Benefit from Facebook Ads

Does your nonprofit want to become more engaged on social media? Is your organization holding a big event that could use a bit more attention? Join social media expert Josh Cantrell on Wednesday, July 12 from 3 p.m. to 4 p.m. at The Regas Building to learn more about how to tackle your audience, optimize your campaigns, and invest with impact using Facebook ads. ABN members can sign up for this FREE training with us HERE.

In the meantime, there are a few ways Facebook ads can help any nonprofit build their audience and increase engagement. We’ve taken these key points and paired them with a few Facebook Statistics from Pew Research and the New York Times Customer Insight Group. We hope this is the beginning of helping your organization understand and effectively market to your audience.

1. Find new supporters by reaching outside your existing community.

It’s no secret that Facebook is the most popular social network across all age groups. In fact, over HALF of Facebook users have over 200 friends. Users 18-29 tend to have 500+ friends. When your supporters share your posts to their friends, your engagements could double, or even triple!

2. Reach out to people who are similar to your existing supporters.

Did you know that 84% of social media users share posts to show their support for a cause? Your network is likely to attract like-minded more individuals. When users share content, it reflects their own personal identity or beliefs. When sharing a post, a user is making a statement about themselves. To get more interaction with users, look at things from your audience’s perspective: What will this post say about them if they choose to share it? Will their friends want to see this as well?

3. Make sure more of your audience sees an important post.

Do you have an important fundraising event coming up? This is the perfect opportunity to use a tiny percentage of your budget to gain more support overall. Facebook’s algorithm bases its user’s news feeds on three basic elements:

• Affinity: How close is the relationship between the user and the content or its source?
• Weight: What type of action was taken on the content?
• Time Decay: How current is the content? How recently was it posted?

To ensure your users see your posts, Facebook ads were created. By using these ads, your organization can control who sees it and how much money is spent on each ad.

4. Send calls to action to people with particular demographics, interests or behaviors.

When you create a Facebook ad, you have the ability to target a selected audience based on interests. You can select the topics of interest based on the post, your organization, or nonprofits in general, and then Facebook does all the work! Facebook will target individuals who have similar “likes,” connections, locations, demographics, and more based on these highlighted interests.

5. Drive specific behaviors, like visiting your website or signing up for your email list.

One of the best parts about Facebook ads is your ability to customize. Outside of the ability to create your target audience, you can also embed links, images, and videos inside of the ads. Ultimately, the end goal of any advertisement is to drive people back to your website.

And if that’s not enough or you’re eager for more, check out ABN’s social media marketing packages HERE, or attend one of our upcoming trainings on social media and digital marketing:

SOCIAL MEDIA FOR NONPROFIT SUCCESS – Tuesday, July 25, 9 a.m. to 12 p.m.

DIGITAL MARKETING STANDARDS FOR NONPROFITS – Tuesday, October 24, 1 p.m. to 4 p.m.