Far too many nonprofit organizations go digital — they’re on social media, they’ve got a website, they’re doing other digital marketing — but they don’t have a strategy for it. So I reached out to Ryan Sawrie of Digital Zeal. Ryan has 15 years of digital marketing experience and recently released a new book, Build your Digital Strategy.
Dolph Goldenburg:
I understand your first career in marketing was very impactful. And really started with a pink slip.
Ryan Sawrie:
Yes. My first job was with a marketing company that worked mostly in the automotive industry. We did a lot of direct mail campaigns. It was a great place to work and had a great reputation. And I learned a lot about what I did and did not like about marketing. And what worked and didn’t work.
Anyway, 2008 and the financial crisis rolled around. One morning I received an email congratulating me on my one-year anniversary. And about two hours later I got called into the director’s office and was told I was being let go, along with quite a few other people. I looked at it as an opportunity to start over again and transition into the marketing I wanted to be doing.
But, obviously, not a lot of people were hiring. I probably wrote 40 letters to different ad agencies across the city and maybe got two responses. But one of those letters resulted in a trial – basically I had a few weeks to figure out if I could make a place for myself and have an impact. No one in the company was taking ownership of their digital marketing strategy, so I did. And that’s how I ended up in digital strategy. Twitter and Facebook were new at the time. A few clients had MySpace pages. So my job became to figure out what was working and what wasn’t in terms of digital marketing.
Dolph Goldenburg:
What were some of the low hanging fruit that you picked to help those initial clients?
Ryan Sawrie:
At the time, a lot of it was simply getting small businesses and nonprofits to even take the initiative to be bold and step into these new spaces. I did a lot of training about how to set up a Facebook business page or use Twitter. I also watched what large businesses were doing. For example, Honda was putting its Facebook URL on its television commercials. So I recommended the same to our clients.
Ryan Sawrie:
The fundamentals of these baby steps haven’t really changed, even today in 2023. We’re still convincing organizations they need to have dynamic websites and be active on social media. And we’re still reminding them to point people to whatever platforms they’ve chosen to engage with. Sometimes it’s as simple as making sure there is a newsletter sign up form on your website. Or using another tool like Linktree to easily connect your network with all your digital marketing platforms and any new content you are creating.
Dolph Goldenburg:
What are some other baby steps that nonprofits could take and still see significant results?
Ryan Sawrie:
Newsletters should be a big part of any marketing strategy. Most nonprofits already have a database of volunteers and donors. That list is a huge opportunity that nonprofits should lean into. First of all, that list is people who have already made a conscious choice to share their contact information with you — they’ve already “opted in” and want to hear from you.
Second, that list is yours and you have complete control over your messaging. You can change email providers and that list goes with you, but you can’t take your Facebook list with you. Plus, social media channels are always changing the algorithms they use, which impacts how people engage with you. And sometimes they’ll deactivate your profile or restrict when you can post, especially if your organization deals with political or sensitive issues. And then all your work on building out that social media platform is just gone. That’s why I stress email newsletters, especially for nonprofits.
Dolph Goldenburg:
So I hear you on the value of newsletters. Tell me a little more about the strategy behind producing and sending them.
Ryan Sawrie:
While everyone’s email marketing plan will be different, it’s important to find a consistent rhythm for sending them — I think weekly newsletters are ideal if you have the capacity. In terms of content strategy, a lot of nonprofits use their newsletters to point back to their internal content — their website, their blog, their donation button. But I encourage nonprofits to use their newsletters to be thought leaders and point readers toward relevant resources outside their organizations. Think about your audience and what they are interested in or need to know about. Then point them there. Or provide commentary on recent news. There are so many successful newsletters out there who aren’t just leaning into their own content, but also providing outside content that is valuable to their subscriber database.
Ryan Sawrie:
As with all marketing strategies, you’ve got to think about that journey that people are going on, whether they are making a donation, signing up to volunteer, or purchasing swag from you. It takes more than one social post or newsletter to move people into actually taking whatever action you want them to take. So it might take 10 emails to get someone to attend your gala. Or it might take one social media post, one giveaway, one video, and one email to get them to sign up to volunteer. So a lot more thought and work goes into this than just adding a button to your homepage.
Dolph Goldenburg:
I imagine it’s really important for your entire digital strategy, but especially for your email strategy, to be clear about what your ultimate goal is. For example, at Successful Nonprofits®, our newsletter goal is engagement; success for us is when someone replies to our email.
Ryan Sawrie:
Exactly. You have to start with identifying what you are trying to accomplish. And then, from a digital perspective, determine which, if any, digital marketing tools actually help you reach that goal. A lot of nonprofits just assume digital marketing tools can help them accomplish all their goals. And that’s a mistake — digital marketing tools can’t do everything.
Dolph Goldenburg:
Tell us about the digital strategy sprint.
Ryan Sawrie:
A sprint is any length of time that you’re laser focused on accomplishing a specific project. So a digital strategy sprint is usually two to three months of focusing on building out that fully comprehensive digital marketing plan. I work with clients to identify their goals and then we come up with five or six steps to help them get there.
My book, Build your Digital Strategy , outlines those steps, A through F. A is aligning goals. B is brand alignment and audience development. This step works to identify your target audience – because it can’t be everyone – and explores what you sound like online and what images you use. Then C is a content strategy, which means defining what your content is and why you’re even creating it — it’s the idea of posting with purpose, which is essential for longevity.
Dolph Goldenburg:
I love this phrase “posting with purpose.” Can you say a little bit more?
Ryan Sawrie:
A strong content strategy requires that you post with purpose, every time. It gives you a reason behind every piece of content you publish. In the social media world, we get Fear of Missing Out (FOMO) all the time. We see other brands doing things that we wish we could do or we see a trending hashtag and want to jump on board. But sometimes you just don’t have the capacity. Or there’s not a connection. For example, I worked with a computer company that wanted to post for World Ocean Day. I’d never heard of World Ocean Day. I couldn’t figure out how their brand was even connected, and frankly, they couldn’t answer that, either. It’s easy to get caught up in things like May the Fourth Be with You Day. If you have the resources to put into it, great. But if you have limited resources, as many nonprofits do, then it’s important to make sure everything you do has a purpose and isn’t just FOMO.
Dolph Goldenburg:
Got it. So I think we were on step D.
Ryan Sawrie:
Yes. D is for distribution. This is when you start to think about what channels or methods you want to use for getting your content out into the world and to your target audience. You can’t do everything. And you don’t need to be on every single channel — I think really working well on two to three channels is great. So where are you going to prioritize your resources to best represent your brand, reach your target audience, and accomplish your goals?
E is for evaluation and measurement. This is the step where you figure out how you will know whether or not you’ve been successful. We’re often in this go, go, go cycle and we don’t make the time to actually evaluate what’s working well.
Lastly, F is finding ideas. Digital marketing isn’t just about being strategic and digital, but actually about developing great marketing. So throughout this whole process, if you thought deeply about your brand and your audience and content, you should also have been coming up with great ideas that make sense for your business and the goals that you’ve developed along the way.
Dolph Goldenburg:
Awesome! Part of what I do professionally are interim executive director engagements. I’ve noticed over the last couple years of interim engagements that I am constantly inundated with digital marketing opportunities to the point that I don’t have time to think through them so I just ignore them. How do I sort through all the noise and decide what’s right or not?
Ryan Sawrie:
One of the things I love about a digital strategy is that, if you’ve done it well, then you say “no” a lot. Your strategy is not about taking all new projects and opportunities. It’s about narrowing your focus on a few core things that are going to help you reach your goals.
Dolph Goldenburg:
Ryan, that’s useful. Thank you for that advice and for joining me to discuss digital strategy.
Additionally, check out the following Successful Nonprofits® resources if this post was helpful:
Blog: 10 Tips That Are Guaranteed to Make Your Swag Stand Out
Blog: Digital Advocacy: 4 Tips to Launch Your Nonprofit’s Campaign
Podcast: Broadcast With Your Own Podcast with Mathew Passy
Podcast: Do More Good — Through Your Website (with Adam Walker)