In the marketing world, building an audience is critical for success. Having people in your corner who relate to your messaging and interact with your content means that you have access to people who are far more likely to work with you.
For nonprofits and purpose driven businesses, building an audience is just as crucial, if not more so, than other businesses in the market.
When attempting to communicate your mission, raise awareness, or attract potential donors, clients, or stakeholders—building an audience that understands and is connected to your mission significantly increases the chances that they’ll engage with your organization.
So how do you do it?
Many of the clients I work with (and many organizations and businesses out in the wild) tend to treat their audience as a singular entity. When I ask them to tell me about their audience, they start by describing one type of person or group of people.
What this approach is missing is that every audience is actually made up of many types of people and personalities who engage in different behaviors, who have different interests, and who get involved with social causes for a variety of different reasons.
Assuming your audience is monolithic means that you may be unintentionally alienating segments of your audience with content that doesn’t actually resonate with them.
Who do you serve?
As a Fractional CMO, I help social impact organizations understand who their customers are and why they buy or donate, so that organizations can use more effective and targeted marketing strategies that build relationships with their audience.
For nonprofit organizations, this means taking the time to understand what your donors are interested in and passionate about. For purpose driven businesses, it means really getting to know your clients.
Not taking the time to understand your audience means you’re leaving essential information on the table by marketing to the type of person you assume is in your audience, rather than understanding who your audience is actually made up of and why they connect with your organization in the first place.
That’s why one of the first things I do with most of my clients is learn about their audience.
Building an audience that is excited and ready to give or buy means:
- Spending time and effort getting to know them
- Segmenting the audience based on what you learn
- Keeping your audience interested, and most importantly…
- Getting them to take action
Know your Audience
Getting to know your audience is absolutely essential to creating effective marketing, and yet most organizations don’t spend enough time listening to the cares and needs of their donors.
In fact, according to a 2024 Hubspot survey, less than 50% of marketers actually even know their audience’s interests and hobbies, and only 25% are aware of the social causes their target audience cares about.
There is a HUGE opportunity to stand out with personalized marketing messages simply by spending time understanding who your donors and customers are and what they care about to begin with.
How do you get to know your audience? You talk to them, of course!
Many of my clients feel they have a good grasp on their donors and are ready to rattle off a list of their interests, pain points, desires, and personalities. And yet, when I ask them how they know this, I often find that they haven’t actually spoken directly to their audience about it.
What happens when you offer the opportunity for your audience to tell you about themselves? That’s where we find gold.
When I interview my client’s stakeholders, I ask lots of questions to get them talking about their experience — what they loved, what they didn’t like and what they’d want to change the next time they solve the same problem. I dig into what made them seek out a solution in the first place. What led them to the organization.
These conversations reveal the problems that a particular audience faces, how they approach solving those problems, and why they choose the solution they do. This treasure chest of information is essential for creating messages that resonate because it tells you exactly why your clients engage with your work.
It tells you how and why they view your organization as the best choice for solving the problems they care about.
When paired with data, this information becomes the backbone of your marketing strategy. It serves as the foundation for every touchpoint you have with your donors or clients moving forward, and it helps you get in front of others who feel the same way.
Build Your Audience
After getting clear on who your current and target audience is, you can start the work of growing that particular audience.
There are many different strategies for building your audience. Whether you choose to focus on growing your email list, ramping up your social media following, or pouring your energy into virtual and in person networking, growing your audience means you have more eyes on your work, which is a good thing.
The secret here, though, is that not all eyes are necessary eyes. Growing your audience comes after getting to know them for a reason.
Your target audience is unique
It’s important to focus your efforts on growing your specific target audience.
Messaging that is sent to all people at all times is rarely effective. Instead, focus your efforts on the information you learned about your audience in step one.
Is your audience full of champions for the environment? What about people invested in building racial equity in the workplace? Are they beginners for your cause, or experienced veterans?
Knowing exactly who you’re looking for and who you are talking to means you can curate helpful, relevant, and engaging content specifically for them.
And personalizing your outreach not only helps your audience feel seen, but it drives performance and better outcomes. In fact, the fastest growing companies are personalizing their marketing more than ever before.
Keep Your Audience Interested
Once you know your target audience and have begun to grow your list, it’s time to nurture your audience and keep them interested.
Providing relevant and interesting content to your newly curated audience on a regular basis can help you keep them invested in the work you are doing and keep your organization top of mind.
By showing up regularly in a way that shows you care about the same issues they do, you build rapport and loyalty that nurtures long term relationships. You also avoid making your audience feel like you only reach out to them when you’re trying to sell something.
Offering information that showcases your impact in areas that they care about and offering insights into your collaborations, community engagements, and recent achievements builds your credibility over time and keeps your audience engaged and interested in your work and impact.
Get your Audience to Act
Finally, it’s time to offer your audience an opportunity to act. This is the point of it all, after all, right?
Once you’ve taken the time to get to know your audience, expanded your reach, and nurtured those relationships, this part of your marketing strategy is much more effective and straightforward.
The best way to get your audience to act is making the RIGHT ask.
You do this by using the information you’ve gathered throughout your audience development process and putting the rubber to the road in personalizing your outreach.
For example, through your audience research and ongoing engagement, you’ll likely find segments of your audience that you know are much more likely to make smaller, ongoing donations, while others will prefer to hear from you less throughout the year but will give larger one-time gifts when asked.
Knowing which is which and utilizing different strategies when engaging with them will help you better connect with them based on which category they fall into.
Knowing your audience’s varying interests and pain points will also help you structure the language, frequency, structure, and channel through which you reach out to them.
So whether you’re asking your audience to donate, purchase, advocate, or volunteer—a warm audience who is connected to your organization and is being stewarded in a way that matches their interests is much more likely to respond to your call to action than someone who receives your general messaging en masse.
A Warm Audience is Your Best Audience
At the end of the day, knowing your audience deeply and paying attention to which types of conversations, issues, and efforts resonate with them is what will help you build an audience that is ready to give.
Knowing your audience means that you no longer waste time creating campaigns for clients you don’t understand. It also means you stop trying to appeal to everyone, and instead focus on those who are likely to resonate with your work and are interested and take action to support you.
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Need help learning how to build an audience that is ready to give? I work with nonprofit organizations every day to understand their audience, target their marketing and communications, and encourage their audience to take action.
Contact us at Wayward Kind to learn more about how we can work together.
