Word of mouth may be effective when it comes to marketing, but how do you keep your organization top-of-mind as your members and potential members go about their day? You meet them where they already are: their email inboxes, their social media channels and the places they search, like Google and Bing. Whether they are on mobile or desktop, marketing efforts can easily be seen by your audience if you utilize the right platforms, targeting and optimizations.
Meet Your Audience in Their Inbox
Email marketing has been around since the rise of the internet, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t an effective tool. In fact, open rates have increased from 17.2% in 2015 to 20.8% last year. (SaleCycle, 2020). Plus, according to Statista, there are 3.9 billion daily email users this year alone, and that number will increase to 4.3 billion by 2023. That is BILLION, not million—and that is a big number.
Email is an effective form of communication, so why not reach out to your current and potential members to make them aware of what your organization offers? Seventy-eight percent of marketers have seen an increase in email engagement over the last 12 months, according to HubSpot. Take advantage of that increased engagement by sending out appealing, well-thought-out emails to capture new members and retain current ones.
In a 2020 survey by SaleCycle, 59% of respondents said that marketing emails influence their purchase decisions while 50% said they buy from marketing emails at least once a month. That doesn’t mean you should only send out emails once a month, though. Sending at least one a week should do the trick, but make sure to include a button on every email that links to where people can register for activities or sign up for classes.
Engage and Inform Your Audience in Their Newsfeed
Current and potential members spend quite a bit of time scrolling through social media—an average of three hours a day to be exact (Globalwebindex, 2019). Organic posts—what you share on your organization’s Facebook or Instagram account—are always helpful, but their reach is minimal. An organic post’s average reach is about 6.4% of page’s total likes (Social Media Today), which is not a lot for most pages on the platform.
The best and more successful way to entice potential members to register for your classes and events is to create ads for Facebook and Instagram via Facebook’s Business Manager, which all businesses on the platform have access to. You can easily target members and potential members via their interests, age, location (by city, state and zip code), gender, education and more. You can even upload email addresses and other information to build audiences that match that information or create lookalike audiences based on it.
A few things to remember when creating paid social media ads:
- Keep your copy short and sweet yet informative.
- Include a CTA button (Facebook will let you choose) and add a link that pertains to your copy.
- Do not put a link in your copy.
- Limit emoji usage.
- Include a dynamic, eye-catching image that reflects your copy.
- Remember, the less clicking your audience has to do, the more likely they will convert.
You should include images in your ads. If your Facebook ad contains images, it will be between 75% and 90% more effective (Consumer Acquisition). Video is also equally as important and must be uploaded directly into Ads Manager when you create your ads. If you do choose to share a video organically, also upload it to Facebook. The platform will likely share your organic post more than a link to YouTube.
Also, do not boost your posts. Facebook will suggest it, but your ability to target your audience will be limited. You get the most bang for your buck when creating ads in Ads Manager.
Be Where Your Audience Searches
Search Engine Optimization, otherwise known as SEO, is an effective and incredibly important marketing tactic. But what is it exactly? It is an unpaid way to market in which the quality of a webpage is improved to receive more traffic (and better quality traffic) to a website or webpage from search engines.
Think of it like this: How often do you go past the first or second page when you search for something on Google? Not often, right? Improving your website’s SEO will help your organization rank better for specific search terms, thus moving you closer to that first search results page—or even onto the first page.
Currently, Google has 86% of the search engine market (Statista), so optimizing your website toward Google’s algorithm for ranking would be advantageous.
Use the following tips to be well on your way to optimizing your website:
- Increase your website speed by removing anything that is slowing it down. You can test your website speed via Google’s PageSpeed Insights.
- Keep your site speed to 2 to 3 seconds.
- Post blogs and ensure that those blogs have links to other websites with relevant content.
- Write strong and relevant meta descriptions for each page on your website.
- Focus on optimizing your website for mobile.
- Create a custom 404 page.
- Increase site speed by compressing and optimizing your images.
- Remove broken links.
ACTIVE’s Camp & Class Manager solution makes these efforts much easier and more effective. The all-in-one solution offers your organization the ability to create professionally branded, eye-catching emails with easy-to-use templates, as well as send them to current and potential members. With Camp & Class Manager’s integrated social media, you will be able to grow your registrations and membership with ease. Talk to a specialist today
ACTIVENet will be there for you when it comes to your organization’s needs. Whether that means engaging your community, streamlining operations or managing participation, our software is here to help your organization perform at its best.
