Your organization has an important message to share. The challenge is making sure it reaches the right people.
For years, many organizations have relied on familiar communication channels—email newsletters, organic social media, print materials, direct mail and other tried-and-true tactics. Those tools still have value, but the way people receive information has changed.
Social media algorithms determine which posts appear in someone’s feed, which means even people who follow your organization may never see an important update. Email inboxes have changed, too, with automated filtering, promotions tabs and an overwhelming volume of messages competing for attention.
Simply putting information out there doesn’t mean the people you need to reach are actually seeing it.
That’s where digital advertising can help.
Paid digital campaigns give organizations another way to intentionally put important messages in front of the people most likely to care about them—whether that’s a prospective customer, family, employee, participant, donor or community member.
And getting started doesn’t have to mean a massive budget or complicated marketing strategy.
A thoughtful campaign can start small. What matters most is having the right foundation, understanding who you want to reach, being clear about what you want them to do—and knowing how you’ll measure whether it worked.
Before you launch your first campaign, here are a few places to start.
Before you create an ad or set a budget, make sure your organization is actually ready to advertise. A strong digital foundation comes down to three things: your accounts, your data and your measurement.
Get your Accounts in Order: Does your organization control its social media and advertising accounts? Do the right people have administrative access? Is your Meta Business account set up correctly? Is multi-factor authentication in place? If the person managing your social media leaves tomorrow, does the organization retain access to everything?
These details may not feel like marketing strategy, but they’re essential. Make sure your organization—not an individual employee—has appropriate ownership and access before advertising dollars are involved.
Understand the Data you Already Have: Next, look at what you already know about the people you serve.
Your customer, participant or stakeholder database may tell you where people live, what they’ve purchased or registered for, what they’ve expressed interest in or how recently they’ve engaged with you.
You don’t need perfect data to begin. The goal is to understand what information you have available and how it might help you identify smaller, more relevant audiences instead of defaulting to sending every message to everyone.
Make Sure you Can Measure What Happens: Finally, decide how you’ll know whether your advertising is working.
Do you have Google Analytics or another analytics platform properly installed? Can you track important actions such as registrations, purchases, applications, inquiries or form submissions?
The right measurement will depend on the goal. You might track website visits, landing page views, registrations, purchases, inquiries, phone calls or another meaningful action.
Not every outcome can be perfectly attributed to an ad—and that’s okay. What’s important is establishing what success looks like and how you’ll measure progress before the campaign begins.
Start Here: Before launching a campaign, check your accounts, data and measurement. Make sure you have the access you need, understand what you already know about your audience and have a way to measure whether your campaign is moving you toward your goal.
It’s tempting to begin with the creative. You have a great photo, an upcoming event or a new program, so you start designing.
Instead, begin with a simple question: What do we want someone to do after seeing this ad?
Maybe you want people to:
“Build awareness” can be a valid goal, but the more specific you can be, the easier it becomes to build the rest of your campaign. Your goal informs your audience, message, creative, call to action and ultimately how you’ll determine whether the campaign worked.
Start Here: Write down one primary action you want your audience to take. If your campaign is trying to accomplish five different things, narrow the focus before you start.
One of the biggest opportunities digital advertising provides is the ability to move away from the idea that everyone needs to receive everything.
Your organization probably serves more than one audience. A school district may communicate with current families, prospective families, staff, job seekers and community members. A nonprofit may need different messages for donors, volunteers and the people it serves. A business may have several different customer groups interested in entirely different products or services.
Those audiences shouldn’t necessarily receive the same message. Digital advertising allows you to create multiple, smaller audiences and deliver messages that are more relevant to each one.
Your existing data can help. Previous purchases, registrations, inquiries, interests, geographic information and other appropriate data may provide clues about who should hear from you and what they might care about. Advertising platforms can then help you reach people beyond your existing database based on factors such as geography, demographics, interests and online behaviors.
The goal isn’t necessarily to reach the largest audience. It’s to reach the right audience.
Start Here: Instead of asking, “How many people can we reach?” ask, “Who is most likely to care about this particular message?” Build from there.
This is one of the simplest details to overlook when setting up a digital campaign. A local business may only serve customers within a certain radius. A school may draw students from specific communities. A nonprofit might serve an entire state. Another organization may have a national audience.
Your advertising should reflect that.
Digital advertising platforms offer extensive targeting options, but they only work in your favor when you configure them intentionally. A campaign that’s geographically broader than your actual service area can spend valuable advertising dollars reaching people who were never likely to take action.
At the same time, don’t automatically make your geography too narrow. If you know customers, participants or families regularly come from neighboring communities, your digital advertising strategy may provide an opportunity to reach more people like them.
Keep in Mind: More reach isn’t automatically better reach. Define the geographic area in which someone could realistically become a customer, participant, applicant, donor or stakeholder—and start there.
Once you know who you’re trying to reach, think about what matters to them.This is where segmentation becomes especially valuable. Rather than creating one broad message and sending it everywhere, consider whether different audiences need different information.
A prospective customer may need an introduction to your organization. Someone who has already purchased from you may be ready to learn about another service. A prospective family may need to understand what makes a school different. A past donor may respond to a very different message than someone encountering a nonprofit for the first time. The more relevant the message feels, the more useful your communication becomes.
And this isn’t limited to advertising. The same thinking can strengthen your email strategy, website content, organic social media and other communications.
Start Here: Identify two or three meaningful audience groups and ask what each one needs to hear from you right now. If the answer is different, the message should probably be different, too.
Getting someone to click an ad is only part of the job. Where do they land?
If your ad promotes an event, take them directly to the event page. If you’re recruiting employees, take them to the relevant job opportunity. If you’re promoting a specific service, don’t send them to your homepage and make them search for it. The experience after the click should feel like a natural continuation of the ad.
The message should match. The information they expect should be easy to find. And the next action should be obvious.
A Simple Principle to Follow: Make the path between the ad and the action you want someone to take as short and clear as possible.
Digital advertising moves quickly. Your audience may only give your ad a few seconds of attention while scrolling. Make those seconds count.
Strong creative doesn’t have to be complicated. It needs a clear focus, compelling visual and message that someone can understand quickly. Ask yourself:
It’s also worth testing more than one creative approach. Different photos, headlines or messages may resonate with different people—even within the same audience.
Start Here: Show your ad to someone who wasn’t involved in creating it. Ask them what caught their attention first, what they think you’re promoting and what they would do next. If those answers aren’t immediately clear, simplify.
Not everything needs to be advertised. If an event sells out every year without advertising, you may not need to spend money promoting it. If one of your services already has more demand than you can accommodate, additional awareness may not be valuable.
Instead, use your advertising budget where increased visibility can change an outcome. That could mean promoting:
Digital advertising becomes much more strategic when the question changes from “What can we advertise?” to “Where could advertising help us accomplish a goal?”
Start Here: Before promoting something, ask what happens if the campaign succeeds. Prioritize your advertising budget where increased awareness or action has the greatest opportunity to make a meaningful difference.
Your first campaign doesn’t need to be your biggest. Give yourself an opportunity to learn. Start with a defined audience, clear goal, manageable budget and focused message. Then evaluate what happened.
How many people did you reach? How often did they see your message? Did they click? What did each result cost? Which creative performed best? What happened on your website? And, when your tracking allows it, did people ultimately complete the action you wanted them to take? Those answers give you something incredibly valuable: a baseline.
Now your next campaign doesn’t have to start from scratch. You can adjust your audience. Refine your message. Test different creative. Shift your budget. Try another call to action. That’s how digital advertising becomes less about “running ads” and more about building an intentional, results-driven communications strategy.
Start Here: When the campaign ends, compare the results to the goal you established at the beginning. Identify what worked, what didn’t and one or two things you’ll change the next time.
Digital advertising doesn’t require your organization to abandon the communications strategies that are already working. It’s another tool to help your message reach the people who need to hear it.
The strongest campaigns start with the same fundamentals as any effective communications strategy: understand your goals, know your audience, create a clear message, implement with purpose and evaluate the results.
You don’t have to transform your entire communications strategy overnight. Build the right foundation. Choose one goal. Identify one audience. Start with a budget that makes sense for your organization. Then learn, adjust and grow from there.
At Captivate Media + Consulting, we help organizations turn complex communication challenges into clear, actionable strategies. If you’re ready to explore digital advertising but aren’t sure where to start, we can help you build the right foundation, identify the right audiences and create a strategy designed around your goals and resources.
At Captivate Media + Consulting, we help organizations turn complex communication challenges into clear, actionable strategies. If you’re ready to explore digital advertising but aren’t sure where to start, we can help you build the right foundation, identify the right audiences and create a strategy designed around your goals and resources.
