The Future of Nonprofit Marketing

Lou
Kotsinis

I’ve been at this a long time, and I’ve had a front-row seat to some major turning points in digital marketing:

The rise of the web. 

The rise of social media. 

The age of apps.  

While these were game-changers for sure, they arrived at a pace, and in such a way that clients could embrace them gradually and learn to thrive in each experience. 

But now, the next wave of change has arrived, and the speed and scope of these iterations are unlike the preceding ones. It’s a combination of multiple, intertwining trends that are transforming the way prospects find, learn about, and engage with causes online. 

As a nonprofit leader, you need to know these trends and position your cause to benefit from them. If you get on board now, you’ll be in a great place a year from now, when others are just waking up to the new reality. 

There’s an opportunity here for the organizations that understand what’s happening and adapt their tactics and content production accordingly. Here’s where you should focus: 

1. Zero-Click Marketing

Historically, the web had one goal: get users to click: Click here to visit our website and learn more, Click here to read our latest post, Click here to sign-up – and so on. 

For years, we measured traffic to websites, dropped links into social media posts to get people back to our sites, and tried to rank as the number one listing in Google’s search results. Everything centered around the website as the end-all-be-all of marketing success. 

This was digital marketing, and it was good. 

But over the last decade, several trends have combined to make this form of marketing a thing of the past: 

Google is keeping search results for itself. 

A while back, I wrote a post called Google is taking over search traffic. What does that mean for your nonprofit? In it, I talked about how Google, rather than simply offering up links to various websites where searchers could pick the most relevant link for their needs — was starting to provide answers itself, circumventing websites entirely. 

At the time (2019), Google was sending about 12% of search traffic to its own properties. As of 2024, that number is 28.5%.  And that’s only for the individuals that have chosen to click on a search result. Most of the individuals arriving at Google, 58.5%, to be exact, don’t click on anything at all. (i.e., their query is satisfied by Google right on the page, or they’re guided to another Google-based resource). 

Social media channels have become “Walled Gardens”

As a society, we spend more time on social channels and apps than we do on any other online platform. If you’re running a social media company, what’s better than people spending a lot of time on your channel? Having people spend even more time there. 

With that goal in mind, these platforms have made it harder to link to another channel or website. For example: 

• Instagram doesn’t allow links within posts 

• X penalizes posts – algorithmically lowering the reach of posts that include links 

• LinkedIn also penalizes posts with links and requires several steps to locate, copy and send the link of one of its posts outside the platform 

These companies want you to spend all of your time on their properties – leading the industry to  refer to them as “walled gardens.”

A Billboard for Your Cause on Every Marketing Channel

There is a third element that’s accelerating the move away from traditional website-centric marketing, which I’ll discuss below, but the preceding trends should inspire brands and causes to adapt their tactics towards what digital strategist Rand Fishkin defines as “Zero-Click Marketing”– providing audiences with the most valuable and relevant stand-alone content in each platform where they spend time – as opposed to encouraging them to click to a website. 

For example, in the past, you may have posted on Facebook about the impact of a program, and then included a link to your website to talk more about that impact, perhaps concluding there with an invitation to donate. 

With zero-click marketing, you’d use that Facebook post to tell a comprehensive story about impact, foregoing the link back to your site, so that the visitor doesn’t have to leave Facebook to understand your mission and the effectiveness of your program.

Your audience or prospect who – given the factors above – is probably spending lots of time on Facebook, over time becomes immersed in your mission, and seeks out your website on their own.

In a “zero-click” world, rather than posting with a link, you’re educating your audience
right there on the platform, building your brand across channels.

At this point, they’ve become true believers in your cause; they’ve been following your work and learning about your mission and the impact it’s having around an area for which they care deeply.  

By doing this consistently, across the channels where your prospects or donors reside, you’re in effect, earning your prospect’s trust to the point where they actively seek you out based on the effectiveness of your mission and the quality of your brand. 

The result is a higher-quality prospect, in the sense that they’re arriving at your website “pre-sold” and ready to support. You may be receiving fewer visitors to your site, but those who come may have a higher intent to back your cause. 

Implementing zero-click marketing

That’s the theory behind zero-click marketing. Here’s how you’ll put it into action:

1. Define your intended audience

Who are your most important prospects for the coming year(s): Individual donors? Grantmakers? Local residents? Develop a persona of who this is – and keep it limited to your one or two top audiences. To do this, gather your social media insights and Google analytics data, and combine that with your existing understanding of your audiences. More on this here.

2. Know where they reside online

Start with where you already have a presence and an audience and build from there. Where else could you see your ideal prospect (see above) spending time learning about you? Do you have the capacity to produce videos that your audiences would appreciate? Then perhaps a YouTube channel is in order. Do they thrive on late-breaking, quick hits of information? Maybe Threads is the way to go. 

Don’t feel your cause needs to be everywhere. Focus on the highest-value experience you can reasonably provide given your size and capabilities. 

3. Curate the right messaging and content for each platform

People go to different places on social media and the web based on their needs, tastes, and interests. Someone who enjoys visual content may prefer Instagram. Readers who like to immerse themselves in topics of interest enjoy blogs (this is me). Still others love to learn and be entertained through video – again, YouTube may work best here. 

The main point is not to simply cut and paste your content from one channel onto another; if you’re truly interested in building a base of engaged supporters, you should be providing unique experiences on each channel, otherwise, you risk coming across as typical, or worse, disingenuous. 

4. Deliver consistent, relevant, and engaging content

“Relevant and engaging content” will vary from cause to cause, but I can summarize these values into one: education. 

Rather than simply posting about upcoming events, fundraising/asks, and accolades, inform your audience about your mission; educate them about how you’re helping. Think deeply about your target prospect and their desires and produce: posts, blogs, videos, and deeper content pieces (like white papers and reports) that will satisfy those needs. 

5. And, measure

If you’re doing these first four items consistently, you’re way ahead of the pack. But there’s one more critical step. You need to measure what’s working. 

How interested are they in a particular platform?

Is there a particular channel where people are spending most of their time learning about your cause? 

For your website, simply look in your Google Analytics at things like visits to a given page. On social, look at your overall engagement (some channels, like YouTube and Instagram, provide time spent metrics as well). After a while, you’ll start to see which channels are truly the popular and engaging ones for your audiences and you can dedicate more resources there.  

What content is resonating? 

Which types of posts, pages, and information are getting the most engagement (clicks, shares, likes, etc.)? Over time, a pattern will develop upon which you can build. 

What’s translating into actual donations/conversions/actions?

Google Analytics provides tools to help you determine where visitors to your website are arriving from, the path they’re taking to your giving page, and how they got there. On social, you should be measuring the actions they’re taking on that channel. Done consistently, this will reveal a pattern that you can then tie back to the type, volume, and quality of the experience you’re providing there.  

By implementing the preceding steps, you’ll grow your brand in the channels that matter most and build those true believers who are more likely to support your cause. Reach out to us if you have questions or need help putting these items in place. 

2. AI search

In addition to zero-click marketing, the second game-changing advance that’s influencing how nonprofits can and should be promoting their causes is AI search. 

We’ve all grown accustomed to “Googling” anytime we need an answer to practically anything. And Google, by far, continues to dominate the search landscape. 

But new, AI-powered tools are giving Google a run for its money. I can’t go as far as to say that this is the “future” of search – right now AI search is only 8% of all overall search volume – but it’s sure looking that way. Google itself has introduced AI into its own search results but there are other AI-first platforms providing a stellar experience.

Personally, my searches these days start on AI platforms like Claude.AI, ChatGPT, and Perplexity before I even think of going to Google. For any question you ask of these tools, they’ll provide an initial, comprehensive answer and then prompt you to continue asking questions so that the search actually becomes a discussion. 

The reason why nonprofits need to pay attention is because the processes and tactics you’d use to “get found” in Google Search are not the same as getting found in an AI search. And, if you’re not doing the things you’ll need to do on that front, you’ll run the risk of missing out on an important and effective means to grow your cause. 

Preparing for AI Search

The key consideration in preparing for AI search is that whereas traditional Google Search relies on websites to return answers and links, AI platforms use multiple types of “datasets” to inform their answers. Some platforms rely on the web and give direct attribution to sites, others though, use data they’ve purchased, social media sites, and/or scour the web and don’t necessarily give details about their sources – yet one more factor contributing to zero-click marketing.

Initial research done by folks like Will Reynolds and Rand Fishkin suggests that AI platforms are looking for mentions of a brand or cause across their training data to return answers based on that query. 

This means you should be proactive in ensuring that your cause and your content are on those channels, sites, and platforms on which AI search tools are being trained. This will require:

Learning about how and from where each AI platform is building its dataset. 

This goes back to zero-click marketing. AI could be using anything from Reddit and Linkedin to your website or Facebook and more to build their content base. 

Structuring your brand and content in those places, and in those ways, that AI will recognize and include them in their results

Publishing “zero-click versions” of your content on the right channels can get it in front of AI tools.

Folks, this is a new frontier for everyone, but we’ve got some insights and tactics that will help position you for AI search. If you need guidance on this front, we can help. 

3. The Website as a Validator  

You’d think that with zero-click marketing reducing visits to websites, and AI search not relying on or citing websites at all, your nonprofit’s website is no longer important – or even necessary. Quite the opposite. 

These trends are actually elevating the importance of your website.  Here’s why:

Your Site is Now the “Closer” of Your Best Prospects

Recall that zero-click marketing means building trust and affinity on whichever platforms your audience spends their time, without prompting them to link elsewhere. Ideally, you’re doing such a good job of engaging those individuals in each channel that they become true believers in your mission, without ever going to your website. 

But unlike the goal of classic marketing, i.e. convincing people to come to your website, true believers are more likely to go to your site for the simple reason that they believe in your mission and want to immerse themselves further in what you do.

Think about it – if you’re interested in giving to a cause – and I’m talking here about a high-quality, recurring donor – won’t you want to learn even more about the cause to which you’re going to commit?

In a world of zero-click marketing, your website becomes a less visited, but more important part of your overall marketing, acting as “the closer” of your best prospects.

It’s the Place Where Prospects Meet the “Real You”

Before, I discussed how AI tools pull from various sources, including but not limited to the web. But even if you’re posting high-quality content everywhere you have a presence online, you have no control over the information that AI chooses to show in its results. 

Similarly, on social media, you can discuss and promote your work, but it’s an open platform, where the public has complete access to shape, critique, and change the direction of the discussion. 

But your website remains your real estate to tell the story how you want – you are the ultimate arbiter of truth regarding your cause. It’s the place where you control the narrative, for the most part, untethered from big tech. In a world where the truth is sometimes open to interpretation, this is a valuable asset.   

Whereas your website was once the casual, front door entrance through which lots of people came in, it’s now going to be the “VIP side door” – where fewer arrive, but those that do stay a while. These are the kind of guests you want to have.

So there you have it. Marketing on the web is changing dramatically. But if you know what’s coming down the pike, you can position your cause for success. Remember:

It’s no longer solely about getting clicks, but building interest around your mission on every channel where you have a presence.

Position yourself for AI search. Even if traditional Google Search remains the dominant player, you’ll want to be found on AI channels as well, and you can do that by building your brand across the internet and giving users what they want on each platform (again – they don’t necessarily want or need to click).

And lastly, treat your website like the asset it is – the place where serious individuals go to immerse themselves in your cause, learn about the impact you’re making on the world, and hopefully, support your work. 

This is a lot, I know, but you’re not alone. BCS Interactive specializes in helping nonprofits and schools navigate the world of AI search, Zero Click Marketing, and Website storytelling. If you’re ready to position your cause for the future, drop us a line. We can help. 

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