How to Actually Use Market Research in your nonprofit
We discussed how simple nonprofit audience research really is. That’s great! It’s not complicated. It takes time, but it isn’t complicated.
I wanted to take a few minutes to examine exactly what we can do with that research, with a few examples.
Recall that part of what you’re doing is researching people based on their interests in your nonprofit. You’ve grouped them together based on that factor. Some people are program recipients (perhaps you subdivide this based on what program they are constituents of), others believe in your work because they care about something specific about your mission. People might love the neighborhood you work in, or the specific disease you are researching. Perhaps they love your approach to these specific things. Sometimes they love you based on a misunderstanding!
We take these insights, and group people based on those insights. Your primary audience segmenting detail is “why do these people love my nonprofit?” Hopefully, this gives you somewhere between three and eight (roughly) audience segments. That’s a healthy number you can work with.
Great. Then you interview people in small groups to talk more about why they love your organization. What can you do with that?
Here is an example for us to use:
In a nonprofit I once worked for, many people loved our nonprofit because of the demographics of clients in our pilot program. They loved that we were working with agricultural workers. From our organization’s perspective, the perspective of our mission statement, their employment as agricultural workers was somewhat incidental.
We learned that in our market research. So how could we use this information?
We begin by asking “what do we want to happen with this audience segment?” There are a lot of options here, and you need to consider a number of factors. Consider factors like “what capacity does our nonprofit have to communicate with and nurture this segment effectively? How could this segment benefit our nonprofit, or how can we provide value to them?” This is a spot where you have to make tough, strategic decisions.
Option 1: Our organization might say, “these people don’t understand us, so we need to focus on people who do. This group of people would be better served by connecting them to an organization that actually focuses on agricultural workers.” That’s legitimate! It might even be wise.
Option 2: On the other hand, perhaps you decide “this is great! Not a problem at all, we just need to tailor how we communicate to this audience segment to increase their engagement as donors.” This might also be a legitimate strategic decision.
So if we take the second option, how could we tailor our communications to this segment?
Example 1: We might post social media content to this audience segment that is faithful to our mission, but has more photos of agricultural workers than typical. The copy will be on brand and on mission. However, we hope to have hundreds of options of photos to select from. Perhaps we simply emphasize photos that remind people that our clients are agricultural workers.
Example 2: Another option would be to tailor fundraising campaigns, direct emails, based on their concern for agricultural workers. The copy might lean into that, the photos lean into that…and perhaps you try to include references to your broader mission. You’re accepting this audience segment and their (slightly misguided) love for your nonprofit, while developing them into a direction you might prefer. This option would accept that some of this segment will pivot over time, while others might fall away over time.
I hope you see how decisions here are driven by strategic questions. What are your big goals for your nonprofit in the next year? 3 years? What Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats exist for your nonprofit? You only have so much capacity, and you are (probably) trying to develop more resources for more capacity. How do these things fit together? How can you be faithful to your core mission?
These are difficult questions, of course. How you respond to these questions will determine much of your communications for the next year or three. However, your decisions will be dramatically improved if they are guided by listening to your audiences!
We love this stuff at Capital Hope Media, and we would love to chat about how we can help you do better communications work. Schedule a Zoom meeting, or email us, if you would like to learn more about how we can help your nonprofit.
