How to Use Video Content Marketing to Promote a Non-Profit

Anna Fox

4 years ago

Video marketing has been fast evolving over a decade lately, and it’s still going ever stronger. Whether you are operating a non-profit (or volunteering to help one which is always a good idea), here are a few tips to use video marketing.

First things first:

The Power of Video Content

If we want to really see how valuable video marketing is, we should look at some statistics:

Blogspot reports that video marketing is being hailed as very important to 92% of marketers. Compare that to the 2015 figure, where only 78% said the same thing. This shows that the market for video content has really expanded.
Wordstream released some incredible figures. Among them, more than 50% of all video content is viewed on mobile devices. Of those videos viewed, Virtuets claims that 92% of those viewers share video content regularly.
MarketingCharts has predicted that by 2021, the average person will spend 100 minutes per day watching video content.
On social media, Optinmonster reports that marketers have an average of a 54% rise in brand awareness when they combine social media and video marketing.
Fast Company found that 57% of those who watched a video from a non-profit donated to the cause.

Let’s not forget that video marketing opens up more channels for you, including:

Youtube (which is considered to be the second largest search engine in the world) and
TikTok (which is the fastest-growing video platform)

It also allows you to create more engaging content (like podcasting).

As you can see, video content is worth creating. You may still worry that it is too expensive or too difficult. Luckily, neither have to be the case!

You may also want to read: The Complete Start-to-Finish Guide to Marketing Your Podcast to Sponsors

Here are the most common challenges (nonprofit) brands tend to face when it comes to video marketing:

“I Am Not Sure How To Get Started With Video Marketing”

While it seems overwhelming, all it takes to start is a subject that you want to record. What would be most effective at telling the story of your cause? Every video should start out with this question, because you are going to be answering it every time you pick up your camera.

Next, you need to ask yourself what style you are looking for. Are you going to sit in front of the camera and talk? Do a live shoot with something going on right then? Do a story time style video with clips, footage, voiceover and music? You are in control and so you will be deciding what your audience most needs to see and how.

Let’s look at some examples to help give you an idea of what has been effective in other non-profit campaigns.

High Jump is a non-profit that creates educational programs meant to help seventh and eighth grade students increase their knowledge in multiple categories, such as art and science. This video campaign netted them $215,000 donations from viewers.

Lifebuoy launched a campaign that followed Sangrah, an expecting mother. The purpose was to illustrate their efforts to help with prenatal and postnatal care.

Their mission is to help children live to the age of five, which 6 million children per year never reach. Handwashing was the primary focus on this particular experiment, which can help to strengthen the health of the fetus, as well as the mother. The video is incredibly well made and tells a story that makes you really care about the subject of the film.

Do you see how each of these videos uses a different storytelling style that still gets the message across? They also appealed to the emotional response of the viewer. Each was touching in its own way, but they both target different emotions. You should be asking yourself what emotion each video you create is trying to convey.

“Creating Video Content is Too Expensive”

If you are looking for ideas on where to start, micro-videos (those 1-3 minutes long) make perfect nonprofit promotional assets. They are also easy to create and require no special skills or expensive software.

You can put inspiring videos together easily using tools like InVideo. Simply pick a video template, upload your own images and videos and put together a video using an easy visual editor:

Invideo can help you create an inspiring video which will take you just a few minutes to put together!

You may also want to read: How To Improve Your Lead Generation With Video Marketing

“Driving Views to Videos is Next to Impossible”

Well, this one isn’t far from the truth, I’ll grant you that. Video content competition is huge: It’s getting harder and harder to stand out and get noticed.

There’s one shortcut for growing video views though: Drive views from Google.

Thanks to Google’s carousels, ranking videos in Google isn’t hard. Plus this strategy is not as popular yet, so it is still pretty doable.

[Google’s video carousels are low-hanging-fruit opportunity for driving video views and brand exposure]

All you need to do is to follow basic SEO steps (those are universal for text and video content):

Identify searchable keywords (long-tail keywords would be your best bet as they have lower competition)
Use those keywords in the video title and description
Link to your videos from your site (there are also ways to automate that)

You are pretty much done.

If you have trouble identifying searchable angles (this is something many nonprofits are struggling with), use Text Optimizer to identify what Google may be associating your niche with:

“Video Marketing ROI is Impossible to Measure”

This is another hard one. It is hard to put a price tag on things like brand exposure and trust building.

Consequently, video marketing may be very hard to “sell” to the brand’s CEO or your manager.

Since executives are usually looking for “measurable” results, you will need to track metrics like clicks and conversions religiously to justify a video marketing campaign.

Tools like Finteza are great for that, as it requires no technical skill to set up. It’s also conversion-oriented allowing you to monitor your sales funnel and compare effectiveness of several traffic sources.

[Track your video marketing traffic sources using Finteza]

Conclusion

Video marketing can be overwhelming. But thanks to modern tools, it is quite doable. Videos work best for building empathy and spreading awareness which make them perfect for marketing non-profit projects. I hope the above ideas will inspire and motivate you to get started!