Audience expansion campaigns to grow your community

How to expand your nonprofit’s audience with targeted digital campaigns

Expanding your audience is essential to growing your nonprofit, whether you’re looking for new donors, members, or event attendees. With comprehensive digital marketing tools, nonprofits have creative and strategic ways to reach the right people. Below are a few campaign types that can help you achieve your audience expansion goals.

1. Mobile and historical geofencing

Geofencing campaigns allow you to target people based on their current or past locations. For example, you could serve ads to high-income neighborhoods if you're seeking big-ticket donors or target relevant industry events and competing venues if you're looking for new members.

When using historical geofencing, you can target past events, specifying a window of time up to three months back. This flexibility makes it easier to reach attendees of past events, extending the impact of your campaign.

2. Search keyword campaigns

Feathr's search keyword campaigns allow you to serve ads to individuals across the web based on the keywords they have searched. This approach is different from traditional Google Ads because it doesn't only target individuals in the moment they search, but continues to show your ads as they browse online.

For example, if you're a cancer research organization, you could target users searching terms like "cancer research" or "donate to cancer." You can even narrow the scope with geofilters, showing ads to local users who are more likely to engage.

“Combining Google Ads with Feathr’s search keyword campaigns can be especially impactful,” says Isa Hasty, senior content marketing manager at Feathr, highlighting how these two tools together can amplify your reach.

3. Affinity targeting

Affinity campaigns let you target a broad audience using demographic and industry data. This is a great option for nonprofits that don’t yet have a large database of their own.

By partnering with ad networks, Feathr offers pre-built audience groups, so you don’t need to rely on website traffic alone to build up your database of contacts. This can be particularly valuable for new campaigns, giving you quick access to potential donors or members based on their online behavior or interests.

For example, you could target affluent individuals who have a history of donating to charities or professionals in specific industries, such as healthcare or technology, for membership drives.

4. Lookalike audience campaigns

Lookalike audience campaigns leverage third-party data to identify individuals similar to those already engaged with your organization.

For example, you might select a group of past donors or visitors to your events page, and Feathr will analyze their online behavior to find similar users. You can then serve ads to these new potential supporters, offering a highly targeted way to build your audience without starting from scratch.

5. Email mapping

For nonprofits with email lists, email mapping (also called CRM retargeting) offers a way to re-engage individuals who may not be opening your emails or visiting your website. By uploading a list of email addresses to Feathr, you can serve ads to these individuals across the web, reaching them where they spend their time online.

This method allows you to target people already familiar with your organization but not currently engaged, helping to pull them back into the fold and renew their interest — without sending an email.

Don't let all that work go to waste

While audience expansion is critical, it’s just the first step. Once you’ve attracted new visitors through geofencing, keyword, affinity, or lookalike campaigns, following up with retargeting and email marketing campaigns is essential.

“Without following up on all this new web traffic that you’re getting through the expansion campaigns … people will drop off,” says Isa. "Running retargeting campaigns and regular engagement emails can help convert new visitors into long-term donors, members, or event attendees."

By centralizing your marketing efforts in a platform like Feathr, you can track connections between campaigns and better measure ROI, ensuring a seamless approach to audience growth and engagement.