Background
After spending 80+ hours learning the fundamentals of digital marketing and websites. I began learning the digital skills needed for website management, such as planning and building websites, optimizing them through SEO, and analyzing website metrics.
In this project, my group and I developed a digital marketing plan and then plotted and built a website from the ground up, demonstrating an understanding of how websites help businesses reach their goals and serve as a home base for marketing efforts.
Objectives
The objectives for the project were as follows:
- Create marketing objectives, and KPIs appropriate to the nonprofit created, and marketing strategies.
- Develop customer journeys and funnels with corresponding channel selection.
- Create content for different organic digital marketing channels that help meet goals.
- Conduct keyword research to aid in the site architecture, content, and SEO of a website.
- Plan a website that meets objectives and user needs for various audience segments and different stages of the conversion funnel.
- Use best practices for UX/UI design, website copywriting, and SEO in the creation of a website.
- Design a well-organized slideshow that appeals as much to people’s senses and emotions as to their reason.
The Business Scenario
Working in a team of four we researched and created a marketing plan for a fictitious nonprofit called Money Matters, that focused on providing financial literacy to young adults and teenagers. We then planned and built a website that acted as the cornerstone of Money Matters’ marketing program. Finally the team presented the marketing plan and website with a slideshow that featured our research, objectives, and KPIs.
Target Audiences
Focusing on teenagers and young adults was a strategic decision as it would allow us to have a significant and lasting impact on their financial well-being. During this formative stage of life, individuals are shaping their attitudes, beliefs, and behaviors around money. By providing financial literacy education and coaching at this crucial juncture, we can instill healthy financial habits that will benefit them throughout their lives.
Marketing Personas
Branding
Brand voice: The most appropriate brand voice for Money Matters Institute would be a combination of informative, supportive, and empowering tones. For Ambitious Alex, the brand voice should be educational, inspiring, and relatable. For Driven Danielle, the brand voice should be authoritative, empowering, and empathetic.
Brand emotions: The brand emotions for Money Matters Institute should evoke feelings of confidence, empowerment, and control. The brand emotions should convey trust, reliability, and a genuine desire to help individuals achieve financial freedom and security.
Design
Competitor Research
For competitor research, we wanted to find the best financial literacy non-profit websites, and determine what we liked, and didn’t like about each to inform our website strategy. We decided to type in the keyword “financial literacy non-profit” to see which websites ranked on the first page, and put together a list of 20 websites to analyze. While going through the websites we made sure to answer the following questions:
- What are they doing well?
- What improvements can they make?
- Can the sites be clearer simpler, more informational?
- How do they motivate their target audiences? etc…
Keyword Research
We conducted keyword research to use in planning the website by:
- Confirming what users were searching for on this topic.
- Looking for short-tail and long-tail search terms.
- Refining the categories.
- Expanding on subtopics.
- Determining the most frequently used terminology for use on the website.
- Determining keywords that can be used throughout the website’s content.
The tools we used were:
- Google Keyword Planning
- Google Ads
- Autocomplete in search engines
- “People also ask” in search engines
- “Searches related to” at the bottom of SERPs (search-engine results pages)
- Third party sites like Moz, Keywords Everywhere or SEMrush
Establishing Objectives
Our primary objectives that would guide the decisions of our marketing plan and website were as follows:
- Provide Comprehensive Financial Literacy: Offer high-quality financial literacy courses to teenagers and young adults, equipping them with the knowledge, skills, and mindset necessary for financial, professional, and personal success.
- Expand Reach and Impact: Increase the organization’s reach by raising awareness about Money Matters Institute and its programs. Expand the participant base to empower more individuals with essential financial education and support.
- Foster a Strong and Supportive Community: Create a community of engaged and supportive individuals who actively participate in Money Matters Institute’s programs, resources, and events. Encourage collaboration, knowledge sharing, and peer support within the community.
- Secure Funding and Donations: Develop strategies to secure funding and donations to sustain and expand the organization’s operations. Cultivate relationships with donors and stakeholders who align with the mission and vision of Money Matters Institute.
- Enhance Partnerships and Outreach: Forge strategic partnerships with schools, universities, community organizations, and other relevant institutions to extend the organization’s reach and offer tailored programs and workshops. Collaborate with like-minded organizations to amplify the impact of financial literacy initiatives.
Primary KPI’s
- Website Traffic: Measure the number of website visitors, page views, and time spent on the website to gauge the effectiveness of our online presence and content.
- Social Media Engagement: Monitor likes, shares, comments, and follower growth on social media platforms to assess the level of engagement and brand awareness.
- Lead Generation: Track the number of leads captured through website forms, event registrations, and program inquiries to assess the effectiveness of our lead generation efforts.
- Members Satisfaction: Conduct members surveys and collect feedback to measure satisfaction levels and ensure we are meeting the needs and expectations of our members.
- Program Impact: Evaluate the progress and outcomes of participants, such as improved financial literacy, increased savings, or successful career advancements, to measure the impact of our programs.
Our top competitor we based our website on was Moneythink, because they had a great user interface, and it was simple, easy to navigate, and user friendly.
Website Planning
When planning the website, we explored steps in the conversion funnel and how they would apply to website behavior.
- We created wireframes, with design details of template pages.
- Planned the internal linking between pages.
- Wrote content pages and crafted a search listing, site-map, and robots.txt file using SEO best practices.
- Created an outbound SEO plan.
Digital Marketing Channels and Platforms
When selecting the digital marketing channels and platforms for our digital marketing plan, we focused on which channels teenagers, young adults and potential donors would be spending the most time on.
Facebook – We chose facebook for the awareness stage because 19% of its users are between the ages of 18-34 which matches our primary target audience of teenager and young adults. It’s also a great platform for videos for awareness as well as ad promotions, groups for community engagement, and business page feature.
Instagram – Instagram is a great platform as well because of the 34 years and younger demographic. Instagram prioritizes images and video which would allow us to showcase our company culture. We also selected it for the advocacy stage because it has features which can get people to start sharing our content on their stories, and tagging us.
Youtube – Youtube was chosen because it appeals to all ages. It would allow us to showcase our brand through video, build awareness, and educate our audience on financial literacy topics.
Website – Our website was used to provide value through blogs, increase consideration, which would eventually lead to conversions. Additionally it’s an ideal place to get people to sign up for our newsletter.
Twitter – Twitter was selected because it’s a great place for targeting our potential donors, and volunteers. The majority it’s user base is between the ages of 25-49. It’s also a great platform to take polls, and give company updates.
Email – We chose email to nurture audiences on financial literacy, as well as retain them by continuing to market to them and keep them in the loop.
Blog – We selected blog as well to target our older demographic of donors, and volunteers who like to read, and stay informed. It’s also a great platform for providing value, and establishing authority for the brand.
Customer Journey Funnel
Depicted above is a customer journey funnel, starting from the awareness stage down to the advocacy stage with corresponding channels for each.
Customer Journey Example
After creating a marketing persona named Ambitious Alex, we put together a theoretical example of a customer journey that someone like Alex would go through:
- Alex become aware of Money Matters either through Facebook or Instagram.
- After following the Instagram page Alex sees an ad mentioning the struggle many young people face, when trying to find a career that best suits their needs and interests. The ad also contains a call to action to fill out a personality assessment which would give Alex a better idea of which career would suit him best. However, in order to get his results back he would need to submit his email.
- After submitting his email Alex would receive his career assessment and would be placed on our email list.
- Alex, is now in the consideration phase, and would then begin receiving emails from us providing educational value on the different programs we offer, testimonials from other students, etc…
- Finally we we would add calls to action in the emails to get Alex to our website, where he would convert and become a member.
- After completing the program, we would also encourage him to share his excitement about the program on either Instagram or Twitter, in the advocacy stage.
KPI’s and Measurement Plan
Our KPI Strategy was based on our main goals which were to build our membership base, recruit volunteers, and get donations. After establishing the final goals, we reverse engineered the funnel process by following the customer journey from awareness -> consideration -> conversion -> retention. Each stage of the funnel had its own unique objectives and KPIs.
Our main objective with Money Matter Institute was to build our membership base. We wanted to impact as many teenagers and young adults by providing them with free self-paced online courses to strengthen their financial literacy, and have them living their best financial lives.
Secondly, we wanted to recruit financially educated volunteers to provide mentorship and guidance to our members through their journey to financial literacy, independence, and freedom.
Then, we wanted to encourage donors to contribute to our cause and mission of providing free financial literacy courses to teenagers and young adults.
We understand that marketing is a process that take time, and requires users to go through several stages before finally converting into members, volunteers, and donors.
In order to accomplish our ultimate goal we set our initial objectives and KPIs for awareness, consideration, and conversion.
For awareness, our first objective was to reach 50,000 people across all socials, and gain 5,000 Ad impressions to build as much awareness as possible.
Our next step, was to move people into the consideration phase by offering them a free career quiz, in which they would be required to enter their emails to receive their results. For that we’ve set an objective to get 100 email opt-ins from the quiz. Other objectives and KPIs were set for page views, website visits, session time, and bounce rate to increase engagement with the website and pages.
Finally we set goals for site memberships, and volunteer sign up by tracking how many people get to the membership and volunteer thank you page. And we also set a goal to increase donations by tracking the revenue generated from the website.
Content Marketing Plan
For the content marketing plan we developed creative examples for all of our organic marketing channels, including both text and images where possible. The main goals of the creative elements were to drive the audience back to the website.
Website Build
After setting up all the necessary elements needed, we finally built the website, which included multiple pages with the following features:
- A conversion activity.
- An “About Us” section with an overview of the organization.
- Content pages with anchor links.
Slideshow Presentation
We also created a slideshow presentation in Google Slides that includes the following subsections:
- Business overview—described the nonprofit and explained its goals.
- Marketing plan, including creative content
- Website planning