Soapbox Engage Blog

When building a campaign for your nonprofit, it takes a lot to ensure it is successful. But one of the most important pieces of the campaign is your campaign message.

Your campaign message is the core of your campaign strategy. It is how you communicate with your audience and tie donations to impact. It has to be catchy! A campaign message needs to be something that piques interest and encourages people to be involved.

6 things to consider when building a campaign message:

1. Identify Your Audience(s)
2. Know Your Brand
3. Use Storytelling
4. Incorporate Visuals
5. Use Clear and Simple Language
6. Include a Call to Action

Identify Your Audience(s)

With your message, you need to give your donors a reason to care about your cause. Your message should inspire and excite – making your audience believe they can make change!

In order to do this, you need to understand who your audience is and what makes them tick…

You may be targeting a few audiences, and if that’s the case, you should tailor your marketing to each one. But it’s important that you develop your message with a specific group in mind.

Know Your Brand

It’s important that your message aligns with your brand. You want your audience to recognize your campaign as aligned with your other work, and ultimately achieve your organization’s mission.

If for some reason you can’t come up with a campaign message that aligns with your brand, that may be a sign that it is time to rebrand your organization.

Use Storytelling

By now you surely know that storytelling is one of the most important parts of fundraising. It is not enough to simply tell your audience the numbers to illustrate a potential impact. You should incorporate stories from community members who have been positively impacted by your work. This will engage your audience’s empathy as well as give them something to relate to, which will make them more likely to want to support your campaign than if you only used data.

Incorporate Visuals

It’s important that you find the right words for your campaign message, but words alone will not be enough to pique someone’s interest in your campaign. Successful campaigns include both engaging editorial copy and eye-catching visual content. It’s important that you include infographics, photos, or videos to get your audience to want to engage with your campaign’s material.

Use Clear and Simple Language

In order for your campaign to be effective, it needs to be easily understood and memorable. If your campaign message is a long run-on sentence that only vaguely references what you will be doing, your audience won’t understand what you’re trying to say. And if they don’t understand, they won’t be compelled to give. Keep it clear, concise, simple, and specific.

Include a Call to Action

The purpose of a campaign message is to move your audience to act. What is it that you want them to do? Sign a petition? Make a donation? Share on social media? It should be clear in your message the action they want them to take.

Soapbox Engage makes it easier for you to move your audience to action. With our Actions and Petitions apps, you can easily send messages to your database and encourage online advocacy.

---

With these tips, you’ll be able to build a successful campaign message that should ultimately lead to a successful campaign!

---

If you want more tips on creating a campaign, check out the following resources:

• 4 Easy Steps to Planning an Effective Advocacy Campaign: The campaign message is just one piece of your campaign, but maybe you’re not sure how to plan a campaign in the first place. This blog post offers 4 steps to help you build an advocacy campaign.
• 5 Annual Giving Campaign Strategies That Win More Donors: An annual giving campaign is essential to the success of nonprofit fundraising. If you’re looking to gain more donors, check out this blog post with 5 strategies.
• 5 Ways to Make Your Peer to Peer Fundraising Campaign More Successful: A campaign becomes even more effective when you can get your audience to advocate for you. That’s what makes peer to peer campaigns so great. This blog post offers five ways for you to make your peer to peer fundraising campaign more successful.