The Gift That Keeps On Giving: Using Year-End to Build (and Monetize) Your Most Important Digital Audience
In retail, your most likely customers are your past purchasers. For public media organizations, the same principle holds true: tomorrow’s new members are today's one-time donors. This holiday season isn't just about raising funds—it's about building a sustainable digital audience that will support your mission into 2025 and beyond.
These final weeks of December represent a unique digital fundraising landscape and the hottest marketplace of the year. Potential donors are primed, reflective, and more open than any other time to supporting a meaningful cause. Here's how to capitalize on this critical window:
1. 🔍Use Search Advertising as Your Discovery Engine
Pause & Pay. Now is not the time to lean on your Google Grant which will allow you to be drowned out by the dozens of other online stores, car sellers, and other nonprofits who are already buying this premium ad space.
Target your branded search terms ("stream kabc", "listen to wxyz", etc) and update your ad text accordingly.
Expand to broader philanthropic searches like "year-end donations" and "tax-deductible giving"
Anticipate ROI/ROAS to surge from 2-3x to 7-10x typical performance. Let us know if that’s not your baseline!
⭐️Important: Allocate 90% or more of your Q2 ad budget to Giving Tuesday and after, and primarily to this channel.
2. ✍️Go Beyond the Inbox with Paid Social
Reach your donor lists on their newsfeed. It's not enough to rely only on email, which is as expensive as it is unreliable in the age of Promotions and Social folders.
Focus on Meta for proven and cost-effective reach, and defer experimental channels like TikTok until the new year.
Push this request out as an organic post, then boost to your primary marketing audiences. This is cheaper and more effective than running as ads.
3. 📢Compel Conversion by Selling Your Org and Your Mission
Make sure you're not just offering premiums and matching opportunities...but calling this out clearly in your ads.
Craft messaging that speaks to both emotional impact and practical value.
⭐️Important: Younger audiences expect to understand their direct benefit, which is why you’ll give them a mug for their gift.
4. ✌️Lean into the Anticipated Challenges of the Looming Social Environment
Transparently communicate anticipated funding challenges in the new year and beyond.
Connect individual donations to the broader mission of public journalism.
Create urgency. At no time more than now will they be more receptive to this, with hearts, mind, and wallet.
5. 🤾♀️Be Operationally Flexible and Assertive
Discard your traditional posting schedule constraints to maximize presence in the final weeks of December.
Keep your digital campaigns active for every minute of the rest of the year.
Take advantage of the extended holiday period, with Christmas on a Wednesday in 2024. That’s a lot of idle time on phones!
The most successful public media organizations don't just ask for donations—they show the benefit, reciprocate the gift, and (in their messaging) lean into the existential need to which donors will be most receptive.
