by admin

For every charity or non-profit, planning your online advertising budget for 2024 involves thoughtful consideration of your financial goals, past performances, campaign planning and lots more. Here’s a step-by-step guide to help charities plan their online budget for the upcoming year.

1. Firstly, asses the performance of your 2023 online advertising efforts. Drill into which campaign or Facebook Challenge worked well and why. Use this data as a starting point. Compare previous targets against the results and see how they performed in terms of return on investment (ROI)
2. Define your advertising goals for 2024. Increase brand awareness, generate leads, boost the number of once off or regular donations – having clear goals will guide your budget allocation. Identify the online channels that align with your goals. For example, use the Google Ad Grant for the awareness goal.
3. Allocate Budget. Decide on what percentage of your overall budget will go toward different campaigns or Facebook Challenges.
4. Plan your campaigns. I personally think the beginning of a new year is a good time to start planning your campaigns. Whose story will you use, content, target audience, channels and more.
5. Factor seasonality. What specific times during the year or certain days impact your advertising efforts. Plan for increased or decreased spending during peak seasons.
6. Always allocate a certain percentage of your budget to testing. Ad creatives, formats, wording etc and how they resonate with your audience.
7. Stay informed about online advertising trends. AI is an absolute game changer!  AI can now optimise your campaigns by adjusting your daily budget, bids and targeting. AI will personalise ads for each specific user based on their demographics. And AI can now automate a lot of the tasks you do when managing a paid advertising campaign. Understand the benefits and challenges of AI.
8. Measure the ROI: Establish KPI’s for measuring the ROI. Track conversations, CPA, Opt-In’s, leads, donations and other relevant KPI’s to access how effective your advertising is.
9. Set up GA4 correctly. Have you set up relevant conversion events in GA4? Do you understand how to asses them?
10. Review your main donation page. Using best practices optimise your main donation page; review its design, giving process, can you track donations and can visitors view it on a mobile device.

Top Tip: When visitors process their donation ensure they receive a thank you page and not a thank you message. This will make your life alot easier especially when setting Facebook Conversion events or events in GA4.