3 Campaign Types to Promote Your Next On-the-Ground Peer-to-Peer Event

As any nonprofit team that has executed an on-the-ground peer-to-peer (P2P) event knows, they can require a lot of planning and logistics. When city permits, outside resources, and hundreds of volunteers are relying on you, there is no such thing as a small decision. After all the hard work invested, deciding how to promote your event can be critical to success.

Promoting on-the-ground events need not be daunting. In fact, it can be fun! If done right, it can give your nonprofit the chance to try creative and innovative promotion strategies to find new donors and hit big goals.

Because P2P campaigns rely heavily on supporters for donations and attention, most on-the-ground event promotional strategies include three types of campaigns: inbound, P2P, and social.

In this article, we’ll an overview of on-the-ground campaign types, as well as easy strategies to execute your best event ever:

1. Outbound Campaigns

Outbound campaigns include most of your traditional marketing channels such as email, direct mail, and print advertisements. While these channels might seem a little old-school (especially when compared with social media), they’re highly effective in garnering conversions and bringing in new registrations. Afterall, the success of P2P fundraising lies in your ability to harness social networks and attract new donors.

To uncover the most new donors and foster strong relationships with new audiences, it comes down to that initial impression, which makes traditional outbound campaigns so important.

2. Peer-to-Peer Campaigns

To create affinity and engagement, P2P campaigns rely on socially optimized online giving sites that allow supporters to bring in donations, share updates, and attract new participants on their own – without hefty oversight from the nonprofit.

With the right peer-to-peer software, minimize the time and effort needed to support on-the-ground fundraisers. You just make sure your participants have the content and resources they need, including mission and impact messaging, how to’s for creating easy-to-setup personal fundraising pages, and links to the larger campaign. Now you can sit back and watch the fundraising take off!

As new donations and registrations come in through your P2P participants, make sure you’re encouraging and promoting a bit of competition through online leaderboards and social updates.

3. Social Campaigns

Social media is a huge part of modern P2P campaigns and they are definitely a big reason why on-the-ground events have become as popular as they are (like walkathons and bikeathons). When it comes to promoting your next big P2P event, involve the community as much as possible through your social channels. Follow as many influencers as you can, as well as local bigwigs who might have a connection with your organization. As participants and registrants start to post on social as part of their individual P2P campaigns, like their posts as much as possible and use your event hashtag to continue cross-promotion.

Here are a few tips to use social media to your advantage:

• Identify your audience and know what kind of campaigns and content will appeal to them
• Post engaging content and think outside of the box (ex: video, tag a friend, create a poll, etc)
• Tap into donor energy and ask them to share your content with their networks to increase your campaign’s visibility
• Change it up and keep content fresh so that your donors don’t glaze over your posts