What Can You Do When Your Marketing Budget Is Small?

Over the course of my career, I’ve worked for some big dogs in the Catholic world.

They have prestige. They have a well-known figurehead. They have big donors. They have a growing team.

But what about the little guys?

As my White Tree adventures1 have picked up steam in the past few months, I have taken calls with an increasing number of smaller non-profits, filmmakers, business owners, and ministries that are just getting started or are ready to make bigger moves after a couple years of existence.

The problem is that they don’t have much money—and the fact remains that you really do need money to make money.

But if you’re smart about it, and you take the time to craft a more holistic marketing plan, there are ways to use a small amount of money to position yourself to make a bigger amount of money.

More often than not, the issue on these client discovery calls is not the lack of money as much as the lack of a plan.

I can’t talk strategy with you when you don’t have a plan. I definitely can’t execute tactics for you when you don’t have a plan. I’d be wasting my time and what little money you have. I’m here to partner with you to grow your org’s impact, not spend your dough on things that you think are working for other people but probably won’t move the needle for you.

So make a new plan, Stan. No need to be coy, Roy. Just get yourself free.2

1. What can you offer people that would make them join your email list and also become interested in your mission?

   Building up your email list is the number one path to a successful future of growth. Once someone is on your list, you have their attention until they start ignoring your messages or they unsubscribe. Don’t waste that attention! An email subscriber is a much warmer audience than any social media follower or podcast listener or YouTube viewer. They gave you the keys to their inbox. You know where they live.

   But don’t sleep on the second half of that question. You must build your email list with a lead magnet that relates to your mission or the audience won’t stick around. Don’t attract a bunch of Star Trek fans to your Star Wars non-profit. They’re not going to give. Find something that is exclusive, useful, and you.

   
   Once you find that golden ticket, spend some marketing budget to run Meta lead gen ads with it.3 Grow that email list and nurture those folks til they willingly give you their money.

2. Are you showing up for your audience?

   You have an email list with actual humans on it. How often do they hear from you? The monthly newsletter that goes out in the months you have time/remember just won’t cut it.

   
   You have a social media account. Are you posting to it daily or at least several times per week? As Gary Vee won’t stop yelling about, social media is now interest media. Even accounts with limited followers can crush on organic reach if the content is unique, valuable, and resonant.

   
   These posts and newsletters don’t need to be the most polished pieces of content. In fact, your humility and earthiness might be refreshing to your audience and a sign of the scrappy perseverance that they want to support.

3. Are you using your free Google Grants ad money?

   If you’re an eligible non-profit, don’t tell me that you don’t have any money for ads. You can have $10k/month in Google Ads money. You just have to ask for it and have someone who knows how to run it. (At the very least, I know a guy named Claude who is willing to help you get started.)

4. Who’s sitting next to you?

   I’ve said it once and I’ll say it again: Catholic organizations need to partner with one another more often. Let’s work in a spirit of abundance and not scarcity. If we share our Catholic missions with each other’s Catholic audiences, only good things can come from it for both parties.

   And it’s an easy/free lever to pull when you can find a partner willing to dance that way. Look around and reach out. Find people who are well-connected and have them reach out on your behalf. It’s time we all started acting more like we’re on the same team.

5. Are you recycling?

   It’s good for the earth and it’s good for your bottom line. If you pay for an expensive piece of content, make sure you use it everywhere you possibly can. Slice it up and use it in pieces. Get all the cutting room floor material from the production company you hired. Have them film some extra content for you when you’ve already paid to have them come out. Think strategically about how the video content you’re capturing can serve you across the board, not just for the current project.

Those are 5 ideas off the top of my head. There are plenty more. But I can’t stress enough that all of these ideas should be used to build a larger marketing plan so that everything works together. In isolation, these are just disconnected tactics.

Also, SURPRISE, this isn’t just for the little guy either. If you’ve got marketing money to spend, you’re in an even better position to use these tactics on steroids to attract even more people to your mission and steward them to become donors.

If any of this is intriguing to you and you don’t know where to start, let’s connect.

Thanks for reading, and may God bless you abundantly in your work!