Copywriting for Not-for-Profit Masterclass
You will learn to:
- Successfully target different audience personas with persuasive content technqiues
- Find the trigger words, structures and strategies for acquisition, retention, lapsed.... And volunteers
- Avoid common messaging mistakes that not for profit organisations make
- Use storytelling to make connections Structure your content effectively across all platforms and for each specific need
- Evaluate your content
Course Categories: Copywriting & Creative
See below for further course details and full programme information.
Ready to upskill your team with the IDM? Explore our Corporate Training option, here
Course Information
Starting with your audience
- The best copy is written for a real person
- Identifying copy personas for your project, platforms and objectives across the marketing and product spectrum
- Think benefits, not features
- Keywords, trigger words, psychological copy techniques that work for acquisition, retention and lapsed supporter, volunteers and targets
- Emotional connections for not for profit copywriting
Doing it: Create personas
Doing it: Build a benefit-led copy profile to add to throughout the session
Understanding audience behaviour to target your copy effectively
- What do we know about print and digital readers and what that means for your content
- Who are they?
- What do they want from you?
- What do they relate to?
- What do you want from them?
- What will they respond to?
- How do readers process content differently depending on the format and what that means for your content eg. Emails, web pages, print, social media
- What about our need eg. Retention, donor, volunteer etc.
- Thinking benefits over features
- Visual language, emotive triggers and power words
- How Google fits in
- Incorporating brand personality
- Thinking about lifecycle content opportunities
Doing it: Analysing examples and suggesting improvements
Structuring content and how to use these techniques for editing and writing
- How can you arrange your information to make maximum impact?
- Getting the most important information in early
- Finding the best way to get it across - different ways of starting
- Planning before you write
- Fitting the story into different structures
- Understanding how those structures work
- Considering the order for different formats
- Engaging your reader
- Driving action with clear messaging
Doing it: Planning content order and structure for maximum effectiveness
Platform- and need-specific copy insights
What you need to know to write the most effective copy for:
- Websites
- Social media (organic and/or paid)
- Letters
- DM mail packs
- Ads
- Lotteries
- Events
- Legacy
- Individual giving
- Volunteers
Doing it: Platform- and need-specific copy challenges
Finding the human story in your material
- Using the classic storytelling arc to engage and involve your different personas
- Finding the emotional elements to resonate with your audience and know when to include facts and figures and when to include human stories
- Choosing the aspects that are likely to persuade them to act for different mediums and different types of campaigns and communications
- Persuasive copy techniques for not for profit content at different points of the lifecycle
Doing it: Delegates will analyse how other organisations use stories in writing
Doing it: Delegates will find the most important aspects of the story in their material
Writing for maximum effect
- Getting the basics right first - common pitfalls a writer needs to spot and avoid
- Tone of voice
- Why sentence length and structure matter
- Why too many clauses obscure your meaning
- Making your writing clear, compelling and effective
- How to avoid using superfluous words
- Finding useful alternatives to overused words and terms
- The importance of active verbs
- Common errors to avoid
- Useful tools to simplify the editing process and spot errors you might miss
Doing it: Delegates will improve poorly written text
Analysis and discussion
To do lists
Becky Bocchetti, Consultant
Becky Bocchetti is a leading digital trainer and content consultant who has a proven track record of success with a variety of media owners, FMCG brands, marketing specialists and content providers. Her unique cross-media experience is in high demand with clients who look to her for expertise, insight and tangible results.
Excellent tutor who inspired with confidence that the content was relevant, reliable and proven.
Susannah Rose,
British Museum
Great day - and I'm typically very critical. I got a real sense of value, with highly worthwhile lessons for anyone in the charity sector or fundraising generally.
Jack Barton,
National Trust
If you want to meet great people from the widest range of industries while learning from industry greats in amazing facilities, the IDM is for you
Katherine Fleet
Matrix
This course was engaging and easily digestible. I now feel confident to take the skills I have learned forward into my next marketing appeal or fundraiser