It’s no secret that effective marketing helps maximize the fundraising potential of your nonprofit’s events. For events that have a high fundraising potential to start, such as live auctions, being strategic in your marketing efforts can lead to significant revenue generation.

But in many cases, fundraising event success doesn’t depend solely on the amount of money you raise. Increasing donor engagement is also a common goal, and a solid marketing strategy can encourage more supporters to get involved with your organization—through participation in your live auction and beyond.

You’ve probably heard that creating a multi-channel marketing strategy tends to be more effective than focusing on just one communication method. But to really make your event stand out, you’ll need to get creative. Here are four unique ideas to market your nonprofit’s live auction:

1. Release Your Auction Catalog in Advance
2. Create Fundraising Videos
3. Leverage Corporate Sponsorships
4. Design Peer-to-Peer Invitations

As you develop marketing materials for your auction, remember to demonstrate to supporters what’s in it for them if they participate. Feature your nonprofit’s mission prominently so they get an idea of what their fundraising dollars will accomplish, and showcase your live auction items so they arrive at your event excited to bid. Let’s get started!

1. Release Your Auction Catalog in Advance

While the main purpose of an auction catalog is to serve as a guide to the event, it can also be a useful marketing tool. By sharing your catalog in advance, supporters can get a sneak peek at the items you’re offering and start to decide which ones they want to bid on. Then, when the live auction begins, they can enter into the bidding process more quickly.

Winspire’s guide to auction catalog design recommends including the following sections in your nonprofit’s booklet:

• An eye-catching cover page. Incorporate your nonprofit’s logo, color scheme, fonts, and other brand elements to maintain consistency with your other event marketing materials.
• A letter from your organization’s director or board chair. This establishes credibility and helps engage auction participants by addressing them directly.
• Information about your nonprofit’s mission. Share concrete examples of ways you could use the funds raised during your live auction so supporters know how their contributions will make a difference.
• An event agenda. Include the start and end time for bidding, as well as additional information about the order of events at your auction, such as the names of any guest speakers and whether food will be served.
• Your auction items. It’s best to feature 12-15 items in total, with two or three on each page of your catalog. Come up with a catchy title for each item, ensure your descriptions are skimmable, and add relevant photos.
• Acknowledgments. Dedicate a page to thanking everyone who made your event possible, including staff members, volunteers, sponsors, and participants (of course!).

Once you’ve put all of these elements together into a cohesive catalog, print out physical copies and save the catalog as a PDF for digital download. This way, you can easily share the catalog through a variety of marketing channels. Include a printed catalog with any invitations you mail out, and link to the digital version in social media captions, emails, and the “Events” section of your nonprofit’s website.

2. Create Fundraising Videos

Video marketing for nonprofits is on the rise for several reasons. Videos are more engaging than text or images alone, hold supporters’ attention for longer, and provide a multimedia storytelling experience. Viewers can walk away with a clear understanding of your nonprofit and the inspiration to get involved in your fundraising efforts—such as by attending your auction!

Here are some tips for incorporating videos into your live auction marketing:

• Have a clear purpose for each video. Consider creating a video for new supporters to educate them on your organization and its cause in addition to videos that directly promote your auction. Separating educational and promotional video functions ensures that none of your videos end up being too long for supporters to watch all the way through.
• Incorporate testimonials. Quotes from previous event attendees, volunteers, staff members, or beneficiaries of your nonprofit help humanize your fundraising efforts.
• End with a call to action. Include the link to your event registration form in the video’s caption, and consider displaying it on-screen at the end of the video as well. This way, supporters can quickly sign up for your auction while it’s top of mind.
• Tailor the video’s format to the marketing channel you use to share it. A video embedded into your nonprofit’s website or an email should have a landscape orientation and can be slightly longer. On the other hand, many social media videos are shorter and vertically oriented, so keep this in mind as you create each of your videos.

Additionally, check the settings on each video you post to make sure closed captions are enabled. This ensures your videos are accessible to all audiences.

3. Leverage Corporate Sponsorships

Corporate sponsorships can help offset costs associated with planning a fundraising event. Most nonprofits go one of two routes when partnering with businesses to support their live auctions: either their sponsors provide direct financial support for the event, or they assist in the auction item procurement process by supplying high-value prizes at little or no cost.

Many sponsorship agreements stipulate that in exchange for a business’s support, the nonprofit will promote the business in its event marketing materials. However, this promotion can also go two ways. When approaching a potential sponsor, consider asking them if you can hang up flyers at their facility. Or, you might ask if they’d be willing to participate in co-marketing opportunities with your organization, such as collaborative Instagram posts or cross-promotion in each other’s newsletters.

Leveraging your corporate sponsors’ influence to promote your auction can spread awareness of your event and mission to a new group of potential supporters—the business’s existing customers. At the same time, your sponsors can gain new customers through their exposure to your nonprofit’s supporter base, so it’s a win-win situation!

4. Design Peer-to-Peer Invitations

Word-of-mouth marketing is powerful, so encouraging supporters to invite others to your auction can greatly expand your nonprofit’s reach. To kickstart this process, create peer-to-peer invitations, or invitations that supporters can use to invite friends and family to your auction on your nonprofit’s behalf.

An easy way to design these invitations is to use digital greeting card tools to create custom eCards for supporters to send to their networks. According to eCardWidget, creating an effective digital greeting card requires that you focus on the following four elements:

• Image. Choose a high-definition, well-composed photo as the base of your eCard. For a live auction invitation, the photo should either relate to your organization’s mission or to the event format.
• Branding. Incorporate your nonprofit’s logo, fonts, and color scheme into every design to increase brand awareness and establish credibility with recipients.
• Message. Add a short phrase to the front of each eCard, like “You’re Invited!” Then, include a templated message for the inside that supporters can edit to include stories about their personal involvement with your organization, and attach the link to your event registration form.
• Mobile optimization. Make sure your eCards format properly in both mobile and desktop views so that supporters can share them via email, social media, and SMS text messaging.

Peer-to-peer invitations have two major benefits for your organization. First, acquiring new supporters through your live auction will require less time and effort on your organization’s part because your existing supporters will do some of the work for you. Second, when recipients can read personal stories from their loved ones about their involvement with your nonprofit, they’re more likely to trust that they’re supporting a worthwhile cause by participating in your event.

About the Author

David White

David White is the Director of Nonprofit Sales at Winspire. The Winspire team is dedicated to supporting the nonprofit community by providing the best service and unique auction item experiences for their events. Winspire has helped over 75,000 nonprofit auctions across North America increase their revenue through events of all sizes.