Building a marketing function for a small nonprofit
Copyright Alliance had big goals and no large marketing department. I built an integrated program that connected the website, content, email, social, membership, events, and advocacy around shared goals, and doubled creator membership.
growth in engaged creator membership, 2016 to 2021
web audience engagement, year over year, 2020 to 2021
organic search visits, first quarter 2020 to first quarter 2021
new creator members in a single quarter
Copyright Alliance is a small nonprofit serving a broad community of creators and copyright stakeholders. Like many mission-driven organizations, it wanted to grow awareness, educate creators, engage members, support advocacy, and show its value, without the resources of a large marketing department.
The opportunity was to stop running channels as separate activities and connect them around shared goals.
One plan, every channel
- Strategy and alignment
- Developed an integrated marketing and communications plan spanning digital channels, membership, events, and advocacy
- Defined the priorities and audiences each channel should serve, so efforts reinforced each other
- Content and channel development
- Created educational content that made complicated copyright issues accessible to creators, including question-based FAQs and designed infographics
- Led a website redesign and an expanded members-only portal, focused on user experience and resource discovery
- Launched Copyright Academy, a webinar series of short expert conversations available exclusively to creator members
- Strengthened member communications across the membership lifecycle, from onboarding to renewal
- Coordinated execution and optimization
- Ran coordinated campaigns across email, social, web content, partnerships, and events, from Capitol Hill educational events to Women's History Month and Black History Month campaigns celebrating creators
- Built partnerships with groups such as Volunteer Lawyers for the Arts to reach new creators
- Reported quarterly on web, advertising, and membership performance, and used the results to plan what came next
- Introduced Asana as the organization's project management platform
A new website that kept its traffic
Website redesigns often cost an organization its search traffic for months. The new Copyright Alliance site launched in February 2021 with careful redirects, and visits held at their highest level while pageviews reached a five-quarter high.
Quarterly website visits, total and from organic search, January 2020 to March 2021.
The most-visited pages on the site were answers to real questions, like “What is the difference between copyright, patent and trademark?”
Writing content that answers what people are already asking is the same approach that now earns citations in AI answers. I was doing it before it had a name.
“Jodi brought both strategic thinking and hands-on execution to our marketing and membership efforts. She helped us build a more cohesive approach that strengthened our digital presence, grew our creator community, and made a meaningful impact despite the realities of working with a small nonprofit team.”
As Director of Marketing and Membership, I led marketing strategy and oversaw much of the day-to-day work behind it: digital content, the website, email, membership communications, events, partnerships, and advocacy campaigns. I also supervised staff and interns and managed the department budget.
In a small organization, that meant balancing strategy with execution, focusing on the work with the greatest impact, and building systems so each channel supported the others.
What it shows
Small nonprofits don't need more marketing activity. They need clarity about their audiences, their priorities, and the role each channel should play.