Campaign FAQs

• What is a campaign?

  A campaign is a series of messages working toward one goal. That could be getting people to attend an event, join a program, or donate.

• What are typical campaign goals?

  A campaign can help more people discover your organization, interact with your message, sign up for a program, or donate. Decide what matters most before you start. That goal helps you choose what to say and how to measure results.

• Can campaigns grow donations?

  They can help, but donations aren’t guaranteed. People may need to learn about your work and trust your organization before giving. Make sure your ad, donation page, and follow-up share a clear message, and make donating easy.

• What are paid, owned, and earned media?

  Paid means buying space for your message, like a billboard or online ad. Owned means using channels you manage, like your website or newsletter. Earned means others choosing to talk about you, like a newspaper covering your work.

• What is programmatic advertising, and how is it different from traditional media buying?

  Traditional media buying usually means arranging ad placements directly with a newspaper, radio station, or website. Programmatic advertising uses software to buy online ad space across websites and apps.

  Imagine you’re promoting a community event. Your team tells the software where you want to reach people, when to run the ads, and how much to spend. It helps find and buy places to show your ad, such as a weather app or news website.

  People still create the ads, check the results, and decide how to spend the budget. The software handles much of the buying.

• What are impressions and reach?

  Impressions count how many times an ad is shown. Reach estimates how many different people it reaches. One person shown your ad five times can count as five impressions, but only one person reached. Being shown an ad doesn’t mean someone noticed it.

• What is click-through rate?

  It’s the percentage of times an ad gets clicked after being shown. If it appears 100 times and gets two clicks, the rate is 2%.

• What are engagement and conversions?

  Engagement means interacting with content: liking, commenting, sharing, or clicking. A conversion is the action you want someone to complete, like registering for an event. A click shows interest; a completed registration shows they signed up.

• How do we know it’s working?

  Match the results to your goal. For sign-ups, count completed registrations. For fundraising, compare donations received with campaign costs. Tracking links show which campaign messages brought people to your website. Website activity, sign-up forms, and donation records help you understand what they did next. These tools won’t capture every reason someone decides to act.

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