Nowadays, more and more businesses are aware of the importance of digitalisation, and understand that if they follow the old marketing strategy, whether they are in the market leader position or not, sooner or later, their profits will gradually shrink and even be eliminated from the market. However, many non-governmental organizations (NGOs) have stagnated in digitalisation.

Compared with the average commercial organisation, many NGOs have not yet developed a marketing mindset that keeps pace with the times and are skeptical about the effectiveness of online marketing and digitalisation. For example, they still maintain the old-fashioned offline publicity mentality, feeling that they have achieved the desired results by uploading only event photos and event details on a regular basis, and they always do not give much thought to allocating part of their budget for publicity expenses on social media platforms, because they are not clear enough about the return and effectiveness of advertising, and they are worried that this is a “money burning” behavior.

This is largely due to the fact that due to their background and scale, their image tends to be conservative, and their internal stakeholders may not be willing to accept and try various new digital platforms and new marketing strategies, so even if they are fully compatible with other aspects, they will not be able to effectively keep up with the pace of digitalisation.

Even though some NGOs have a market-oriented marketing mindset, another obstacle preventing them from going digital is a lack of resources.

Generally speaking, NGOs have to make trade-offs when they do not have sufficient resources. However, how often do you develop a digital platform, or even look for marketing and PR? Intermediaries work professionally and often require a lot of expenses. In the end, even in the face of tight resources, digital marketing can only be put on the back burner.

However, even for NGOs, digitalisation is still very important. With the help of digitalisation, they can more effectively identify their target audience, which can lead to business growth, and also help these organizations to provide better and more market-oriented services, forming a win-win situation.

However, in the face of such an “internal and external troubles” situation, how can NGOs deal with themselves and effectively develop digitalisation?

First of all, find people who really understand online marketing and strategic management to manage social platforms. In many cases, the management of the company often delegates the responsibility of online marketing to frontline colleagues, thinking that “having access to social media platforms = mastering how to develop their social platforms”. In fact, to successfully develop an organization through digitalization, it requires a lot of professional analysis and technology. Secondly, organisational stakeholders need to relax some of their powers to the next generation of marketing professionals to develop and formulate digital strategies together.