By Jesse Holcomb
Some nonprofit newsrooms have embraced marketing as a way to deepen and widen their reach despite (or amid) ever-tightening competition for audience attention.
Roughly three quarters of nonprofit news organizations dedicate at least a portion of their annual budgets toward marketing their journalism to wider audiences. But, for the vast majority of outlets, marketing remains a tiny portion of their overall budget. Across all INN members, outlets devoted just 3.5% of their yearly budgets on average to marketing, a share broadly consistent across different types of outlets.
Average/Median percentage of organizations’ yearly budget devoted to marketing to help grow their audiences
| Geographic scope of coverage | Average percentage of yearly budget devoted to marketing | Median percentage of yearly budget devoted to marketing |
| Local outlets | 3.3% | 1.0% |
| State/Regional outlets | 4.6% | 2.0% |
| National/Global outlets | 2.8% | 1.0% |
| All outlets | 3.5% | 1.0% |
Outlets that report spending any portion of their budget on marketing tend to generate more revenue than organizations that spend nothing on marketing. For those with a marketing budget, however small it may be, the median annual revenue is $542,000 compared to just $306,000 for organizations with no marketing budget.
The same pattern holds, albeit more narrowly, when looking at the relationship between marketing investment and specific forms of revenue that could stand to grow if marketing efforts yield strong results. Outlets with marketing budgets generated a median of $81,000 in individual giving revenue in 2023, compared to $73,000 among outlets without a marketing budget. And outlets with marketing budgets also outpaced the rest in advertising and sponsorship revenue, generating a median of $2,000 in 2023 compared to a median of $0 among outlets without a marketing budget.
Outlets’ investment in marketing is also associated with audience growth and ambition. About 51% of outlets with a marketing budget saw audience growth between 2021 and 2023. Just 39% of outlets without a marketing budget experienced audience growth during the same period.
Forty-four percent of outlets with a marketing budget report aiming to reach a large target audience of at least 1 million readers. Slightly fewer outlets, without a marketing budget, (39%, aimed to reach an audience of that size.
To better understand why these news outlets are investing at least some of their resources in marketing, INN asked members to identify their main priorities. What are they trying to get out of marketing?
The survey found that outlets are most interested in seeing their paid marketing efforts bear fruit in traffic growth. Nearly half (47%) of outlets indicated traffic growth is a high priority. And 30% of outlets say collecting email addresses through newsletter sign-ups is a high priority.
While some outlets invest in marketing to prioritize audience growth, a smaller portion (15%) say that their top marketing priority is donor development.
The survey findings suggest that outlets are prioritizing growth in web traffic, not because they are building on an area of strength, but because they are operating at a deficit. Outlets making overall traffic growth a top priority tended to lag behind the field overall in web traffic in 2023, with a median of 22,000 average monthly website visitors, compared to 27,000 for the field overall. See our report chapter on audience goals for more on this trend.
% of outlets that ranked ___ as a high priority.
| Goals | Percentage of outlets |
| Increase overall traffic to website or other products (increase overall, general audience reach) | 47% |
| Collect email addresses or other first-party data through newsletter sign-ups or other products | 30% |
| Increase targeted traffic to website or other products (increase overall impact, or increase targeted audience reach) | 27% |
| Directly solicit donations or other financial contributions | 15% |
| Other | 4% |
By far, Facebook is the most common venue for digital content marketing among INN members. Nearly half (45%) of outlets say they use Facebook content boosts, which are a way to extend the life of a post on the social media feed of a user, and advertisements to market their brands to audiences.
And 18% of outlets say they invest in Facebook paid lead generation, a way to identify new potential audiences for a newsletter or web product, and drive those potential audiences from Facebook and to their own website. About one-fifth of outlets (21%) say they pay to boost their content on Instagram.
Nonprofit outlets that report using Facebook paid lead generation amassed a strikingly larger subscriber list for their email newsletters, with a median of 14,000 readers. Nonprofit news outlets overall attracted a median of about 6,000 subscribers.
% of outlets that used ___ for digital content marketing
| Type of digital content marketing used | Percentage of outlets |
| Facebook content boosts/advertisements | 45% |
| Instagram boosts | 21% |
| Facebook paid lead generation | 18% |
| LinkedIn boosts | 9% |
| Twitter promotions | 6% |
| YouTube promotions | 2% |
| Google Ads (pay-per-click) | 2% |
| Bing Ads (pay-per-click) | 1% |
| TikTok promotions | 0% |
| Other | 10% |
Among the outlets that experienced web traffic growth in 2023, 79% reported using Facebook content boosts, 33% reported using Facebook paid lead generation, and 36% reported using Instagram boosts. In each case, these proportions significantly outpaced nonprofit news outlets overall. With other social marketing tools, the outlets that enjoyed traffic growth did not substantially differ from the outlets that did not use those tools.
One such organization, Ovideo Community News, has seen its audience triple recently alongside its use of paid Facebook ads. This local outlet serving communities in Florida grew their newsletter list of 2,700 in June 2023 to more than 12,000 today, with most of the growth coming from several rounds of lead generation through Meta ads. A two-year grant from Indiegraf supported this audience development work.
Other outlets are enthusiastic about Facebook’s lead generation as a way to grow their audiences. For MinnPost, paid lead generation was the single most effective marketing strategy it implemented over the last year. Paid lead gen efforts helped the MinnPost team grow their newsletter list by 34% in 2024. Before investing in these marketing efforts beginning in mid-2023, their subscriber count was fairly stagnant.
The editors at Charlottesville Tomorrow are also pleased with the return on investment in Facebook lead generation and report a conversion rate of about $1.25 per sign-up. Still, this organization is a testament to the importance of knowing the market and diversifying marketing strategies. Charlottesville Tomorrow serves rural communities and uses a flyer distribution service that has yielded a conversion rate similar to Facebook lead generation.
The bottom line, though? For the team at Charlottesville Tomorrow, what matters is making sure the sign-up process is easy and clear on every story on their website.
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