Know your audience. Who do you want to reach? Tailor your marketing to your audience.
At SPOKES, we've found that mass marketing does not reach our East African Immigrant residents. We ended up hiring a Somali immigrant who at the time didn't know how to ride (first thing he did was take our Learn-to-Ride class). While he has left us (got a great scholarship to grad school in education), that build connections and word of mouth in that community has grown. But we still rely on the community organizer employed by our parent organization (a neighborhood group--she is a Somali immigrant).
For the more general population (and younger East African immigrants) we do use Facebook and our website but we've noticed that the Facebook reach has shrunk as Facebook changes how they rank posts (It seems that for organization/business pages, they have significantly reduced the reach to try to get you to buy promotion. Facebook promotion is relatively low cost but we limit our use of it. For Facebook, we make a point of posting/sharing things that are not directly SPOKES related but are bike related. You can check that out at
www.fb.com/SpokesConnect.
Our email newsletter is growing in circulation. We publish it about once per month.
We always seem behind in updating our website but people do use it to find out about us
www.SpokesConnect.org
We also use posters in businesses and community buildings and flyers at bike shops and coffee shops.
The neighborhoods we serve all have email discussion lists. They are open to nonprofits posting information. That has been a great resource. They all have over 1000 members and they tend to be the more active members of the communities.
One of the local REI stores (about 15 miles away in a suburb) hosts a used bike drive for us every year. They advertise it in their electronic and paper media. That has worked great!
For our Learn-to-Ride and Earn-a-Bike programs, other organizations in the area know about it and tell people about it. NiceRide (our bikeshare program) regularly refers people to our Learn-to-Ride program.
We are developing a new four-fold brochure for general information and fundraising. (Donated graphic design, hopefully donated printing)