If there’s one thing Rodney Ferro has never been, it’s still. From his prep teacher’s note about having “ants in his pants” to a career that’s seen him move from the big ad agency world to leading digital marketing innovation for not-for-profits, Rodney thrives where there’s movement, change, and challenge.
Today, Rodney is the Founder of PN Digital, a passionate team helping not-for-profits navigate the ever-evolving digital landscape. Over the past 15 years, Rodney has worked with organisations across Australia to build smarter, more sustainable digital marketing strategies — and overcome the common hurdles of small teams, limited budgets, and an overwhelming pace of change.
At this year’s Technology for Social Justice Conference, Rodney and PN Digital’s Marie-Claire will be running a hands-on workshop designed to help not-for-profits maximise SEO, make the most of Google Ad Grants, and integrate AI and automation to attract more donors and supporters.
Before we dive into the workshop, we caught up with Rodney to hear his thoughts on the future of digital marketing for NFPs, how AI is changing the game, and what attendees can expect.
Tell us a bit about your digital journey over the last few years and your main focus in helping accelerate the work of not-for-profits?
Rodney: Over the last 15 years we have definitely noticed patterns in the shift (every 5 years), where organisations are trying to build capacity within their teams for digital marketing, but unfortunately are challenged between funding / budget changes and also the challenge of retaining talent, especially in a smaller team. At PN Digital our solution is to help these organisations with ‘insourcing’ via a team of professionals all based within Australia to assist in filling in the gaps where it is needed to strengthen their teams and systems internally.
We have seen many organisations use this ‘known secret’ to help amplify their messaging and increase their brand awareness, which in turn is having a positive impact on their incoming enquiries, donor retention and meeting requests for corporate support.
How do you see AI already transforming digital marketing strategies now and into the future?
AI is obviously an interesting topic, where there is seemingly a ‘great divide’. Those that are embracing the technology and exploring, and those that feel there is just too much learning and it’s a bit threatening to what we are doing today and also the world we live in.
Digital Marketing we believe can definitely thrive with a sprinkle of AI technology. As brand custodians of our organisations, we must create guidelines about how our organisations use not only new tech but think carefully about “how we turn up” in this fast paced world of marketing. It is not about making more noise, it has never been, it's about creating value, creating meaningful connections and building on your authentic brand.
We believe that you should embrace the tech, but not forget our your organisation's core values and why you exist, how you want to show up for your supporters and beneficiaries. Then the tech will help you, not pull you back!
What can attendees expect from your workshop at the conference?
We have carefully crafted a workshop to try and focus on a few channels of ’search’ as we believe it is a strong part of digital marketing (across search engines, socials and new platforms as they develop). Marie-Claire and I are sharing content framed at a beginner to intermediate level to make sure you can leave the workshop empowered to implement a few techniques.
The focus is how we can use new tech like AI, automation, trigger based marketing to help streamline our process, save time and more importantly help us get the results we are looking for.
We hope you can join us and we're happy for attendees to ask us any questions at our exhibition table. We work with a number of NFPs and charities each day with consulting or training the team and this is what we love doing. So please get involved, we have a number of giveaways as usual and ‘Pro-Bono Hours of Service’ and we hope to bring you a workshop that helps your organisation do more with what you have.
See you soon-ish!
Read more about the 21st Technology for Social Justice Conference
here.
