What happens when an EA org actually invests in marketing? A case study.
webAuthor
Nick M Brown
Credibility Rating
3/5
Good(3)Good quality. Reputable source with community review or editorial standards, but less rigorous than peer-reviewed venues.
Rating inherited from publication venue: EA Forum
This EA Forum post is tangentially relevant to AI safety insofar as it addresses organizational growth strategies for EA-aligned groups, which may include AI safety organizations; its primary focus is on marketing and movement-building rather than technical or policy AI safety content.
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87
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15
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eaforum
Forum Tags
Building effective altruismCareer choiceConsultants for ImpactEffective altruism messagingMarketingOrganization strategy
Metadata
Importance: 28/100analysis
Summary
A case study examining the outcomes and lessons learned when an effective altruism organization made a deliberate investment in marketing efforts. The post analyzes what worked, what didn't, and what other EA organizations might learn from the experience regarding outreach and growth strategies.
Key Points
- •Explores the relatively rare case of an EA organization systematically investing in professional marketing rather than relying on organic growth
- •Provides concrete data or observations on outcomes such as reach, engagement, or recruitment resulting from marketing investment
- •Discusses cost-effectiveness considerations relevant to nonprofit and EA-aligned organizations considering similar investments
- •Offers practical lessons for EA orgs weighing the trade-offs between programmatic work and communications/marketing spending
- •Contributes to broader EA discourse on movement building, scaling, and donor/volunteer acquisition strategies
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# What happens when an EA org actually invests in marketing? A case study.
By Nick M Brown
Published: 2026-03-18
*This post reflects one campaign run in close collaboration between a digital marketing agency and an EA-adjacent org. Results exceeded expectations, but may not generalize. We aim to share lessons, not promote a particular approach or provider.*
**Epistemic status: ***Practitioner sharing one campaign’s results. Reasonably confident in the numbers; less certain about generalizability to other orgs or cause areas. I run the agency that ran this campaign, so take the framing with appropriate skepticism.*
**What We Did and What Happened**
---------------------------------
In late 2024, [Consultants for Impact](https://consultantsforimpact.org/), an EA-adjacent org that helps management consultants transition into high-impact careers, partnered with our agency, [Effct.org](https://www.effct.org/), to run a digital marketing campaign on Facebook, Instagram, and LinkedIn. The goal was straightforward: reach working consultants who might want to do more good with their careers, but don't know where to start.
Our goals were initially reach more consultants, build their newsletter, and see if paid media could move the needle for the org. **What we got was much more than we planned for.**
**By the end of 2025 we had generated:**
* 11,000+ newsletter subscribers (a 5,500% year-over-year increase)
* 44 million impressions across platforms (13x CFI’s initial goal)
* 5,200+ LinkedIn followers (220% YoY growth)
* Reached an estimated 10–15,000 consultants based on conservative estimates. Listed reach on the platforms was in the millions.
* **212+ career advising applications directly from social media, up from just 18 the year before**
That last number surprised us as much as anyone. We built a funnel aimed at the top, and people kept walking all the way through it.
### This post shares what we learned, for EA-aligned orgs thinking about whether marketing is worth trying.
**How We Did It**
-----------------
### **1\. Set clear goals**
CFI’s team (Sarah, Emily, and Cindy) didn’t say “let’s raise awareness.” Together, we set roughly **five SMART goals and tracked them throughout the campaign**. Because the target was specific, everything else snapped into focus: the audience, the channels, the content, the metrics. Vague goals produce vague campaigns. A clear north star made the work simpler. We guided them on what numbers felt realistic. I tended towards conservatism with the estimates. In the end we ended up crushing the goals by about 900%.
**Midstream goal changes are one of the fastest ways to sink a campaign. Once you commit to a direction, protect it.** Revisit it at a planned checkpoint (at least a couple of months away), not at week three.
### **2\. Meet your audience where they are**
Consultants are busy. They scroll LinkedIn between meetings and Instagram during commutes. They don’t want whitepapers in their feed; t
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