MAKE THE MOST OUT OF MARKETING

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Here different skills are learned, so that by the time aspiring marketers reach board level they are assumed to have developed these skills on their route to the top. Obviously, the smaller the company the fewer the staff, and therefore, marketers would have to take on more matrix roles as well as their brand responsibility. In a very small enterprise, outsourced agencies or consultants would be enlisted.

 

 

 

 

 

There is an argument that the whole company has both internal and external customers, not just the marketing department. Add to that a company-wide mission and suddenly everyone from the cleaner to the chief executive is involved in marketing. In practice, of course, the mental picture of an accountant wishing to live the brand values of the organisation and delight their marketing budget holder with exemplary service may seem far-fetched. Similarly, the IT department's speed to service might not fit the wants and needs of a front-line operator in customer services. One of the greatest inhibitors in a call centre, for instance, is screen downtime.

 

 

 

 

Katya's Non-Profit Marketing Blog

Robin Hood Marketing, Colombia Style
29 Jul 2010 at 7:08pm

Left: Director of Marketing Catalina Mejía and Right: Executive Director Ángela Escallón Emiliani of Conexion Colombia.

I’m at the Conexion Colombia nonprofit conference in Bogota, where I spoke on Robin Hood Marketing and online outreach - and where I got to hear from a Colombian marketing guru as well as a panel of corporate marketing executives.  I want to share some of what I learned in one post today, another tomorrow.  What was most clear was this: Good marketing principles are the same, anywhere in the world.

Gabriel Perez, professor of marketing at the University of Los Andes, and someone who has marketed everything from Chiclets to cars, had these universal insights to offer:

1. Old school.  Perez said marketing used to work like this:  A company would think it had an offering that was so important, people would come looking for it - and buy it.  Unfortunately, this is how I think much of nonprofit marketing still operates - we have a great cause, so we expect people to know about it - and give.

2. Modern marketing.  For-profit marketers have realized this isn’t enough.  The point of marketing isn’t to offer what we think is best - it’s to listen to consumers, understand their needs, and innovate to meet those needs.  Marketing in this way permeates an entire organization, because it fuels product development, not just promotion.  This is what great companies do - and what nonprofits need to do.  What do your donors want?  What do your beneficiaries feel?  How can you structure all you do to meet their needs better?

How To Raise A Lot More Money Now - a free eBook from Network for Good
28 Jul 2010 at 9:20am

At Network for Good, we?re always looking for the latest and greatest resources to help nonprofits engage with supporters online. And we get a lot of questions about how to raise more money online ? now! 

Inspired by the great work that nonprofits do every day, I called on some of the smartest people I know in the nonprofit fundraising world to help me write this eBook and give you 50 creative ideas that you can start using today to raise more money for your cause. 

Get your free copy of How to Raise a Lot More Money Now: 50 Great Ideas from 11 Top Experts. 

I?d like to give a special thanks to all of my friends who contributed: Jeff Brooks, Mark Rovner, Jocelyn Harmon, Alia McKee, Sarah Durham, Kivi Leroux Miller, Chris Forbes, Nancy Schwartz, Beth Kanter, and Allison Fine.

 

Thoughts on marketing, millennials and social media
23 Jul 2010 at 4:15pm

I recently did an interview with Achieve CEO Derrick Feldmann.  Achieve helps nonprofits engage supporters.  Here are some excerpts!

Is your tagline a winner?  Find out with the Taggies! And make it snappy.
20 Jul 2010 at 9:38pm

Taglines are tough.  Try to sum up your essence in a few pithy words.  It’s hard!  It feels like telling your life story in a haiku.

So Nancy Schwartz comes to the rescue with her inspiring annual tagline awards - and a pithy summary of how to write a great tagline: make it snappy!  Let people know within two seconds what your organization does and how it helps them!

As Nancy says:

Too many nonprofits don?t have a tagline because they can?t craft one that works, or, even worse, they use one that doesn?t work very well. That?s 72% of all nonprofits according to a recent GettingAttention.org survey.

If that?s you, Nancy 2010 Tagline Contest for Nonprofits will inspire you. Nancy is a nonprofit marketing expert, and she?s hosting the third annual Getting Attention Nonprofit Tagline Awards Program (a.k.a. The Taggies).

This year there are three new categories ?Special Event, Fundraising Campaign and Program (product, service or other program) taglines?in addition to Organizational taglines. You can enter up to four (4) separate taglines?one for each of the award program?s categories: your organization?s tagline; a tagline for any program operated by your organization; a tagline for a fundraising campaign; and a tagline for any special event your organization produces.

All entrants will receive a free copy of the fully-updated 2010 Nonprofit Tagline Report in late fall. It?s the only complete guide to building your org?s brand in 8 words or less?filled with how-tos, don?t-dos and models.
Enter today?the deadline for entries is July 28.

Go for it.

What makes a good friends-to-friends campaign online?
15 Jul 2010 at 6:16pm

Allison Fine and Beth Kanter have interesting thoughts on this question in their new report for the Case Foundation, which reviews the results and lessons of their last America’s Giving Challenge.  The Challenge raised more than $2.1 million for nonprofits from over 105,000.  The 2009 Challenge, organized by the Case Foundation, Causes and PARADE ran for 30 days, during which thousands of individuals competed for donors, donations and matching awards from the Case Foundation for their favorite charitable causes.

The report covers what worked and didn’t - and provides recommendations on how to improve future giving challenges.  I can’t think of anyone better to do the report—Allison and Beth just released the book, The Networked Nonprofit.  You can hear them talk about it here.

Read the whole report here, but here are some highlights on what makes for effective campaigns:

Personal Appeals: Personal solicitations to pre-existing networks of donors and friends through multiple channels were rated as the most effective methods for fundraising. Thirty-five percent of contest participants rated messaging to friends through Facebook as most effective; 32 percent rated personal email to friends, family and colleagues as effective or most effective; and 25 percent rated email to an existing organizational donor base as effective or most effective.

Use of Distributed Networks: Social media enables on and offline grassroots activism, giving nonprofits the ability to coordinate large numbers of people across distributed networks. This type of grassroots activism can be enormously effective for contests or any type of cause-based movement.  Some like Atlas Corps recruited 150 ?Campaign Captains? before the contest started. Other organizations broke their efforts down into bite-size pieces for their volunteers by creating templates to use to send messages to their friends, post and comment on blogs, and create their own videos.

Additional assets included:
? Thankfulness: Many of the winners cited the importance of thanking
donors profusely throughout the contest.
? Transparency: Creating public spaces to share information about who is
doing what is also a very effective strategy.
? Videos: Most of the 2009 winners, including Conversational Case Study
subject Darius Goes West, made good use of videos to chronicle their
efforts.
? Storytelling: The ability to tell stories to compel people to act in short,
funny and meaningful ways was an essential element of success.
? Calls to Action: From YouTube?s annotations program to requests to tell
five additional friends, strong campaigns included great calls-to-action,
blending social stories with hard marketing.

One of the greatest things the Case Foundation did this year (in my view) was to provide nonprofits with a lot of training on how to engage supporters online.  I participated - you can see my training and Beth’s here:

 

The end of the web as we know it - and what it means to us
13 Jul 2010 at 9:35pm

The technology thinker Steve Rubel today proclaimed the end of the web as we know it.

He identifies these trends, and I quote from this article:

1) The canvas. The iPad has been deemed by some a blank slate. When you use any mobile device, you’re really only able to do one thing at a time. This means that we become entirely engrossed in whatever we have on the screen. Companies will need to up the ante if they hope to keep users in their fold longer. Development costs will go up, and the economics of content and experiences will look more like Hollywood—where a few hits deliver enough profit to pay for the dogs—than Madison Avenue.

2) Content snacking. How often do you consume media meals—e.g. engage with a unit of media like a newspaper, magazine or film from start to finish in one sitting? My guess is that you do this less than you did 10 years ago. Content snacking rules today. Popular digital metrics, such as time spent, may soon be useless.

3) Infinite choice. It never ceases to amaze me what a single mobile device can hold. Every time I turn on my phone, my finger needs to decide what’s more important to me at that time—friends, work, entertainment, etc. Choice will scale, human attention is finite, and mobile devices put all of this in our pockets. Time is your competition.

He says to succeed, we must: appropriate the best tools rather than inventing them; create partnerships to cut through the noise; and focus on digestible sized content.

I agree with most of this, and here’s how I’d translate it for our sector and nonprofit marketing thinkers:

1.) Do not build anything yourself. Co-opt useful tools (like those from my employer, the nonprofit Network for Good), point to great content, join existing conversations on vibrant communities rather than building your own. Don’t try to create shiny tools that lure donors; go to where donors are online, using the tools everyone else already built.

2.) Stop thinking like the lone wolf. How can you join a movement with momentum? What partners can strengthen your case? In our sector, none of us have the resources to go it alone in the noisy online space. Getting and keeping attention has to mean corralling resources beyond our own.

3.) Get concise, pithy and to the point online. DO NOT put your offline content online - it won’t work. Read my advice on snackers here.

The bottom line? Your online strategy has to evolve all the time, because how we interact with technology changes constantly. Adapt or fail.

DO NOT MISS THIS: Free amazing webinar - Dan Ariely on: Are your donors irrat...
13 Jul 2010 at 9:14pm

As you know, I’ve been completely fascinated in recent months with behavioral economics and its relation to our work.  I wrote a paean to Dan Ariely, the dean of the field, in the Network for Good ebook, “Homer Simpson for Nonprofits: How People Really Think and What It Means to Your Cause - a Guide to Behavioral Economics for Nonprofit Leaders.”  Dan Ariely has had a tremendous influence on my thinking about marketing, fundraising and life.

So I’m thrilled to announce Dan Ariely himself is presenting a webinar for Network for Good next Tuesday. 

DO NOT MISS THIS.

Here’s what’s in store July 20th at 1 pm ET:

We all think our donors and constituents are rational, so that’s how we communicate with them.  But are they?  Is anyone? Join Dan Ariely, author of Predictably Irrational: The Hidden Forces That Shape Our Decisions (February 2008) and The Upside of Irrationality: The Unexpected Benefits of Defying Logic at Work and at Home (June 2010), as he walks us through the simple experiments he’s used to study how people actually act in the marketplace, as opposed to how they should or would perform if they were completely rational.

His experiments examine a wide range of daily behaviors such as buying (or not), saving (or not), ordering food in restaurants, pain management, procrastination, dishonesty, and decision making under different emotional states. These interesting, amusing, and informative experiments demonstrate profound ideas that fly in the face of common wisdom.
On this call, we’ll address:

? What are the motivations behind our donors’ actions?
? What does this mean for your organization when trying to engage with donors online and off?
? How can you use this knowledge to increase the impact of your organization’s communications?

Here?s the registration link.

Here is Dan’s amazing story, along with a quick overview of standard vs. behavioral economics.

 

Using Social Media To Accomplish More with Less - a FREE Nonprofit 911 Webinar
12 Jul 2010 at 11:34am

In their new book, The Networked Nonprofit: Connecting With Social Media To Drive Change, co-authors Beth Kanter and Allison Fine show nonprofits a new way of operating in our increasingly connected world: a networked approach enabled by social technologies, where connections are leveraged to increase impact in effective ways that drive change for the betterment of our society and planet.

Tomorrow, Beth Kanter will be joining Network for Good for a FREE Nonprofit 911 webinar to show how social media is catalyzing this shift away from “organization-centric” advocacy, governance and communications toward a “networked” approach.  She?ll walk call participants through how to analyze and understand their social networks, how to leverage those networks to maximize their returns, how to create a social culture to nurture these connections, and how and why organizations and the individuals who run them must value relationships as well as transactions.  She?ll also answer specific questions from webinar participants about how their organizations can maximize their returns from social media. 

We?ll also be giving away free copies of The Networked Nonprofit to call participants, so register today!

Failing wisely this fundraising season
8 Jul 2010 at 10:15pm

This is not a terribly original thought, but it’s certainly a critical one: failure is how we learn.

There are times when you will fail as a fundraiser.  You will fail as a marketer.  You will think you know your audience, you will be certain you know your message, and you will be wrong.

Your audiences aren’t necessarily rational, they aren’t necessarily consistent, and they aren’t necessarily predictable.

Welcome to the imperfection that we all exhibit - and face.

We’re just weeks away from fundraising season, and it’s so easy to go into it cowed and meek.  Worried about results, focused on what we might not get, and conservative in our approach. Why?  Because we fear failure.

The problem is, fear of failure becomes a self-fulfilling prophesy - it makes us fail and worse, it makes us fail foolishly.  It makes us safe and boring (not good), too focused on extracting value from donors instead of offering them the chance to make a difference (not good), and so focused on the downside of missed targets that we fail to embrace their gifts: what they teach us (also not good).  For example, if an email bombs - and you use an email campaign tool - at least you know what didn’t work and why.  That insight is gold.  Better to have a big failure that yields insights than an unimaginative campaign with crappy results that net no knowledge at all.

Listening to my seven-year-old screech her way through violin practice tonight - after crying that nothing was perfect the first go-round - and then screeching once again, with a few good notes and satisfaction in her own persistance, I was reminded the best we can do is press on, boldly test, critically examine, and reflectively learn. Look at missteps - if they happen - as useful guidance as to where the right path may lie. 

Iin the important months ahead, be brave in your outreach, boldly giving to your donors, and most of all, generous with yourself.  Don’t be fearful in your practice as a fundraiser - it will only lessen your results and limit your understanding.

Watch this and weigh in: Stunning storytelling or cartoonish composite?
3 Jul 2010 at 7:58pm

The nonprofit Nanhi Kali, which seeks to change the lives of impoverished girls, just launched an unusual campaign with a unique storytelling gambit: an animated character whose life path is determined by the donations the organization received.

You can check out the Girl Story campaign here. 

Says Nanhi Kali:

The story follows the path of a young girl named Tarla—a character based on a composite of real-life girls that Nanhi Kali has helped in the past. Tarla wants to go to school to better her life. Whether Tarla succeeds, however, is up to the viewer, as her story will progress only via audience donations unlocking new chapters.  Viewers who donate will receive updated emails on Tarla?s progress and journey. They will also receive a thank you email for their contribution from Tarla herself.  Should viewers choose not to donate, Tarla’s story ends there, in parallel circumstances to what happens to many girls in real life who don’t have the resources they need to succeed.

Here’s what I like about the campaign: It’s based in storytelling, it’s focused on impact and it encourages donor engagement.  We need more of all of those things in our sector.  Bonus points for the fact it’s also unusual.

Here’s what I’m not sure about: Tarla is an animated figure, not real, and I can’t really help her.  She’s a stand-in for other girls I might help, but her story lacks the immediacy of real people for me.  Fundraisers often use composites, but adding a cartoon on top of a composite and making the interaction game-like (donate to see more) seems to add further abstraction to the human impact of a gift.  I asked the organization and their creative firm (Strawberry Frog) about this fact, and Creative Director, Josh Greenspan said via email:

“We knew from the beginning that we wanted an animated story. We can only guess at the psychology behind it, but frequently, animated stories are viewed as more emotional than live action ones. Perhaps the issue becomes ?too real? when faced with a person in need, especially a child. That said our goal wasn?t to create an animated sob story. It was extremely important to us that Tarla be a strong and determined character. Yes, she?s seen crying in the film series, but she wants your donations, not your pity. Throughout the story Tarla defies social dogma, gender discrimination, disapproving parents and more. These are not the deeds of a pathetic young girl looking for a handout. We believe that the simple animation style and gritty filmic quality provides a compelling and honest feel, while not overshadowing a truly inspirational story.”

I’m not sure that a cartoon will elicit the reactions that a real person would, but the story is certainly compelling and donors have surprised me before.  So I asked about fundraising results - and was told it is too early to tell.

So, folks, what do you think?  Will this work?

UPDATE: I asked Jeff Brooks of Future Fundraising Now Blog his thoughts (because I put a LOT of stock in his take) and here’s what he said:

I’ll be surprised if this works.  The problem is, it’s NOT REAL.  You can sponsor a real child through any number of excellent child sponsorship organizations, and they’ll give you a real story of a real child whose life you helped transform.  Given that, why would a cartoon story be compelling?

The cartoon is not emotional.  The strongest thing it has is fake tears.  Where’s the real desolation of poverty and ignorance? Making it a cartoon just emphasizes the lack of reality here.

 

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