Today’s Tips for NGOs & Small Businesses 033015

Attention-grabbing Headlines

As nonprofit and small business marketers, you are obviously tasked to distribute their organizations’ messages, services or products to as many people as possible. You’ve probably devoted a significant amount of time to the “what” of your message. You’ve written a solid message, re-written it, revised it, shared it prior to distribution and then returned to it again until you are convinced 101% that it is impeccable.

But will it be read?

Oftentimes, the effort that you as marketers spend in creating the proper message is wasted because too few people read what you’ve written. If your message has fallen on blind eyes, perhaps the problem could be with your headline. It could be too long or not long enough. Did it address the message or did it miss the point? Was it cute or flippant or was it dry and boring? Or did you omit including a headline or subject altogether?

A great headline gets your audience and stakeholders to stop, read and share your content.

According to content writing coach Heidi Cohen, “Every marketer is looking for ways to get his or her content noticed on social media. This is particularly important for small businesses that lack the budget to support every piece of content with advertising and other paid marketing tactics. To capture your audience’s time and attention, you need a strong headline. As David Ogilvy (advertising executive known as ‘The Father of Advertising’) famously said, “On average, only 1 out of 5 readers gets beyond your headline.”

Cohen pointed out the treacherous social media 90-9-1 participation principle:  90% will lurk, 9% will do something small (such as share) and 1% will create content or participate.

“Because you have such a brief opportunity to gain your audience’s attention, it’s important to have a strong headline that compels visitors to read and share your content,” Cohen observed.

All marketers must search for the strong headline and then capitalize on it by distributing it often as I have emphasized in previous blogs.

You can improve your headlines by heeding these tips:

1. Demonstrate value with numbers (dazzle the with numbers)

2. Find resources for inspiration (see what others have done)

3. Use your customers’ questions (listen to your supporters, customers, advocates, stakeholders)

4. Brainstorm potential headlines for options (ask for a colleague’s opinion)

Finally, don’t give away all of the message in the headline. Leave the gist of the message in the message.

Should Donor Communications be Personalized?

Should you abstain from the personal approach in writing to donors or other stakeholders? Should business communications be personalized?

Fundraising consultant Jay Love opines: “Personalized communication can result in revenue increases ranging from sublime to off-the-charts. But personalization takes a lot of time and effort, and not all organizations have the bandwidth. If you can’t personalize communications to everyone (which is obviously best), there are ways of segmenting out groups to focus on.”

Love suggests the following categories:

* As many as time allows

* All major donors (“major” as defined by the nonprofit)

* All repeat donors

* All first-time donors

* All donors giving above our average gift amount

* As much as our budget allows

However, new fundraisers may have a difficult time deciding who is who among contributors. The 2014 report from the Fundraising Effectiveness Project notes two criteria for helping you make a decision:

12% of the donors provide 88% of the funding

3% of the donors provide 76% of the funding

“So depending on your resources, one could easily argue for performing totally personalized communications on either that specific 3% or 12% and thereby impacting 76% or 88% of your funding.

If such personalized efforts are not already in place, the resulting impact could be dramatic. Either percentage is an excellent starting benchmark for nonprofits looking for a specific game plan to put into use.”

Interesting Statistics about Contacts

37% of nonprofits did not send an email within 30 days of sign up while 44% of nonprofits asked for a donation via email within 90 days of sign-up, according to Online Fundraising Scorecard.

Remember

Tweeting is like fishing. You wouldn’t drop one hook with a worm and hope for a catch.

Tweeting is like fishing. You need to cast and play the fish to catch a good one.

You need to tweet often and regularly to reach as many people as possible.

Contact me for more ideas and guidance.

For a global view of what NGOs are doing, please visit my Facebook page https://www.facebook.com/BoostingNGOOutreach

Today’s Tips for NGOs & Small Businesses 032315

I’ve been discussing with you the importance of developing and launching a social media strategy in order to reach out to your stakeholders and consumers. I hope that you’ve begun laying the groundwork for embarking on such a campaign.

Social media can provide you with instant feedback and reviews about your plans which, in turn, can be re-distributed to others. If you really want to make a good impression on targeted prospects, be ready to respond to tweets and other online mentions with the right information.

It is equally important to take note of activity – your activity – that could turn people away from you, your organization and company.

I came across a post by Anton Koekemoer, a digital marketing specialist, who made the following valid observations about what your nonprofit and small business shouldn’t do:

1. It’s about interaction, not automation. Make sure that what you are tweeting and posting creates a conversation among people and that you can interact directly with the people in your network.

2. Don’t shout, listen or it’s not about you. When you start marketing your business or nonprofit projects, remember that it’s not about you, it’s about addressing your targeted audience and stakeholders’ questions and needs. Listen to them and start marketing and promoting the things that they desire. If you do this your projects and business will be relevant and potential prospects will increase.

3. It is not always about Search Engine Optimization – the process of maximizing the number of visitors to a particular website by ensuring that the site appears high on the list of results returned by a search engine – or SEO. SEO is all about receiving where social media is all about giving. Before you can receive, you must give. It is a proven fact that people will listen or react to people that they trust, like and know. If the information, services or products that you provide has value to your listeners, the chances are very good that they will follow you.

4. Design is important because it is the visual presentation of your organization or business. Stakeholders and potential clients will leave immediately if they do not like the design of the website. Make sure that your design is reader friendly and that your targeted audience will find appealing.

5. You should avoid inviting people to a Facebook Group without asking their permission – it’s only polite. The creator of a Facebook Group has the ability to add friends to the group automatically. Facebook Groups are quite handy if you want to create a targeted forum that can take customer concerns off of your Facebook Business page. If you add people without their consent, the feedback you will get will most likely be negative.

6. You shouldn’t tweet direct messages. Your potential audience will not appreciated being bombarded with direct messages and mentions without information regarding your projects, services or products. Don’t ping people directly on a regular basis if they didn’t ask for direct contact. This is most likely one of the easiest ways to lose readers.

7. Start a blog but don’t slack off. Blogging, like tweeting, trains your audience. Once they know you are offering information they need, they’ll return. If it slacks off, they’ll learn not to return. A blog should be one of the central points of your overall social media marketing campaign. Blogs capture the attention of search engines. Blogs are easy to use and disseminate timely messages to the world as they occur. If you use a blog for your social media strategy, the best thing you can do would be to blog regularly and never slack off. If a customer visits your blog and discovers that it was only updated back in 2010, he or she might get the feeling that nothing new will appear for any time soon. You don’t have to blog every hour, but keep it current.

“Being social is the big keyword in social media marketing. You can be social in your activities online without broadcasting your sales pitch every time over the heads of your targeted audience. Build their trust first before you start selling and provide value first before you start marketing,” Koekemoer advised.

Social media, Twitter, Facebook and blogs are serious outreach tools that can help you build your reputation and organization. It should be used responsibly.

International Expansion

There may come a time when your NGO would like to expand overseas and establish an office or affiliate in a foreign country. There are a host of questions and issues that you’ll have to deal with beyond the customary visa, cultural, logistic, economic and administrative ones.

In today’s unstable geopolitical situation, you also have to contend with specific post-9/11 anti-terrorist laws. A good place to start having your questions and concerns answered is this website:

http://grantspace.org/tools/knowledge-base/Nonprofit-Management/Establishment/international-operations

Interesting Statistics

10% of charitable giving in the USA was earmarked for health organizations, according to Giving USA.

8.9% overall percentage increase in online funding during 2014 in US, according to Blackbaud 2014 Charitable Giving Report.

Contact me for more ideas and guidance.

For a global view of what NGOs are doing, please visit my Facebook page https://www.facebook.com/BoostingNGOOutreach

Today’s Tips for NGOs & Small Businesses 031315

A new study about fundraising conducted by Dunham+Company/Campbell Rinker published in a blog on miratelinc.com points out that fundraising appeals to all age groups equally.

According to the study, the percentage of donors aged 66 and above, who made a donation online in 2014 has doubled from 29% in 2010 to 59% last year – considered a remarkable increase in just four years no matter what sort of adoption rate one is trying to measure. In fact the report verifies that the current rate of 59% is virtually identical to the 60% figure for those aged 65 and below.

Fundraising experts who viewed the data concurred that the age of donors now has extremely little if any relationship to their likelihood of making an online donation to a nonprofit organization or NGO.

Rick Dunham, president and CEO of Dunham & Company, observed about the report: “The trend of older donors giving online has definitely accelerated in the last two years. From our perspective, charities must seriously consider that an older donor is now just as likely to hop on to their website to give as a younger donor. This means charities must do all they can to optimize their website for ease of use as well as streamline the giving process to better serve these older donors, as donors over 60 are a prime demographic for giving.”

An aging population that began using the Internet a decade and a half ago still uses it so consequently that demographic is still involved in all of the online activities that it once was.

Consider these facts:

1. The percentage of North Americans who are regularly online has increased from 62% to 88% over the last decade;

2. The percentage of all visits to websites from mobile devices has increased about seven-fold in five years from 5% to more than 35%;

3. The percentage of nonprofit funding donations online are growing at a rate of between three or four times the overall growth rate for the industry annually

4. The percentage of people who have ever made an online donation or mobile donation is growing by about 15 percent each year

Additionally, researchers note the growing mainstream acceptance, trust and use of the internet across all demographics. The point at which 50% of people in North America were “regularly online” occurred about 16 years ago, when you stop to consider that someone aged 50 at that time is now 66 and someone who was 60 is now 76 it’s easy to understand how such a rapid shift is taking place among the older demographic especially when coupled with the ease of use for newer websites, changing technologies and smartphone/mobile device use.

The Performance Imperative Campaign. I came across these interesting guidelines on a website by way of Guide Star USA and Leap of Reason. It deals with things that inspire great organizations to make great impact. High performance is defined as the ability to deliver over a prolonged period of time meaningful, measurable, and financially sustainable results for the people, stakeholders or causes that your organization is in existence to serve.

Among the tenets are:

1. Courageous, adaptive executive and board leadership;

2. Disciplined, people-focused management;

3. Well-designed and well-implemented programs and strategies;

4. Financial health and sustainability;

5. A culture that values learning;

6. Internal monitoring for continuous improvement;

7. External evaluation for mission effectiveness.

Is your organization capable of satisfying these points?

Twitter is a contemporary water cooler or cocktail lounge. A vibrant community where small businesses and nonprofits/NGOs find leads, promote projects, raise funds and congregate as thought leaders to discuss timely topics.

Interesting Statistics

3% of charitable giving in the USA was earmarked for environmental and animal organizations, according to Giving USA.

5.8% of charitable donations in the USA went to small nonprofits/NGOs, according to Blackbaud 2014 Charitable Giving Report, which also pointed out that 17.4% of overall giving in 2014 occurred in December.

Contact me for more ideas and guidance.

For a global view of what NGOs are doing, please visit my Facebook page https://www.facebook.com/BoostingNGOOutreach

Today’s Tips for NGOs & Small Businesses 030915

As an NGO or small business, you are compelled every day to convince someone to join your cause, donate funds or sample your product or service. Sometimes you succeed and sometimes you don’t. The numerous efforts are frustrating.

Charlotte Beers, former CEO of Ogilvy & Mather, observed: “Taking part in the adventure of persuading others, sweeping them up into an idea, an unexpected action or an unproven vision, is a wonderful experience. The ability to create excitement all around you is what leadership is about. Listen to the sound of leadership; it is you being eloquent, powerful, convincing, compelling and forceful. It is not for the faint of heart, but the outcome is inevitable if you care enough to ignite a spark, which will grow into a flame.

“Leading through persuasion is a form of communicating that must be learned. In fact, it has to be learned, for if you can’t persuade or convince others, you cannot lead. It helps to focus on the response you hope to evoke rather than just what you want to say as a way to counter your own reluctance to ask others to change. Of course, laying out the response you want is a central part of good communication, but in the goal of leading others, you are also always after one very specific response: ‘I never thought of it that way.’”

Repeat for yourselves Beers’ remark: “The outcome is inevitable if you care enough to ignite a spark, which will grow into a flame.”

To elicit an enthusiastic “I never thought of it that way” response, Beers encourages nonprofit activists and entrepreneurs to be prepared to express your own excitement, keenness, the leaps you’ve made from logic to an imaginative new proposition, the size of which is yet unknown.

She pointed out that you are not trying to sway people against their will but to present them an opportunity to see things anew, differently, from another angle: “To create change, to invent a new future, you have to be vulnerable, to show passion and belief in an unproven idea, and to risk failure by pursuing it. You, the initiator, have to find a delivery style that allows you to communicate your conviction in a compelling, inescapable way.”

Beers advises that you deflect skepticism, shake away reluctance to embrace a new idea, or break through indifference. In order of ascending artistry, her list of tools that leaders use to carry the flame, includes:

* Threats or consequences

* Passion, pathos

* Humor, wit

* Imperfection

* Surprise

* Wonder

“With every step you take to be clear about your own place at work and in every opportunity you seize to claim that place, you can become clear and communicate memorably and become more of a leader. Such clarity is surprising and often impressive. Speaking passionately from the very center of who you are is compelling, forceful, persuasive: that’s what leadership sounds like,” he said.

Everyone sends out numerous emails every day to people who know us and to unknown people. The subject line of your email is what will entice the addressee to read the email or overlook it. There are specific words, expressions or styles that you should use in the subject line to attract recipient – or to avoid.

Ryan Pinkham wrote: “Those less than ten-word phrases that can often make or break an email marketing campaign that took weeks to put together—aren’t they a joy to create?

“I wish I could tell you that somewhere out there is the perfect subject line, one that could send your open-rates skyrocketing and make opt-outs and spam reports ancient history, but I can’t. I can tell you, however, that creating almost perfect subject lines is possible and it starts with understanding certain truths about your readers—15 truths to be exact.”

1. People won’t act unless told to do so

2. People are skeptical of most emails

3. People do NOT like to have their time wasted

4. People respond to numbers

5. People are more likely to act when they feel a sense of urgency

6. People care more about the sender than the message

7. People hate being misled

8. People want things to be personal, just not too personal

9. People want you to share your expertise

10. PEOPLE DO NOT RESPOND TO CAPITAL LETTERS AND EXCLAMATION POINTS!!!!

11. People are starting to think much more “socially”

12. People don’t want to be left out of the conversation

13. People actually do like being teased

14. People have needs, questions, and concerns

15. People hate being sold to

These 15 truths are generally intended for recipients that you don’t know.

Interesting Statistics

16% of US charitable donations go to educational organizations; and 10% go to health organizations, according to Giving USA.

58.4% is the retention rate of multi-year donors, according to Reactivating Lapsed Donors, Target Analytics. So if you have a donor for a few years, chances are that you’ll keep him or her.

Contact me for more ideas and guidance.

For a global view of what NGOs are doing, please visit my Facebook page https://www.facebook.com/BoostingNGOOutreach

Today’s Tips for NGOs & Small Businesses 030415

Successful outreach, marketing and fundraising require knowledge of who you are approaching, your stakeholders, supporters, politicians, audience and customers. In previous blogs I’ve pointed out that even female and male donors must be approached differently for them to reply positively to your information or campaign. And it is incumbent upon you to know the differences.

If you ask, as many of you have asked me, where do I start, where do I look, what should I write, then you haven’t begun researching your stakeholders. Nothing wrong there. But you should remember that your first step can’t be fundraising. The first step is research, rock-solid research so that you know who you intend to reach and you are ready to outreach and spread the word about your organization.

Kyle Chowning, marketing strategist, wrote that to create a successful, comprehensive marketing strategy NGOs and small businesses must consider what he calls the “5 ‘Ps’ in your marketing mix: People

Product (project, goal, mission)

Price (reaction)

Place (location of project’s implementation)

Promotion (who to reach your stakeholders, audience, customers)

“Building a strong marketing strategy for your proposal or plan is important to winning new business regardless of what your product or service is. Taking the time to answer these questions will likely lead you to success,” Chowning wrote.

However, he cautioned, “Don’t do this: one of the biggest mistakes people make is guessing the answers to the marketing mix questions. As I mentioned, marketers pursue and use data to build rock-solid marketing strategies.”

Social Media 101—Conclusion

Conclusion of my discussion of the basics of launching your social media strategy. If you have already done so, don’t worry, treat this as a helpful review.

·         The first step to planning any addition to an organization should be setting goals. Before joining the social media world, your organization should have an understanding of its goals for:

The social media team at large,

Each social platform, and

Individual team members.

·         “The first thing we did was to define a purpose. What is the purpose of starting a community? Over the past two years, we’ve heard, ‘You’ve got to be in social! You’ve got to be in social!’ A lot of companies are doing that, but they don’t know why,” said Kailei Richardson, manager of strategy and social media expert at Point Roll.

·         Planning a strategy for each social platform was key for planning the role of the social media team. Study the mechanics of the platform before deciding all are good for you or one.

·         After an organization has defined what the social media team should be and who it should include, the next step is to survey available internal resources and allocate them appropriately. This includes employees, funds and equipment.

·         Create a social media policy. A social media policy is a great way to set your company’s expectations for social media use in writing for all to see — either internally or externally (or both). In most cases, it’s a legal and organizationally necessary to have a social media policy to set the tone for employees and the community.

·         The policy must also address your mission, projects, products, image, brand, stakeholders, audience and customers.

·         Communicate effectively across your organization. Just because a team is labeled the “social media team” doesn’t mean they have to exclusively use social media tools to communicate with each other and the rest of the community. Senior management must be included in the process.

·         Whatever you do, once you launch it, don’t belittle it as a passing adolescent fad. If you do, you will have wasted time and money. More ominously, you may fail and bring tarnish your organization’s image. If you treat it seriously as you would any phase of your organization’s work, you will be primed for success.

Social media can be helpful but we have to know why we want it and have a plan. Wanting it because everyone else has it is not enough and can be detrimental. With a plan, social media won't turn into a plaything. I also think that senior management should be prepared for it and familiar with the concepts and lexicon so you can hold your own during the discussion, launch and implementation. One tweet is not enough, you should join the conversation and invite others to join your conversation.

Hope this has been helpful.

Statistics

NGOs & nonprofits contributed to the US economy $887.3 billion or 5.4% of the GDP.

Small businesses share of GDP constitutes 46-48%.

Not bad for local entrepreneurship and grassroots initiatives.

Contact me for more ideas and guidance.

For a global view of what NGOs are doing, please visit my Facebook page https://www.facebook.com/BoostingNGOOutreach

Today’s Tips for NGOs & Small Businesses 030115

You’ve got mail! Actually, a lot of email.

According to The Radicatti Group Inc., more than 100 billion emails were sent and received in every day in the business world in 2013. This incredible number is expected to grow and reach more than 132.1 billion by 2017. On the consumer side, 82.4 billion personal emails were sent and received in 2013 and this total is expected to dip to 74.5 billion by 2017.

That is an astounding total: 182.4 billion emails per day or 2.13 million emails per second.

With this phenomenally large number of emails traversing back and forth in cyberspace, what should you do to ensure that your e-correspondence, outreach or fundraising campaign is read by its intended audience and not relegated to the spam or junk folder?

Jay Wilkinson, a digital marketing guru, noted: “In nonprofit email marketing, there’s not much worse than creating an engaging campaign, building a compelling message, and then ending up in someone’s junk folder. So how do you avoid that? You need to know what triggers spam filters. Here are three ways to get your messages delivered to someone’s inbox and stay out of their spam.”

* Don’t send attachments

* Watch your graphics

* Watch your words

“Some words associated with spam and they may land you in someone’s junk mail, particularly if used in the subject line. Risky words include free, prize, bonus, buy, purchase, promotion and deal. Also, watch your punctuations—exclamation marks are especially risky in subject lines, as are words in ALL CAPS. When you build your next email campaign, focus on delivering the right message to your audience, but be mindful of what sends the wrong message to spam filters. A great campaign that gets labeled as junk mail will be sadly ineffective,” Wilkinson recommended.

Be careful with your email and you’ll achieve winning results in your campaigns.

Social Media 101 – Part 2

Continuation of my return to the basics of launching your social media strategy. If you have already done so, don’t worry, treat this as a helpful review.

·         Take the slow and steady approach. Pick one or two communities, projects, products or industries that are important to you. Determine your key goals and define who will be responsible for keeping activity going day in and day out. This new marketing is far from free. If you are large enough, you may have to assign more than one person to handle this project. But senior management cannot stay apart from this ongoing assignment.

·         Don’t measure success by follower counts. Growing your community is important, but you should be focused on who’s engaging with you and at what levels. In the long run it’s more important to have a devoted enthusiastic community. Organic growth matters.

·         Social media doesn’t equal self-promotion. Two things are important: Need to show who is behind the company (or organization) and need to focus on customers and not the company or organization. Ideas, professionalism, knowledge, education and engagement are important.

·         Search across the web for people looking for similar help or ideas and then begin offering advice and information.

·         Learn from the experts. Just because something worked for one nonprofit or company doesn’t mean it’s going to work for your organization. You’ve got to learn from the work of others, while tailoring their experiences to your own particular needs, goals and customers.

·         Get help without relinquishing your identity. You, president, owner, EVP or GM, simply can’t be an expert in everything. Be in control of establishing the relationship with your community and create networks. Play a large role in defining the message and content for all our communications, as well as engage in every tweet and blog comment directly.

·         Since social media is still an evolving area in society and business, there aren’t any set steps for success. Social media requires and allows experimentation. Take time to experiment. While there are many suggestions and recommendations across the web, many of these pointers are specific to certain types of businesses or industries.

·         One area of social media that can be discussed with relative consensus, though, is how to define a social media team’s role in your organization. While there are varying paths that can be chosen, they all stem from the same considerations: the goal of social media, who should be involved, what the responsibilities include, and how the strategy should be implemented. Furthermore, it is important to note how the social media team will interact with the organization, company, stakeholders, customers and community at large.

To be continued in the next blog.

Statistics

72% of charitable donations in US come from individuals.

6% of charitable donations in US come from corporations.

15% of charitable donations in US come from foundations.

63% of donors want to know how money will be used.

Are you prepared to address these issues in your fundraising campaigns?

Contact me for more ideas and guidance.

For a global view of what NGOs are doing, please visit my Facebook page https://www.facebook.com/BoostingNGOOutreach