NP Marketing News Feed

Thanks to the 154 nonprofits who completed our recent survey about what should go on the webinar schedule. Here are the top three webinars you selected.

1. How to Create, Reuse, and Manage All of Your Content

This webinar has been scheduled for Thursday, November 4. Registration will open late August.

2. Rethinking Your Newsletter Strategy

This webinar will be held Thursday, September 9. Registration will open in two weeks.

3. Starting and Growing Word-of-Mouth Campaigns

I’m looking for a good guest speaker for this one, but it will mostly take place in October. Stay tuned!

The following people, randomly selected, won an a la carte pass to the webinar of their choice. Thanks for helping me with the schedule!

• Becky Rocker, Jewish Family Service Association
• Lee Ann Kolker, EMQ FamiliesFirst
• Alicia Searfoss, National Relief Charities
• Jerry Borton, Joni and Friends Greater Philadelphia
• Felice Mancini, Mr. Holland’s Opus Foundation
• Hamidah Glasgow, The Center for Fine Art Photography
• Lauren Maul, Gateway Greening
• Jennifer Milburn, Kentucky Waterways Alliance
• Vicki Testerman, Volunteers of America of Minnesota
• Amanda Lopez, Center for Spirituality at Work

P.S. Here’s what’s coming up on the webinar schedule . . .

August 11: Anatomy of a Nonprofit Video – How To Plan, Produce, and Promote Your Next Video (Featuring Michael Hoffman of See3)

August 19: Using Metaphors and Themes to Get Your Messages Across

August 26: Using Photos Effectively: From Cool Composition to Rock the Stock (Featuring Claire Meyerhoff)

September 1: Funny Ha Ha! Using Humor in Nonprofit Communications (Featuring Kerri Karvetski of Company K Media)

September 8: How to Be an Effective Spokesperson for Your Nonprofit (Featuring Thom Clark of Community Media Workshop)

Want a quick consult with Kivi Leroux Miller? All-Access Pass Holders to Nonprofit Marketing Guide can now reserve 30 minutes on Kivi’s calendar for only $75. Fast, affordable way to get answers and advice. Get the Details.

1. Personal branding is about ego instead of reputation. Ego is a dirty word, which carries with it the notion of a misbehaved, arrogant, generally pompous individual. The truth is, we all have egos - but a good personal brand is all about reputation. When you have one, people know something about you before you walk in the door. Hardly anyone would argue that your reputation is important, but somehow the label of "personal brand" became disconnected from that.
2. Personal brands are only grown at the expense of corporate brands. A main point from the Forbes piece seemed to be that if Scott Monty was growing his personal brand, then he was not doing everything he could be doing for Ford. Yet when we look at successful sales people or executives who post record sales or perform well and move on to bigger and higher paying jobs ... generally they are not lambasted for building their own reputation while successfully contributing to the company they work for. Personal brands are the same.
3. Only certain types of individuals have personal brands. When it comes to discussions of personal branding, there are certain types of individuals that you might point to as having strong personal brands - when the truth is that we all have personal brands. In an age where our virtual identity extends beyond just who we are in person and also encapsulates our profile on LinkedIn or the networks we join on Facebook - each of us has a digital reputation and that equates to a personal brand. Already, this personal brand impacts how people are searching for jobs and is likely to extend further to more parts of business as well.

1. Many personal brands START egotistical. As I have shared in blog posts before, it is much easier to be egotistical than to be open online. In fact, the place where most people start when using social media tools is on the more egotistical side, just talking about themselves. It is not a sign of raging arrogance, but of initial naivety. When you are not used to "engaging" online, it is easier to just talk about yourself. Eventually, the good personal brands get past this and become something more robust.
2. High profile tension between personal brands and companies will continue. There have already been several stories of individuals who built a personal brand and had difficulty remaining in their corporate positions and this will continue. To attribute this only to a phenomena that happens for personal branding, however, would be a mistake. There are situations every day where people outgrow roles at companies and move one, for many reasons. Growing a personal brand will continue to be one of these reasons, but should not be singled out.
3. Personal branding matters because PEOPLE matter. I have been vocal for several years now about the premise that people make decisions to buy from a company or talk about it based on the personal relationship they have with individuals who work there as much as the association they have with the product. If you have every recommended a product that you didn't buy to someone who needed it, you know this well. Companies with personality succeed because they create a deep emotional connection with customers, and personality comes from individuals. If the faceless company is dying, as I believe it is in every industry, then more and more companies will need to hire people with strong personal brands and this tension between the individual and the company will be even more present in business.

The solution, in my opinion, is not to single out and vilify the people who are visibly working to balance personal brands with their employers', but instead to treat them as examples of a future in the business world that is rapidly approaching for us all.

*Disclaimer - Ford is a client of Ogilvy (my employer) and Scott is a personal friend of mine. This post was in no way solicited by either and represents only my honest opinion about personal branding.

Why Computers Don’t Matter Anymore

This content from: Duct Tape Marketing

An event occurred recently that was widely covered in financial and tech circles, but the significance of which may have been lost on most.

Apple’s market cap rose slightly above Microsoft’s, making it the largest tech company in the world. Now, market cap is based on current stock price and is a lousy measure of things to come and this is by no means a post about good and bad investments, but to me it marks a point in time that clearly points to the path we’re headed for the next decade or so.

Apple, on the verge of extinction in 1996, rose up with laptops, but then bet the farm on hand held devices and applications. Apple now makes the bulk of its revenue from iPods, iPhones and iTunes – in fact, it would be safe to suggest that Apple is not really a computer company. Apple built its store right next to the new freeway off ramp (the mobile freeway that is) and has benefited through this location dramatically.

As computers and even web browsers continue to lose significance by yielding ground to mobile devices and applications Apple is positioned to dominate for years to come. In the application world social networks like Facebook will continue to grow, cloud computing via applications will generate far more revenue than operating systems, software and hardware.

What all of this means is that Google must successfully nail a social strategy or even it’s mobile plays will cut into it search ad revenue. Microsoft may be in big trouble as it clings to shrinking government and enterprise installations too big to move elsewhere.

Small business can and should seize the opportunity to claim low cost operating efficiencies found in the cloud. Marketers must find effective ways to play in social networks. Resistance to mobile tactics such as location ads, text messaging, and mobile applications must erode as they become the preferred method of content and information consumption.

• Mobile Awareness Is Changing the Marketing Game
• Original iPhone Users Feel the Love Too
• Mobile friendly blogs the easy way
• The Changing Role of the Phone in Marketing
• Great Products Can’t Overcome Arrogance
• Powered by Contextual Related Posts

As I posted yesterday, this week I attended the Conexion Colombia nonprofit conference in Bogota.  A highlight was a panel of marketing experts from Oglivy (Coca-Cola’s agency here), Microsoft and Renault, who shared their marketing strategies - and their advice to nonprofits seeking partnerships with companies like theirs.  It was a goldmine of information.  Their advice spans borders - so I want to share it here.  Here are the key points, nonprofit marketing friends:

1. Great companies inspire - often more effectively than we do.

In listening to each presentation on these companies’ marketing strategies, I was struck by how skillful they were at spinning a marketing strategy that turns their products into intangibles like a better world, a life aspiration or a route to self-actualization.  Renault said, “We’re not here to sell cars, we’re here to build better lives and a greener planet.”  Their tagline: “Drive the change.”  Microsoft talked not about software but about “helping people develop to their maximum potential.”  Their Windows 7 strategy - which has been well-advertised—turned customers into evangelists by having many claim they helped create the product that makes them more productive.  Coke talked about instilling hope and optimism in people - a glass half-full ideal that is part of every single marketing message.

So, to summarize: A car company is about the environment we want for ourselves, a software company is about human potential and a soft drink company is about hope. 

Surely, folks, we can do better on the same fronts!  But we so often don’t.  We talk about our work in ways that are far less eloquent.  These companies make ads that bring tears to our eyes - and the average nonprofit appeal does not.  Let’s do better - and we do it through the next point…

2. Great marketing focuses on the person more than the product.

Each marketing strategy discussed dwelt almost exclusively on what it meant to the consumer - with little to no emphasis on the product itself.  Here’s where we go wrong - we too often talk about statistics and approaches and our organization rather than about human stories that convey our impact.  That’s like Renault talking about powertrains or Coke focusing on bubbles.  We must show what do we do for PEOPLE (or animals or trees), and for the donor.  Which brings me to the next point…

3. To break through, build a relationship with an audience around emotion.

That’s what all of these companies do well.  They don’t think of the transaction of buying their product.  They highlight the emotional benefits of the experience.  Nonprofit marketing folks: the lesson here is don’t think of the transaction of a donor giving you money.  Highlight the emotional impact and the lives changed. 

4.  To work with corporations, show you understand their needs and meet them.

The companies then discussed how and why and when they do cause-related marketing.  They gave VERY good advice to the nonprofits.  Just as they focus on understanding their marketplace and meeting its needs, nonprofits approaching them need to understand their marketplace - and the needs of the company.  Companies exist why?  To make a profit.  Nonprofits need to recognize this will never change - but it doesn’t mean that a company and nonprofit can’t work together.  If a company has a goal that is complementary to the nonprofit’s aims - and achieving that goal enhances their brand while making the world a better place—partnerships can be successful.  But you have to make that case to a company to get support. 

As Oglivy put it: “Link with our business agenda.  Don’t just ask for funds; Offer a program that provides mutual benefits.”

Here is their advice:

1. Make sure your mission is compatible with the company’s brand and aims.  This is essential.

2. Make sure you have a program that is sustainable.  A company may not be able to support it forever - but they want the social impact and good stories to last.

3. Frame what you do in a way that would be interesting to the company’s customers.

4. Show how your work matches the company’s brand, audience and business aims.

5. Propose a program that has real goals and steps - it shows you know your stuff and can have real impact.

6. As you work together, keep reinforcing the good results to maintain momentum in the partnership.

The last point is critical, because we’re in lean times.  The people in a company who support you must keep making an internal case as to why precious resources should go your way.  Help them keep the support going by continually reinforcing the mutual benefits.  If you have them, you have a better chance of keeping your funding. 

Ever wanted to find out where your donors and activists are hanging out on social networks so you can continue deepening your relationsips with your supporters and foster more two-way conversations? Thanks to Care2's new Social Network Tracker that allows you to match your email lists across major social networks it's now super easy to do.

The Care2 Social Network Tracker tells you which of your donors and activists are on social networks, what social networks they are on and how many friends they have in aggregate. 

You can use this data to identify the "super-connectors" on your list so that you can reach out to these individuals and:

• Find out if they are talking about your issue in their social networking community.
• Engage them in discussions and generate feedback.
• Cross promote your most important actions, volunteer, and donation opportunities. (Be strategic on this one - no one likes to be treated like an ATM machine).
• Give them helpful resources and answer questions they have about your issue or organization.
• Share campaign successes.

Here is the short list of the social media sites that are included:

• Facebook
• MySpace
• Twitter
• Flickr
• LinkedIn
• StumbleUpon
• LiveJournal

Match Rate:

The anticipated match rate for Social Network Tracker data append is 70% to 80%.  However, results may vary for your file.

As Frogloop discusses on this blog often, one of the keys in building a strong engagement and outreach proram is to connect with donors and activists across multiple channels. Social media is a key space to deepen those relationships. The Social Network Tracker is one tool that can help you quickly connect with your base.

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?

This article is an excerpt from the new book Top Dog Sales Secrets. Jeb Blount explains how use of the confirmation step, "with the exception of qualification, will have a greater impact on your closing ratio than any other in the sales process."

Why Is Simple So Hard

This content from: Duct Tape Marketing

The other I posed this somewhat trick laden question on Twitter – “Is making something easier to understand dumbing it down or smartening it up?” The answers I got were mixed. Some obviously saw that I was suggesting it’s actually harder to make some easy to understand. Others clearly felt that it somewhat of a disservice to try to make things that were complicated seem simple.

That, in a nutshell, is why simple is so hard. As any regular Twitter user will tell you, you have to work sometimes to get your point across in 140 characters, but the real demon is that we feel the need to make things sound more important than they are or to demonstrate in verbose ways how much, in fact, we know about something that others don’t. I can’t tell you how many times the editor of my book suggested that I needed to utilize use simpler language.

The problem with simple is that it actually takes more work. I often quote Mark Twain here – “I have made this letter longer than usual, only because I have not had time to make it shorter . . .”

The most successful companies I know have been able to boil down what they do, what they stand for, what they are trying to do, how they are unique, or the innovation that will rock your world into one succinct and memorable phrase, and that’s the magic. Earnest Hemingway is considered by many to be one of the greatest American writers of all time. It is widely known that one his most famous traits was the use of short sentences. I’ll defer to Copyblogger’s Ernest Hemingway’s Top 5 Tips for Writing Well to act as a resource for this idea.

When I was creating the Duct Tape Marketing system for my small business clients I started off with something that was far more dense than the 7 simple steps that exist today. The paring down was all done by my clients that wanted something simple and doable. That lesson is a central filter for everything I do, but it’s still a challenge.

Open your business up and ask yourself how you could land on one easy to understand and communicate thing that you stand for. One simple, single purpose for doing what you do. One audacious innovation that takes people’s breath away. Don’t complicate it, no matter how trivial it feels. Turn to a 6 year old and ask them what you do and pay close attention to the answer because it’s probably not draped in the mask of importance that we so seem to cling to. Simple has far more value than complex, try it on and see how it feels.

Image credit: redjar

• Sometimes Simple is Hard
• Simplify
• 80% of Your Advertising Will Be Wasted If You Make This
• A Shoe Shine Sales Strategy
• Two Questions That Matter Most
• Powered by Contextual Related Posts

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.

Your nonprofit could be a 2010 Getting Attention Nonprofit Tagline Award winner! But only if you enter your organizational, fundraising campaign, program/service and/or special event taglines by midnight tonight.

And, even if you don’t win this time round, all entrants will be invited to join me this fall in a game-changing webinar: How to Build Leadership Support for Critical Marketing Projects.

Take 3 minutes now to enter your nonprofit taglines today. Here’s more information on the tagline awards program.

You’ve been fantastically enthusiastic about this year’s award program. For those of you who have already entered, your organizational, fundraising, program and/or special event taglines are of astounding quality.

I thank you for your interest, and for spreading the word.

Let me also thank you for your contribution to strengthening the nonprofit communications field! All taglines entered will be integrated into the Getting Attention Nonprofit Tagline Database (will be online for the first time) and the updated 2010 Nonprofit Tagline Report.

Don’t miss this opportunity to enter. Today, until midnight,  is your last chance to enter your taglines.

All tagline entrants get a free copy of the report and access to the database when they are published in late fall! If you’d like a copy too, but you don’t want to enter your tagline, simply subscribe to the free Getting Attention e-update. That’ll ensure you’re on the list!

Enter your taglines today – or forever (till 2011) hold your peace!

Think Like An Editor

This content from: Duct Tape Marketing

I’m writing a series of posts over at Colourlovers for HP and what follows below is an excerpt from today’s post. I’m also doing some fun video interviews with real small business called Local Color.

So often content producers have no real plan. If they write a blog they simply decide that day what they plan to write. First off, this makes the writing process more difficult and makes repurposing much harder.

Effective reuse comes from planned reuse. The best tip I can give you is to sit down once a month or so and create an editorial calendar. This allows you to create some goals, but it also allows you to think big picture about what needs to be written to create a body of work that will have multiple uses.

You can always slip hot topics into your calendar on the fly, but you’ll find that if you do keyword research for your industry and use that list for topic focus, you’ll get far more bang for what you write and you won’t feel nearly as much pressure always trying to come up with topics.

Read the rest here

• links for 2007-07-07
• Color As Branding Element
• Reduce, reuse, recycle and repurpose
• Your Marketing Calendar A marketing to do list
• My Blogging Editorial Calendar Radar
• Powered by Contextual Related Posts

The show's premise itself is interesting, but what adds to the intrigue of the entire program is that they are pursuing a very smart strategy to let anyone take part in this social experiment by signing up for an online simulation of a global pandemic, that uses your own Facebook friends as characters in the "unfolding drama of the survival of humanity." This technique of using your real friends as the backdrop for a fictional experience created online is something that has been growing in use through efforts such as the popular "Elf Yourself" holiday greeting card campaigns last holiday season.

As this virtual experience around The Colony unfolds, it will be interesting to watch how it adds a real dimension to viewers of the show and (hopefully) synchronizes the experience so what is happening in your virtual version of The Colony mirrors what is happening in the show. The virtual experience so far has a combination of fake updates from your friend networks intermixed custom videos that seem to have been created to support the show from people like Cali Lewis. If this part of the social experiment works to engage viewers, we will likely see more networks and programs in the fall using this fictional virtual experience as a way to engage their most passionate fans. Assuming we all survive, of course.

Social media has exposed the gap between corporate claims and the customer’s experience. Virtual communities have given end users a voice unfiltered by management. The end result of this power shift is that end users have become more vocal and demanding about their experience.

Inspiration Is the Root of Commitment

This content from: Duct Tape Marketing

I’m going to continue another day or two on this idea of commitment. Forgive me if you find it tedious, but it’s a really big, really important topic and I think it will lead somewhere helpful – I started with the Evolution of Commitment and A Convenient Truth.

Getting people to commit to spending money with your firm, and perhaps equally as important commit to returning to spend money, commit to passing your message and telling your story, and commit to referring your products and services, has become more complex in this everything is free, information overload world we find ourselves in.

Today I want to explore another prime driver of commitment – Inspiration. While we will go out of our way for an experience that’s convenient, we will mortgage our assets for an experience that inspires. Inspiration is so thoroughly lacking in most of our daily lives that when we find it, be it in a person, innovation, or organization, we get committed to keeping it.

It would be very easy to cite a company like Apple as a great example of an organization that inspires loyalty and commitment, but that’s just too easy. I’d like to share a couple examples that to me feel more personal in nature.

Seth Godin in quite possibly the most popular marketing blogger and author of the day. His readers are committed to helping him succeed. When Seth mentioned my new book in a blog post about referrals, several hundred people ran out and bought the book. Mind you this was not a review, it was a one sentence mention. I read Seth’s books and I enjoy them. But, and I hope this doesn’t come off wrong, I don’t always implement new strategies and tactics I find in those books. What Seth’s books do, in fact what all of Seth’s 300 word or less blog posts do, is inspire me. I always come away feeling better for having taken the time to visit and that, I believe, is one of the secrets to the success of brand Seth.

Inside the Threadless Office – Image borrowed from Guy Kawasaki

Threadless makes t-shirts, but there’s nothing too inspiring about that. The thing is Threadless makes the coolest t-shirts in the coolest way. The designs, promotion and most likely a great deal of the marketing is done by the customers. The image above taken from inside their Chicago headquarters gives some feel for why the employees are inspired by working in a playground setting. Threadless inspires by taking advantage of the Internet’s two-way nature to involve customers in the process of creating their product. This innovation inspires profits, customers and competitors alike.

37Signals boasts over 5 million users to online services with a ton of competitors. The company’s customers are fanatical in their support because the software does just what it’s suppose to do and little more – that’s an inspiring idea. The company inspires through simple ideas and incredible design. People are drawn to the almost counter intuitive innovation that holds on dearly to simplicity. The organization lives these beliefs and has been profitable from day one.

• Useful is forever. Bells and whistles wear off, but usefulness never does. We build useful software.
• Our customers are our investors. They fund our daily operations by paying for our products. We answer to them, not outside investors or the stock market.
• Clarity is king. Buzzwords, lingo, and sensationalized marketing-speak have no place at 37signals.

If you or organization does nothing that inspires, no simple concept, no incredible design, no earth shattering experience, no commitment to an idea, no story that attracts – how will people commit?

• A Convenient Truth
• The Evolution of Commitment
• One of the most overlooked marketing tactics on the planet
• Seth Godin Is Getting Small
• 5 Ways to Make Culture a Marketing Strategy
• Powered by Contextual Related Posts

The CitizenGulf project was just unfolded last week. A national event on August 25 with would-be meet-ups throughout the country designed to create awareness for the Citizen Effect project, seeks to raise funds and awareness for fishing families. The effort also fits the nonprofit's citizen empowering philanthropy philosophy, which is identifying actionable problems and solutions amongst major problems, such as this one -- the Gulf of Mexico Oil Spill. How does one go from an oil spill to a national meet-up event? What strategies and tools will be deployed? Here's an inside look on how we scaled from a nonexistent program to a national effort in just three months.

Strategy Begins with Research

We began our effort with a very visible citizen reporting trip featuring Citizen Effect's Dan Morrison and May Yu, Jill Foster, and myself that informed our strategy. Specifically, though it raised awareness via successful CNN iReports, photos, video, podcasts, blog posts, and social network outreach, the effort provided critical insights:

• Defined the problem facing fishing families, an identifiable and actionable issue within the larger oil spill context. Stories were a critical component of social media to make any cause relatable.
• Indentified a local 501c3 (Catholic Charities of New Orleans) that has relationships with the fishing families as well as a possible solution, educating their children.
• Found local partners to work with, namely cause promoter Sloane Berrent and her existing network of national Gulf Coast supporters like Andy Sternberg via Gulf Coast Benefit

Like crime, procrastination doesn’t pay. Literally.

For many organizations nearly half of online fundraising revenue comes in during the month of December. But in actuality it takes months of preparation – building and stewarding an online community, inspiring donors, cultivating them, testing in advance of year-end and analyzing your metrics -- to really make the most of your year-end fundraising opportunities.

The good news is you’ve got several months – four to be exact – to get your fundraising house in order.  That’s why Eric Rardin and I co-wrote this Overachiever’s Guide and presented a Care2 webinar on this very topic last Thursday – so we could share nine steps you can implement now to help you raise more money in December.

For instance:

Your Mother gave you sage advice that holds doubly true with your donors: Always say your hellos and thank-yous.

While welcoming new donors and thanking them seems obvious, in my reviews across non-profit organizations, a majority do not welcome and thank their donors enough. And an un-thanked donor won’t be a donor for long.

• Does your auto responder donation thank you look like a tax receipt? If so, you are missing an opportunity to re-inspire a donor who just gave to you.
• Do you send your donors non-ask updates on your work including success stories they made possible? If not, you are missing a stewardship opportunity that is relatively cheap and easy to do online.
• When you get a large online gift do you ever pick up the phone or send a handwritten note to thank the donor? This is a huge opportunity to bond that high-dollar donor to your cause for the long run.
• When was the last time you made a gift to your organization? I highly recommend you find out first-hand how you are treating your donors in advance of year-end. What would you want to change about the experience? Most likely, your donors want to change that too.

For more tips for getting your thank on, download the Guide or view the webinar.

Subject:  Secretary of State Hillary Clinton Visits HealthRight in Vietnam

Healthright-nonprofit-marketing

This scrappy organization doing fantastic grassroots public health work worldwide had learned just a week prior that it had a fantastic marketing opportunity on its hands: Hillary Clinton had selected its Smile of the Sun center in Hanoi (a model for providing support and advocacy services for children and families living with HIV) as the stage for her signing of a five- year agreement with the Vietnamese government to fight HIV/AIDS.

Healthright’s executive director Mila Rosenthal (in photo in white shirt) is a close friend who happened to be visiting us a few days before Clinton’s visit. She couldn’t leave her  Blackberry alone for a minute – not like her – and when I asked why, she shared the news as she continued to work on visa issues.

Mila knew that:

1. Nothing’s more powerful than connecting your nonprofit with a major news event. Clinton had already done that. It was HRI’s job to make the most of it.
2. Clinton’s visit was the biggest media/marketing opportunity HRI had ever had, especially since her team had vetted many programs before selecting HRI’s program as the “set.”
3. This was a priceless moment for HRI to a) build awareness of its work and impact with existing supporters, and to b) engage many others as supporters, or at least pique their interest.
4. Mila better be there, on the scene, herself.

Despite visa delays, Mila did make the signing.  Then she and the HRI team capitalized on it. They:

1. Captured as many photos as possible, with Mila included when possible (the visual connection between Mila and Hillary is worth a million dollars).
2. Distributed two press releases, one each the day before and the day of the visit, including one featuring the photos.
3. Sent out this e-news immediately.
4. Featuring the story on the HealthRight’s homepage

The only additional suggestion I have for HealthRight is that they continue the story across online and offline channels, including the blog (nothing there yet on Clinton’s visit).

Remember that engagement is fleeting: Once your organization does engage a new or re-engage an existing audience, make sure to keep in close touch with related content (in this case, more about the trip, the center and HealthRight’s work in Vietnam and other countries.  It’s much harder to re-engage them, than to keep the conversation going.

Please share your stories – in the comments box – of connecting your organization’s work and impact with a major news story. Don’t forget to mention the results. Thanks!

P.S. Get more in-depth articles, case studies and guides to nonprofit marketing (and video) success — all featured in the twice-monthly Getting Attention e-update. Subscribe today.

A Convenient Truth

This content from: Duct Tape Marketing

Last week I wrote a post on a subject I’ve been fascinated with of late called the Evolution of Commitment. The general idea of the post was to suggest that with all of this free information and free versions of products available it’s become more challenging to get someone to commit to your offering. I asked readers to tell me what gets them to pull out their wallet and commit and several themes arose.

One word that came up time and time again was convenience. It does seem that people will spend their last dime to get something that makes life easier, more convenient, and that’s something marketers must factor into every aspect of their business. It’s not always the best product that wins. Often it’s a good product that is easy to find, easy to understand, and easy to acquire that wins.

We often get stuck running our business in a ways that are most convenient for us and not so much for the very people we need to attract – customers. Some of the greatest innovations available today reside in making something – a product, service or entire industry – more convenient.

Convenient business

Take a look at all of the ways a prospect could find you and contact you. Are your contact details on every page of your web site? Do you have outposts in places like Facebook? Are your local search engine profiles enhanced with useful information? Do you offer multiple forms of contact – email, web form, click to call, IM? Can prospects get additional information without having to pick up the phone?

Convenient products and services

Do you have versions of your products and services tailored to every size and budget? Do you have trial offerings? Do you offer automated training to help customers get the most from your offerings? Do you give access to your products and services in ways that prospects want them – smart phone, online, offline, iPad, iPod?

Convenient delivery

No matter what your product or service you can always find new ways to give customers the ability to acquire it on their own terms. This is an area where growing use of the mobile device is just begging for innovation. I’ve been offering my podcast free of charge for years. Recently, I created a iPhone app for the podcast that’s available for $2.99. While the same information is available for free, hundreds choose to download and pay for the app for the convenience of getting the content delivered the way they want it.

Convenient message

This is a tricky one. If it’s hard to understand what you do that’s unique, what you stand for, why I must have what you offer, there’s going to be convenience friction. One of the best innovations in this area lies in paring your message down to the simplest terms possible.

Consider this About Us message from software service provider 37 Signals as a fine example of a convenient message – “We believe most software is too complex. Too many features, too many promises. Instead, we build simpler web-based software with elegant interfaces and thoughtful features you’ll actually use.”

While I think most would consider this an obvious topic, it’s not always an easy one to put into practice. What a customer thinks is convenience may not be what we think it is. In fact, it’s often hard for customers to tell us what it is. You’ve got to experiment and constantly push everyone in your organization to consider innovation through convenience.

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