UnMarketing 101 — Release the Power of the Internet in One Hour a Day

Twit­ter just cel­e­brat­ed its sixth birth­day and now claims 140 mil­lion active users. Face­book has 845 mil­lion users. That’s lot of peo­ple shar­ing every­day hap­pen­ings with their friends. Con­trast a Face­book or Twit­ter user read­ing a friend’s post­ings with how you feel when called by a tele­mar­keter. One event is a wel­comed social exchange and the oth­er an inva­sion of pri­va­cy. Old style mar­ket­ing meth­ods (cold call­ing and unre­quest­ed emails) are being replaced by a new approach to donor rela­tion­ships referred to as Unmar­ket­ing, Inbound mar­ket­ing, or rela­tion­ship marketing.

The goal of this new approach is to reach exist­ing donors and as yet undis­cov­ered donors using blogs and social media in a pos­i­tive, non­in­va­sive way.  Think about it — we live in the age of the Nation­al Do Not Call List to avoid tele­mar­keters, spam fil­ters to zap unwant­ed e‑mails, ad block soft­ware for web browsers that vir­tu­al­ly elim­i­nate any adver­tise­ments on the Inter­net, and dig­i­tal video recorders that enable com­mer­cial free tele­vi­sion view­ing. How do you reach out to donor/advocates that make such an effort to avoid being bothered?

You do it with fresh, intrigu­ing, tar­get­ed con­tent aimed at your exist­ing donors and your as yet undis­cov­ered future advo­cates, as well. You do it by build­ing rela­tion­ships with your exist­ing and future advo­cates using social media sites such as Twit­ter and Face­book. In addi­tion, you do it by using a tool­box of free soft­ware to make sure your con­tent is both effec­tive and dis­cov­er­able. Future blog entries will dis­cuss each of these steps in enough detail that you should be able to exper­i­ment with UnMar­ket­ing on your own. For now, let’s look at an overview of UnMar­ket­ing in action.

Fresh, Intriguing, Targeted Content

Inva­sive Mar­ket­ing (on your front porch): DING DONG. “Hi, we’re work­ing on a new dri­ve­way down the street and can offer you a spe­cial price if you’ll com­mit now.”

Rela­tion­ship Mar­ket­ing (post­ed on Face­book): “Mary, I thought you’d be inter­est­ed in this blog post on get­ting your kids to do their homework.”

The sec­ond exam­ple is an arti­cle rec­om­mend­ed by a friend of Mary’s and it con­tains intrigu­ing con­tent. She is going to read it and because it was post­ed on the web­site for David­son Acad­e­my (a pri­vate school in Nashville, Ten­nessee), Mary will vis­it their site will­ing­ly. Mary is the moth­er of three small chil­dren, there­fore the con­tent is tar­get­ed to her inter­ests. Vis­it David­son’s blog and you’ll dis­cov­er that new entries are post­ed about every two weeks… the con­tent is fresh.

Relationships on Twitter and Facebook

Inva­sive Mar­ket­ing (post­ed on Twit­ter): Tweet 1-“Our Gala is Novem­ber 22. Call for details.” Tweet 2-“New Clin­ic hours begin May 10th.” Tweet 3-“Jog for a Cause, sign up here.”

Rela­tion­ship Mar­ket­ing (post­ed on Twit­ter): Trans­la­tion for Twit­ter New­bies: This is the Twit­ter account for CASA of Travis Coun­ty, a Texas non­prof­it for Court Appoint­ed Spe­cial Advo­cates (for Children)

(The old­est entry is at the bot­tom… new­er entries are on top. Don’t wor­ry, you’ll under­stand Twit­terese in no time.)

The non­prof­it, CASA, con­grat­u­lates a donor who was rec­og­nized by anoth­er orga­ni­za­tion. Note — all of these entries are not about CASA. CASA is Tweet­ing about oth­er peo­ple and organizations.

Local mom, Aman­da Evans, thanks CASA for men­tion­ing her blog about her vol­un­teer work. These two mid­dle Tweets are a con­ver­sa­tion. Aman­da and CASA are com­mu­ni­cat­ing with one anoth­er. This is the begin­ning (or con­tin­u­a­tion) of a social media rela­tion­ship. It is more about peo­ple and less about CASA  (and that tells you some­thing about CASA.)

CASA com­ments on Aman­da’s thank you. (Note — I know I said  the newest Tweet is on the top, but with a dis­played con­ver­sa­tion, the order is reversed.  Go figure.)

CASA rec­og­nizes what Aman­da Evans is doing to help her com­mu­ni­ty and her family.

If you believe that your fol­low­ers would be inter­est­ed, it’s good to share anoth­er Twit­ter user’s Tweet  (called a retweet or RT) and to post an occa­sion­al one way item. But the pow­er here is in rela­tion­ships. If Aman­da has fol­low­ers on Face­book as well as Twit­ter, all of those friends were intro­duced to CASA as an orga­ni­za­tion that cares.

Next Up: “UnMarketing 101 (part 2) — The Toolbox and ‘An Hour a Day, Really?’ ”