Apr 27

UnMar­ket­ing 101 (part 2) — The Tool­box and ‘An Hour a Day, Really?’

Scarry Computer(I’ve asked sev­er­al non­prof­it CEOs for their com­ments on what I’ve writ­ten so far and I’m meet­ing some resis­tance. “This would require a major change in how we deal with our sup­port­ers,”  was a com­mon con­cern. I also heard, “This is a shoe­string oper­a­tion. Sure­ly you don’t think we have an extra hour in our day.” Actu­al­ly imple­ment­ing social media mar­ket­ing, to a great degree, is scal­able… and don’t call me Shirley (I could­n’t resist.) Anoth­er com­plaint was “It’s a lot of work with­out any assur­ance of a return.” This was the eas­i­est objec­tion to over­come because I’ve got the stud­ies that sup­port the claims and will point you to them in my next post. 

This post details how to begin to use tools to make your web site more effec­tive. This is the first step to releas­ing the pow­er of UnMar­ket­ing for your orga­ni­za­tion.  Sim­ply open­ing a Twit­ter account or cre­at­ing a Face­book page is rel­a­tive­ly easy. Choos­ing key­words and ana­lyz­ing web­site traf­fic requires some detailed work and calls for the mas­tery of sev­er­al soft­ware tools. How­ev­er if you’re going to put the effort into social media mar­ket­ing, you must able to eval­u­ate your results. That’s where the tool­box comes into play.)

Let me assume your orga­ni­za­tion has a web­site (If it does­n’t, that’s OK. Future posts will show you how to cre­ate a great look­ing site for less than $100.) But for now, here are some ques­tions about your site:

1. How many unique vis­i­tors viewed your site last month?

2. What pages did they visit?

3. What was the most pop­u­lar page to enter your site?

4. What was the aver­age time spent on each page?

5. What was your site’s most pop­u­lar exit page (the last page visited)?

6. How did vis­i­tors find your site?

7. If they found it using a search engine, what key words did they use?

8. If your site accepts dona­tions, what was the aver­age donation?

9. What are the key­words for each page on your site?

If you knew the answers to these ques­tions, then you are prob­a­bly using a sta­tis­tics or ana­lyt­ics pro­gram to mon­i­tor your site. If not, this is the first tool for your tool­box. I use Google Ana­lyt­ics. It’s free and mod­er­ate­ly easy to learn. You set up an account, include a short ID code on your site’s pages, and vis­it your GA account reg­u­lar­ly to find out who is vis­it­ing your site and how they are inter­act­ing with it.

The next pro­gram for your tool­box will help you choose the best key­words for your site. Key­words are the search terms peo­ple enter into a search engine when they are look­ing for your site (or when they are look­ing for infor­ma­tion that your site has to offer, even if they have nev­er heard of your orga­ni­za­tion.) The tool I use to choose key­words is the Google Key­words Tool. While you don’t need to open a free account, you can use the same free account that you use for Google Ana­lyt­ics. There is more work involved with choos­ing great key­words and I will offer sug­ges­tions in a future post. But for now, let me tell you about Lynda.com a great place to get train­ing on Google Ana­lyt­ics, choos­ing key­words, build­ing a Word­Press web­site and much more. (Dis­claimer — I am not affil­i­at­ed with or com­pen­sat­ed in any way by the com­pa­nies I rec­om­mend. I rec­om­mend them because I use them and like them. I will also report on prob­lems I’ve expe­ri­enced, if any.)

Lynda.com is a site that offers online train­ing on more than a 1000 soft­ware pack­ages. There are sev­er­al paid train­ing options avail­able and even a way to learn the mate­r­i­al for free. If your sched­ule per­mits, you can take all of cours­es I rec­om­mend dur­ing a 7 day free tri­al (can­cel after 6 days to be sure you won’t be charged.) Take the fol­low­ing cours­es to learn how to use the tools I’ve recommended:

    • Search Engine Opti­miza­tion Get­ting Start­ed (2010) (2 hours 20 minutes)
    • Google Ana­lyt­ics Essen­tial Train­ing (4 hours 54 minutes)

There are also good cours­es on Word­Press and site design and planning.

I have just rec­om­mend two cours­es that run over 7 hours and the key­word selec­tion process will take a few more hours. How can this be accom­plished in an hour a day (5 hours a week)? Easy. Take your time. Let’s look at a pro­posed week­ly sched­ule of effec­tive UnMar­ket­ing after three to six months of an hour a day of get­ting ready to use social media effec­tive­ly (set­ting up and using Google Ana­lyt­ics and devel­op­ing a great set of key­words for your site.)

    • Post­ing 10 to 15 Tweets a week — 1 Hour (first few will take longer)
    • Writ­ing one 500 to 700 word blog post a week — 2 Hours (two blog posts a week would be bet­ter, but give it time)
    • Face­book main­te­nance — 1 Hour (10 to 15 min­utes a day)
    • Research (for blog­ging and Twit­ter) — 1 Hour

Will this be worth 5 hours of your pre­cious time a week?  That’s the sub­ject of my next post.

 

Next Up: “UnMarketing in Action: Does it Really Work?’ ”

 

 

Apr 15

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

Release the Power of the InternetTwit­ter 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.)

Example of Relationships on Twitter

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?’ ”

Apr 02

Good Advice Before You Tinker: Choose Your Experts Well…

You Need A Video… and I am not an UnMar­ket­ing expert! I do have 45 years of video pro­duc­tion expe­ri­ence and over 35 years as a small busi­ness owner/manager/marketer (think con­cur­rent­ly… I’m old, but not that old.) My first expe­ri­ence as a non­prof­it vol­un­teer was in 1990. Over the last 22 years, I’ve pro­duced at least 100 videos for non­prof­its from Flori­da to North Car­oli­na to Cal­i­for­nia. As a vol­un­teer, I’ve been a non­prof­it Board Chair­man, graph­ic artist, and web design­er. How­ev­er, I did­n’t devel­op an inter­est in non­prof­it mar­ket­ing until 2010. That’s when I got seri­ous about help­ing Asheville Preg­nan­cy Sup­port Ser­vices and that expe­ri­ence is what led me to UnMarketing.

Asheville Preg­nan­cy Sup­port Ser­vices, APSS for short, is a non­prof­it that pro­vides com­pas­sion­ate care to women and men deal­ing with all the issues sur­round­ing an unplanned preg­nan­cy. As its CEO, Deb­o­rah Wood, recalls, “I got this call from Steve telling me I need­ed a video. I remem­ber think­ing, ‘I do?’  The first video he pro­duced for us told the sto­ry of a fam­i­ly from West­ern North Car­oli­na whose daugh­ter came to the Cen­ter for help. We played that at our fund-rais­ing Gala and I don’t believe there was a dry eye in the house.”

Reasons for Video

There are a num­ber of rea­sons I sug­gest­ed a video for the APSS Gala:

1. There is less pres­sure on the sto­ry­tellers. “If you make a mis­take, we’ll just start over.”
2. The flow and pace of the sto­ry are deter­mined in edit­ing. At a live event, you must get it right the first time.
3. Music and graph­ics can be added to enhance the experience.
4. The fin­ished prod­uct (with the per­mis­sion of the sto­ry­teller) can be used on the non­prof­it’s website.

Over the next sev­er­al years, I cre­at­ed a num­ber of videos for the annu­al Galas. Then, as I learned more about the orga­ni­za­tion, I con­clud­ed that their web pres­ence need­ed improve­ment. As with many oth­er Chris­t­ian non­prof­it ser­vice orga­ni­za­tions, APSS’s clients and donors had dif­fer­ent per­spec­tives. We set out to devel­op a site exclu­sive­ly for sup­port­ers and then rework the client site with an empha­sis on the clien­t’s point of view.

Because of Deb­o­rah Wood’s pas­sion for using vol­un­teers wher­ev­er pos­si­ble, I decid­ed to learn Word­Press and devel­op the new donor site myself. The Word­Press plat­form is flex­i­ble, pow­er­ful, easy to sup­port, and free. With the help of a tal­ent­ed vol­un­teer graph­ic design­er, the site was com­plet­ed as a total­ly vol­un­teer effort.

Cur­rent­ly I’m using Google Ana­lyt­ics to eval­u­ate how APSS donors are using the site so that we can improve its reach into the com­mu­ni­ty. This is the point where I began learn­ing about Inter­net mar­ket­ing (or more specif­i­cal­ly UnMarketing.)


Developing a New Base of Committed Advocates Using the Internet

As I became more involved with web­site con­tent cre­ation and using Google Ana­lyt­ics to eval­u­ate the effec­tive­ness of the con­tent, I began read­ing books about Inter­net mar­ket­ing. I stud­ied Twit­ter Pow­er 2.0, Inbound Mar­ket­ing, The Next Evo­lu­tion of Mar­ket­ing, and UnMar­ket­ing, to name a few. In addi­tion, I’ve dis­cov­ered a num­ber of web­sites and blogs that are devot­ed to both for prof­it and not for prof­it social media mar­ket­ing. Then I kept hear­ing from peo­ple I met at the fund-rais­ers, “I nev­er knew some­thing like this orga­ni­za­tion exist­ed.” Usu­al­ly these peo­ple said this while they mak­ing their first donation.

Could there be a large untapped group of future advo­cates just wait­ing to dis­cov­er your orga­ni­za­tion? Peo­ple who today don’t even know you exist? What if you devel­oped Inter­net con­tent that would both inter­est these future advo­cates and intro­duced them to your orga­ni­za­tion? If you did, you could use UnMar­ket­ing to devel­op an entire­ly new donor base… a base of peo­ple who today don’t even know you exist.

I think this is excit­ing. What do you think?

 

 Next Up: “UnMarketing 101 — Release the Power of the Internet in One Hour a Day”

Mar 19

Can UnMarketing Help My Christian Service Nonprofit?

So, Lord... How do you feel about UnMarketing?“UnMar­ket­ing? We don’t even have time for mar­ket­ing!” True, these are tough times. For many Chris­t­ian ser­vice non­prof­its the clients and oppor­tu­ni­ties keep com­ing even when the sup­port does­n’t. Might mar­ket­ing be a solu­tion? And just what is UnMarketing?

Actu­al­ly, some non­prof­its think mar­ket­ing is a neg­a­tive con­cept. “That’s for peo­ple with prod­ucts… peo­ple who track sales… and think about cus­tomer sat­is­fac­tion.” In fact, mar­ket­ing is con­cerned with “cre­at­ing, com­mu­ni­cat­ing, and deliv­er­ing val­ue to cus­tomers and for man­ag­ing cus­tomer rela­tion­ships.” As some­one who has been involved with non­prof­it orga­ni­za­tions for over 22 years, I won­der if there might be a ben­e­fit to think­ing of our donors as cus­tomers and our dona­tions as sales? Are we oblig­at­ed to ensure donor sat­is­fac­tion? What would our donors say was our prod­uct — not the prod­uct we deliv­er to our clients, but the one we deliv­er to the donors themselves?

And what about UnMar­ket­ing? That’s the title of a book by Scott Strat­ten… “UnMar­ket­ing: Stop Mar­ket­ing. Start Engag­ing.”  Scott and a host of oth­er mar­ket­ing gurus main­tain that there is a ben­e­fit to orga­ni­za­tions from online engage­ment with their cus­tomers (think donors) through devel­op­ing Inter­net con­tent (in blogs, social media, and video shar­ing sites.)

A recent report by Net­work for Good tends to sup­port the con­cept of UnMar­ket­ing for non­prof­its. They found that “char­i­ty web­sites with a brand­ed dona­tion page received more dona­tions (5x more!) and at high­er aver­age val­ues than those with a gener­ic dona­tion page.” I took a list of sites sug­gest­ed by Net­work for Good and found that 9 of the 10 sites they sug­gest­ed as exam­ples with brand­ed dona­tion pages were effec­tive­ly prac­tic­ing UnMar­ket­ing.  Does the brand­ed dona­tion page make the dif­fer­ence or is it the non­prof­it’s extra efforts at social engage­ment with their supporters?

Was my sur­vey con­clu­sive? No, but enough to make me want to try the con­cept with a few non­prof­its oper­at­ing in my area of inter­est and expe­ri­ence. There­fore, the pur­pose of this blog is to explore the prac­ti­cal appli­ca­tion of UnMar­ket­ing by Chris­t­ian ser­vice non­prof­it orga­ni­za­tions. Before we begin, here are a cou­ple of under­ly­ing premises:

 1. There is a path to devel­op­ing devot­ed fol­low­ers (I call them advo­cates.) The path involves intro­duc­tion, edu­ca­tion, iden­ti­fi­ca­tion, com­mit­ment, and advo­ca­cy. We will talk more about this process in a lat­er blog post.

 2. If a typ­i­cal small to mid­dle-sized non­prof­it is going to be suc­cess­ful at UnMar­ket­ing, it must be done on a shoe­string. Small to mid­dle-sized non­prof­its don’t have the time or bud­get to sup­port an expen­sive exper­i­ment. At the non­prof­it I’ll describe in my next post, our efforts to this point have all been done with volunteers.

 3. Final­ly, I’m look­ing for­ward to your feed­back in the com­ments sec­tion of these posts. I’m hop­ing that our con­ver­sa­tions here will help us to become more effec­tive UnMar­keters for our causes.

Next Up: “Good Advice Before You Tinker… Choose Your Experts Well…”