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More Brandraising

"Brandraising" author Sarah Durham outlines the best practices for sharing your organization's stories for best communications and fundraising at the 2010 Non-Profit PR & Marketing Forum.

Why we communicate:

1. Fundraising
2. Programming
3. Advocacy

BRANDRAISING is the intersection of these three areas. This blog post outlines the steps to work through a brandraising strategy.

Organizational Level:

To communicate effectively, communications needs to be a part of strategic planning. This conversation isn't about wordsmithing. It is about the idea behind these words.

Determine your ogranization's positioning (the differentiating factor for your organization), use interviews, surveys and other basic communication tools to get buy-in from staff, volunteers, donors and board members.

Determine your oganization's personality (the overall feeling you want people to have about your organization). Here are some questions to consider:

• If your organization had a mascot, what would it be?
• What type of vehicle would it be?
• What color
• Why?


Identity Level:

We develop three to five big ideas (big picture) that add up to the positioning statement from the "Organizational Level," above. These are your Key Messages.

From the key messages, you can create an elevator speech. This is a one to two-sentence statement that says in plain English what you do.

Here is also where you develop a logo.

Experiential Level:

Where people interact with your brand: Online, in print, on air, in person, mobile.

Your organization needs to determine who manages the work at this level, but every person from the CEO to a volunteer, should be thought of as a member of the communications department.

The end result:

The value of this process is that it makes it much easier to create materials and outside of the organization, everyone is hearing the same message.

Resources:

• Duck Call Blog - www.bigducknyc.com/blog
• "Positioning: a Battle for Your Mind" by Al Ries and Jack Trout
• "The Network NonProfit" by Beth Kantor
• www.facebook.com/bigduck

 

Marketing Freebies to TurbochargeYour Cause

Anand Pallegar and Amanda Eyer fro atLarge, Inc. review free tools to improve your on-line marketing initiatives.

Metrics/Analytics- studying the behavior of website visitors.

Don't guess about your marketing; know what causes a reaction. Was it a TV ad, print ad or social media outlet that drove someone to your website. Reviewing this will help you plan your operations better so that you're not spinning your wheels doing something that isn't effective.

The Tool: Google Analytics (GA) It's not about hits anymore. A hit occurs every time you load something on a page (five photos, plus one page = 6 hits). This is a misleading statistic and you should move away from it.

Pageviews is a much better metric, as is Sessions and Unique Visitors.

How to Plan for Analysis:

• Confirm Busines Goals (i.e. raise funds)
• Indentify and Align Site Goals to Business Goals (i.e. online donations)
• Establish accurate, key site metrics
• Identify Key Site Behaviors (i.e. filling out an information form or signing up for a meeting or subscribing to a newsletter)
• Assigns Values to Key Site Behaviors Broadcasting (i.e. $10 for an info form; $25 for newsletter subscriber) - GA will track this for you

Using the Right Words

Conversion - figuring out what actions you want people to take on your site and seeing that happen.

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) - getting more people to come to your website.

The Tool: Google AdWords is a free tool to measure what words to use in your copy for on-line advertising. You can search what words your competition is using in their on-line ads.

The Tool: Google Trends let's you look at how people are searching for key phrases on the web. You can sort by certain parts of the globe and by year. This also shows top web pages associated with the search terms or key phrases.

The Tool: Google Grants gives in-kind advertising to non-profits who advertise.

Attracting Attention

The most effective social media tool you can use is on-line video. The reason is simple: "We like moving pictures."

The Tool:On-line Video (YouTube)

So, to grab views, follow these rules:

• Brand your channel with your logo, design, elements and messaging.
• Use relevant and enticing video titles, tags and descriptions.
• Engage often through new video posts, send friend requests on YouTube, "like" their channels and "favorite" their videos.

Examples of effective YouTube Channels are Women for Women and Invisible People.

YouTube has a nonprofit programthat that offers free advertising, banners and on-line donation tools.

Additional Tools: Google for Non-Profits

 

Media Buying 101

From Rue Ann Porter, Media Director, Clarke Advertising & Public Relations:

To put together a paid media plan, I start with a workbook. One of the key components is understanding your media market and your competitors.

When you sit down to do you media plan, understand who is your key prospect.  Answer this in quantitative terms (sex, age group, income level, geography) and then define a persona for that demographic. Try to get outside of yourself and inside the mind of the person you're trying to reach. Also, how long of a campaign will you run? All of this will impact your media buy.

Then, work with your sales representative. They will be able to give you a wealth of information about the outlet's long-term plans and offer details about future opportunities, which may include unpaid sponsorship support.

Return on Investment (ROI) tracking requires up-front research and post-campaign analysis. There is not a magic formula for this other than tracking what you've done and seeing the concrete results and learning from those opportunities.

Design Guidelines for Advertising Creative

Four strong rules of thumb for ad creative from Jane Bennett of BeCreative:

Attention - draw attention to the ad

Interest - don't confuse the reader/viewer or overwhelm them

Desire - use copy to make your product something they want or want to be involved with

Action - what does the viewer do next? phone call, website, etc.?

You need all four of these elements to work to have a successful advertisement.

Getting Brandraising Inspired

What first drew you to working with your nonprofit? For most of us, it was akin to divine inspiration, and being moved by the mission. But then when we get into fundraising, we cross the divide from raising awareness and donations to becoming a communicator, which may not have been what we first expected.

Your brand is your visual identity and your messaging platforms.

Here are Sarah Durham's four tools to becoming a Nonprofit Superhero:

1. The Long VIew

It's time to get out of the trenches of your day-to-day operations. Keep abrest of what your peers in your market are doing: visit their websites, ask your donors about who they give to. Also, keep up with blogs and trade papers and try not think tactically, but strategically.

For example, don't just set up a twitter or facebook account for your organization. You need to understand how these tools are used and then tailor how your organization can best use them. Finally, with a long-view plan in place, address the tactical issues: who will maintain the account, how often will it be updated, etc.

2. Positioning and Personality

Positioning: the big differentiating idea you strive to own in the minds of your target audiences. So, what do people think of with your organization and does it match what you want them to think?

Personality: The overarching feeling people get from your brand. So, what is the one word that you want people to use to describe your organization?  For example, "fighting cruelty to animals" is a similar position for ASPCA, The Humane Society and PETA, but each has a different personality, such as "friendly," "grassroots," and "edgy," respectively.

3. Audience-centricity

Tell you audience what they get from interacting with you, not how great your organization is. You need to show donors, clients and policy makers how you fit into their world, not vice-versa.

When we speak to be people about or organizations, we need to remember that they don't understand the jargon, acronyms or even the problem that needs to be solved. "Please stop using acronyms!" Use your name to educate people about what you are and what you do.

4. Consistency

Don't get creative. Special appeals, event invitations, email campaigns, etc. don't need a special look. In fact, it may be more distracting and take away from your message with your audience. As a staff person it may feel dull, but it is working with your recipients.

About Sarah:

In 1994 Sarah escaped from the world of advertising, design and marketing worlds she'd grown up in and started Big Duck. While she'd learned a lot, it was time to put communications best practices to work for a better reason: to help nonprofits increase their visibility, raise money and move the needle on their missions. Sarah is the author of "Brandraising: How Nonprofits Raise Visibility and Money Through Smart Communications."