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Archive for the ‘Non-profit marketing’ Category

What matters in nonprofit marketing

Thursday, January 19, 2012 —

According to the Fenton/Globescan social good survey, the more nonprofit organizations engage with their constituents, the more likely they are to receive support. Although many of the findings were were commonly accepted best practices known to many nonprofits (engage with constituents on a personal level – connect your cause to how people live, work, and play), we found others to be quite interesting. Here are what I found to be the best takeaways from this comprehensive survey.

Engage through multiple channels. With the advent of social media, many organizations (both for-profit and not-for-profit) have turned to social media as a primary way to communicate. However, as our social media survey found, attracting audiences to social media sites is a HUGE challenge. The social good survey backs this up. Its results showed that the most effective way to break through to new audiences is through mainstream media, but that social media is critical for maintaining relationships.

Engage to build trust. Although less than half (41%) of the social good survey respondents claimed to understand how nonprofits are run and managed, 26 percent of people cite effective use of funds as their primary reason for giving. Another worrisome fact – less than half of the respondents think nonprofits effectively manage their funds. What to do? Educate your constituents! Explain how funds are used. Do it over and over again, not just once a year in your annual report. Talk about use of funds in monthly emails, post results to Facebook, and explain how decisions are made in your blog. People want to know your organization is well-managed.

We know nonprofit marketing presents special challenges not found in for-profit marketing. Check out this recent blog post and slideshare presentation on a talk we recently gave on this very subject. We hope it will give you some great ideas.

Other resources:
Details matter
Getting a fresh perspective

Christina Steder is the President of Clear Verve Marketing and works with clients to plan, create and execute marketing campaigns. Follow her on Twitter as @clearverve

Tags: customer experience, marketing, nonprofit, Public Relations, Social Media

When you give, you get!

Wednesday, December 7, 2011 —

Clear Verve Marketing was recently featured in a Profile in Philanthropy from BizTimes Milwaukee. These profiles, which appeared in the BizTimes Giving Guide, highlight the services of individuals in the Milwaukee area who have made significant contributions to the nonprofit community. Clear Verve, along with Catral Doyle creative and Welke Group, were highlighted for our Tri-Adathon work. You can view our profile, along with profiles of other generous individuals and some deserving nonprofits, online.

If you’re not familiar with Tri-Adathon, it’s a once a year opportunity for Milwaukee-area nonprofits to receive some really great pro-bono marketing work. Each year, we take applications from local organizations, select a number of projects to work on, and then shut down and complete these projects in a 24-hour work marathon. It’s exhausting and fun. It’s also given us the opportunity to meet some really great people and learn a lot about the many organizations that make our community a better place. The 2012 Tri-Adathon will be held in spring. Be sure to watch for our call for entries coming in March or April.

We don’t do Tri-Adathon specifically to get publicity, but it’s nice when that happens. Many thanks to our friend and client, Gary Ross from Community Health Charities of Wisconsin for nominating us. We’re looking forward to another successful creativity marathon this spring.

Here’s a video of our Tri-Adathon experience last year:

Christina Steder is the President of Clear Verve Marketing and works with clients to plan, create and execute marketing campaigns. Follow her on Twitter as @clearverve

Tags: Clear Verve, marketing, media relations, nonprofit, Public Relations, Tri-Adathon

A new social media planning tool

Monday, December 5, 2011 —

I recently spoke at an event for the Business Journal of Greater Milwaukee. The event, called Social Media for Nonprofits, featured Wayne Breitbarth, LinkedIn expert, and me; and although it was targeted at the nonprofit community in Milwaukee, much of what we spoke about can be useful to for-profit businesses.

My presentation focused on the results of our recent Social Media Survey of Nonprofits ( get the results here) , specifically what nonprofits value about social media, and the challenges nonprofits face in implementing social media tools for their organizations. Because the Business Journal was kind enough to ask me to speak at this event, I wanted to be sure to deliver some high quality content for them. The result of my prep for this event is a new tool we hope you’ll find useful in planning your social media strategy. We call it the Ongoing Social Media Strategy Wheel.

One of the biggest challenges faced by nonprofit is getting others involved in the effort, either from a participation standpoint or from an implementation standpoint. This is partially because most nonprofits (64%) do not have a social media policy guiding the people charged with implementing social media. If your organization doesn’t have a social media policy, be sure to download our template so you can fix this! A social media policy can help make it “safe” to build a team of people to get the work done, rather than relying on a single person (who often has other work to do).

The other challenge is finding time to plan a strategy. Although most of us would never think of spending advertising dollars without a plan or hiring a receptionist and not training that person on how to answer the phone, many people don’t think anything of just jumping into social media without a plan of action. We hope our new document, the Ongoing Social Media Strategy Wheel, helps address the planning issue. When we created it, we wanted to be sure we recognized the following things:

Most organizations are already using social media in some way. It would be stupid for me to lead you through the perfect planning process for people that are not yet involved in social media. That process won’t work if you’re already participating because you can’t stop and undo what you’ve already done just to make a plan.
Planning is not a one time activity. You have to constantly reassess where you are at, look for new ideas, and pay attention to what is going on in the world.
The world doesn’t stop while you plan. You can’t take a vacation from interacting with your social media contacts while you think. You have to think and act at the same time.

The ongoing social media strategy wheel attempts to show this by using continuous circles. The inner circle illustrates the planning and reflection activities that most people forget. These activities are conducted internally and aren’t seen by the public, but they are very important because performing these activities will increase the effectiveness of the woare the public sees. The outer circle illustrates the activities that most people see. Both wheels are rotating constantly and at the same time.

We hope that this new document will help you continuously refine your communications on social media.

If you want to see the rest of the presentation from the Social Media for Nonprofits event (the ideas work for for-profits too), you can view it here:

Social Media for Nonprofits

View more presentations from Clear Verve Marketing, LLC.

Christina Steder is the President of Clear Verve Marketing and works with clients to plan, create and execute marketing campaigns. Follow her on Twitter as @clearverve

Tags: Clear Verve, Communication, content marketing, Facebook, marketing, nonprofit, Public Relations, Social Media, Social Media Policy

The Importance of a Good Graphic (and Vice Versa)

Tuesday, September 13, 2011 —

I’m all for a good image or graphic. A good one can draw attention to pertinent data, make information easier to grasp, and/or add some fun and color. But I saw one the other day that reminded me we should all ask this very important question when combining data with an image: does this enhance the information I’m trying to share?

So here’s the image (you can click on it for a bigger version):

Here are the good things: pleasing to the eyes, easy to read, pop out colors to show the highest number in each data set, a simple font.

Here are the things I’m confused by:

What do the numbers mean (it doesn’t look like percentage or numbers of people)?
Why are most of the numbers so close to 100?
Why is the one image a female for something called “Unique U.S. Audience Composition Index to Social Networks and Blogs,” especially when females only “win” 103 to the males’ 96 … somethings.
Why is each piece of information pointing to a spot on the woman? (As a pal on Twitter so eloquently put it “The only thing I learned was that gender is all in your head and education comes from your pants.”)

Now, to be fair, I discovered a more “complete” graph in Nielson’s full report on page four:

So the image of a female makes a little more sense with this title. And sentences were added under each category like “She likely lives in New England” (I personally like this touch). But overall the graphic is still not doing much to enhance the information. And pointing to the woman’s random body parts is still nonsensical to me.

What do you think? Do you think the image adds to the information in any way simply because it’s not just text? What kinds of images do you do with your work?

Erica Gordon is a Marketing Associate at Clear Verve and also works part-time at a Milwaukee area nonprofit. Follow Erica on Twitter: @erica_g.

Tags: Communication, content marketing, customer experience, Graphic Design, marketing

Nonprofit Survey Results: The Challenges of Social Media

Thursday, August 18, 2011 —

Although we are still working on the ebook for our recent survey on social media use among Wisconsin nonprofits, we thought we could share some advance information about what we have learned.

Of our survey participants, 90 percent are using social media to promote their not for profit organization. Although the participating organizations plan to increase their use of social media in the future, they cited many obstacles to social media success. They are:
• Enough resources to keep the sites current
• A lack of expertise in the best ways to use the sites
• Ensuring content on the sites is consistent with the organization’s brand
• Difficulty with driving consumers to the sites

Many for-profit businesses suffer from the same challenges. There is so much online content that a social media presence is certainly not a case of, “If you build it, they will come.” However, there is some good news. The Pew Internet and American Life Project recently released a new study on the online habits of Americans. The study shows that email and search are the most common activities performed online. It also shows that wealthy and educated individuals are more likely to use the internet for search or email on a daily basis. These are the people that most nonprofits are targeting as potential donors. By combining SEO and email, nonprofits can drive people to their social media platforms where hopefully, an active online presence will be waiting for them to see. It takes time to build a community, but by combining various tactics, everything will work more successfully.

Christina Steder is the President of Clear Verve Marketing and works with clients to plan, create and execute marketing campaigns. Follow her on Twitter as @clearverve.

Tags: Communication, content mar, content marketing, email marketing, nonprofit, Social Media

The Life Well Laughed Project

Thursday, June 9, 2011 —

During the past six months, my health and wellness knowledge has gotten much keener as I try to become healthier by losing weight and exercising. So far it’s working – yeah! Through this journey I have discovered Laughing Cow cheese. Which I have to admit at first as a Wisconsin “cheese” gal I did not think I would like, but have since become a fan.

As I opened up the package the other day, I noticed this great cause marketing initiative they have been featuring called the Life Well Laughed Project.

The Life Well Laughed Project by Bel Brands USA is a great, simple idea. Bel Brands will donate $1.00 to support healthy initiatives at local participating Y and YMCA’s, up to $500,000, with a guaranteed minimum donation of $250,000. All you have to do is enter the UPC code of the package on the Bel Brands web site.

From a marketing perspective, here is my two cents on this effort- it’s a great product/cause marketing tie and have to commend Bel Brands for their efforts to help infuse a bit of fun into healthy living. The list of YMCA’s that benefit from this effort is amazing. However, when I went to the Life Well Laughed website to enter my code, I noticed the web design is very cool and the pop ups with words/sound effects are neat at first, but then really got annoying as I tried to enter my code. I ended up muting the sound effects.

Any company can easily add a cause marketing effort to their marketing plans. It is a great way to give back to your community and be socially aware, and it helps you stand out from competitors. There are so many great causes and organizations you can partner with so the possiblities are endless. If your business or organization hasn’t added a cause marketing segment to your marketing plan, consider the following points to start developing your cause marketing plan:

Evaluate causes that resonate with your organization and customers
Make sure you have a strong theme or message that is consistent with your organizational mission
Once you select your cause(s) have a firm commitment in writing about the goals/deliverables for your cause marketing campaign
Ensure your employees are aware of goals and expectations for your cause marketing efforts and involve them in decision making (e.g. have a committee/task force in organization that helps manage this process)
Share results with customers after your cause marketing initative is completed (e.g. we helped raise $1,000, etc.)

Susan Schoultz is Client Service Director at Clear Verve Marketing and works with clients to plan, create and execute marketing campaigns. Follow her on Twitter as @clearverve2.

Tags: cause marketing, Life Well Laughed

When Weaknesses Become a Strength

Thursday, May 12, 2011 —

Last week, after being tasked with creating a survey on SurveyMonkey, I discovered the company had rebranded since the last time I visited the site (which I admit, was probably about two years ago). It looked so much more professional! This discovery led me to an online search to find out what others thought about the new look and the reasons for the change. It was harder to find than I thought, but my search led me to find this Pixelonomics post, highlighting 30 logo redesigns of 2010.

And my eyes smiled.

It makes me ridiculously happy to look at before and after shots, and to learn more about why organizations make certain changes to logos, colors, shapes and font types.

One website that kept me inspired daily before I got bogged down with grad school was Brand New. Its purpose is to keep tabs on brand identity work and provide opinions on it, focusing mostly on identity design. It’s still around two years later (whew!) and back to being a definite part of my morning routine.

We all have weaknesses (well I like to think so): ice cream, old movies, jewelry, video games, coffee shops, etc. But when they positively impact your professional track, does it actually become a strength? What weaknesses do you have that inspire you in your professional life?

Erica Gordon is a Marketing Associate at Clear Verve and also works part-time at a Milwaukee area nonprofit. She recently received her Communication MA from Marquette University. Follow Erica on Twitter @erica_g.

Tags: branding, logos, marketing, nonprofit

Keeping up with the times

Tuesday, April 26, 2011 —

The other day I was working on a document and trying to save something when this box popped up:

Did you catch the word floppy? Because I laughed so hard when I saw this that I didn’t even care that Word lost data.

But it also got me thinking. Looking like you are up-to-date with technology and marketing trends means you need to have all the little things covered. I tend to think that Microsoft is keeping up with what they need to in order to stay competitive. So it was surprising to me that “floppy” was left in the mix, although I have to confess that this box did appear from 2003 Microsoft Word and not the most recent edition.

I only laughed at this blooper because, in my experience, Microsoft has been trustworthy and the mention of floppy did not seem to impact anything I was working on. There was at no point when the only option was to insert a floppy. So Microsoft will survive. But what if this was a detail that was overlooked by a company that had changed all its branding and missed a word on an important part of communication? Or if it was a company that switched to Twitter for most customer service continues to direct customers to an email that somebody doesn’t check often?

I hope this post serves as a friendly reminder to stay on top of communications and to remember the details!

Tags: branding, Communication, marketing, media relations, Public Relations, Social Media

What’s in that envelope?

Friday, April 1, 2011 —

About a week ago, I received a letter from a local nonprofit (who shall remain nameless). It was a charity I was familiar with, so I opened the envelope. Here’s what I saw:

Can you see what the problem is here? How about if I tell you that this mailing was supposed to be encouraging me to “save the date” for an upcoming event. Unfortunately, that’s not the first thing I read. The first thing I saw was that a corporate table costs $800.

My point is not to bash this wonderful charity. They do amazing work. It’s to illustrate the importance of providing good direction to volunteers (or staff people). Make sure they think about what you are trying to communicate when they are working. This mailing contained three pieces of paper. The one they wanted me to read first (to build up my desire to fork over $800 for a corporate table) was sandwiched between the table solicitation and a survey.

When you are marketing your business or charity, details matter. Remember, people judge things they don’t understand based upon the things they do understand.

Christina Steder is the President of Clear Verve Marketing and works with clients to plan, create and execute marketing campaigns. Follow her on Twitter as @clearverve.

Tags: Communication, content marketing, customer experience, Direct mail, marketing, nonprofit

Know Your Audience (Especially if You Accuse Them of Having Rosacea)

Thursday, March 24, 2011 —

I was recently mall-walking with a friend when we were approached by someone working at one of the center kiosks. Normally we would have walked right by, but we were just there to walk and he was offering us hand lotion. Hard to turn down, right?

After a successful hand scrub, hand lotion, and single fingernail shine, he looked at my face and asked, “So, what do you do for the Rosacea on your face?” It was blunt. It was a question. It was supposed to be engaging. But I was taken aback.

“Ummm I don’t have Rosacea.”

“Yes, you do.”

“No, I don’t.”

“Yes, your face is red. That’s Rosacea.”

Um, this is winter in Wisconsin. It was cold. The wind was blowing quite briskly. I hadn’t worn a jacket while walking from the car to the mall. I also hadn’t put foundation on that morning. So, yeah my face was reddish. But do you really need to point that out? We stopped to try your HAND products. Don’t point out things that you think need to be improved on the rest of me. And, in my opinion, he should have worked his way there differently if I DID have Rosacea. If he had asked questions like, “oh, do you do anything to calm the redness in your face?” I may have been more interested in what he was trying to sell me.

Would this back and forth have insulted you? I mean, I was (albeit amusedly) insulted enough to ignore everything he said after that point. As soon as he jumped from our hands to my face without us broaching the topic, I was done and tuned out while he went over pricing for all the products we tried, some of which were actually pretty awesome.

My friend, while being just as taken aback as I was, thought his ploy might work on some women. She said that a lot of women purchase a product after being insulted to a point of realizing they need to improve something about themselves in order to look better.

But if you are selling to people who are not like that, you can’t backtrack after an insult.

With all that being said, please take the time to know your audience. And if you are in a place where you are trying to sell a product face to red-face, please use care in how you ask questions that will eventually lead to a comment about your product.

Think I’m wrong? (Not about knowing your audience, that’s a given.) If you think an insult works, I’d love to hear about it. Or if you have your own story about a time when you were insulted enough to be turned off of a product, please share that also!

Tags: Communication, customer experience, marketing, Target Audience