Nonprofit Marketing Tips

While most nonprofit organizations are strapped with doing a lot more with a lot less, among their greatest challenges is to stand out among other nonprofits vying for donors’ attention—and dollars.

In today’s digital age, there are a host of simple and inexpensive ways for nonprofits to stretch their budget, while optimizing marketing efforts to promote their brand, connect with donors, amplify fundraising efforts, and increase donations. 

An article from Forbes magazine offers five tips for nonprofits to reach donors:

1. Use social media. To reach donors, connect with them where they are—and Facebook, twitter and LinkedIn is where they reside. Post content and place ads on these channels and take advantage of analytics to ensure the best ROI.

2. Make your message clear. Transparency is important: Donors want to understand exactly how their money being spent and the impact it will have.

3. Use content. Content marketing is a powerful way to demonstrate to donors what you stand for and to make them passionate about your goals. Use video or link back to a landing page to gain more traction for your message.

4. Take SEO seriously. In order for donors to give money, they have to be able to find you online—so embed social media feeds, ads, blogs and key words to boost SEO.

5. Write a blog. This platform gives you the opportunity to share more about your cause and to tell your brand story.

Also popular among our nonprofit clients is the use of custom and turnkey digital apps. These apps can include a host of event or campaign-specific functions such as push notifications, GPS/map features, schedule of events, social media tags, response polling, video links, program updates—the list goes on.

As with any brand-promoting effort, the key to nonprofit marketing success is to use an integrated strategy that employs multiple channels as part of one seamless campaign that works as part of your overarching marketing strategy. HubSpot touts the SMART approach—Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Relevant, and Time-bound—a methodology that helps you establish achievable marketing goals. The link below offers a free download of their SMART planning template:

Download your free marketing goal-setting template here.

What is the most memorable non-profit marketing campaign that caught your attention? Chime in on our Shamrock Facebook page.

Ellen Moriarty

Will your brand survive the next social media blackout?

A few weeks ago, Facebook and Instagram experienced outages, leaving users frustrated—and brands in the dark. Unable to post content and connect with their customers, many businesses lost revenue.

So, what’s the lesson? The social media blackout is a great example of why integrated, multi-channel marketing is so important for brand success. Placing all your marketing eggs in one basket—or relying too heavily on one central media strategy—is risky.

A recent article in Entrepreneur magazine reinforces that point, “you can’t build the foundation of your business on someone else’s platform.” The author argues that brands must protect and maintain the assets that they control: their websites and mailing lists. (read the entire article via the link below)

https://www.entrepreneur.com/article/330200?utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=email

While I agree that your website is an owned marketing asset that’s central to maintaining consistent and reliable brand-driven connectivity with your audience, I’ll take that one step further: For your brand to survive and thrive in today’s digital marketing arena, you need to establish relationships with your customers—connections that are guided by an integrated, cross-channel marketing plan.

This strategic plan should be revisited and updated on a regular basis:

• Website. Ensure your website is primed for business: Your messaging should communicate who you are, what you do and the value you offer. Be clear and concise, using strong CTAs (call to action) that prompt action.
• Email marketing is essential to brand success (72% of consumers prefer email as their primary means of communicating with brands). Optimize this channel by updating/maintaining your mailing lists; and use drip campaigns to keep your brand front of mind. Test your emails and redeploy campaign elements as needed.  
• Product packaging. Review your current packaging: Does it provide an opportunity for customers to interact with your brand—either physically or electronically? Consider incorporating ways for users to consume your content or experience your brand using elements such as augmented reality or video.  
• Promotional and printed products. How are you making brand impressions with your audience? Use tangible touches—like promotional products or unique printed items—to make those connections. Brainstorm ways to incorporate these items into your marketing plan, as they have a longer shelf life than digital ads or social media posts.

Social media is like most technology: It’s great—until it doesn’t work. Of course, social media is important and essential in brand marketing. But always, balance is key. To ensure your brand weathers the next social media blip, have a diversified plan.

Good luck,

Tim Connor

Practice Self-care for Your Personal Brand: 4 Easy Steps

There’s a lot of buzz surrounding the importance self-care: the self-initiated effort to assess, and then take an active role in preserving or improving, one’s health. And why not? Being aware of what we need or lack, and then identifying how we can improve, can improve our quality of life.

That same self-reflective, recalibration practice can—and should—be implemented for your personal brand.

But where do you begin?  This article www.entrepreneur.com/article/277751

In Entrepreneur magazine cites four ways to tune up your brand (from Karen Tiber Leland’s book The Brand Mapping Strategy.) Here are Leland’s tips (summarized) from the article:

1. Brand Sound Bites. In today’s limited character world, the need for a succinct brand presentation is essential. This “brand at a glance” functions as a cheat sheet to deliver your brand’s bottom line quickly, efficiently and with maximum impact. It should include:

• Stats and specifics that demonstrate the competency and results of your brand.
• Trends. Demonstrate your brand’s relevance to what’s happening in the marketplace by sharing knowledge of leading trends in your field—and how you’re at the forefront.
• Hot tips. One or two timely and helpful pieces of advice can help establish the credibility of your brand. The tips don’t have to be world shattering, just useful.
• Points of view and informed insights. Brand thought and industry leaders have strong points of view about their areas of expertise and aren’t shy to share them.

2. Branded Biography. While your profile picture, logo or other visuals may make the first impression when a visitor lands on your website or social media, it’s your biography that often inspires them to dig deeper.

Poorly written “About” sections on your website, too-short summaries on LinkedIn, and sketchy bio sections on Twitter, Facebook and Pinterest can stop an inquiring employer or potential customer in their tracks. On the other hand, a well-written and branded biography can be a pathway to new opportunities.

3. Social Media Profiles. One advantage to having a well-branded bio is that it can function as the source document for creating social media profiles that give your site visitors an immediate feel for your brand.

Using the space provided to its greatest branding advantage is a factor you need to take advantage of. On LinkedIn, for example, the professional headline space (located just under your name) is prime personal-branding real estate. Too often people write only their job title and miss the opportunity to create a mini-narrative of their personal brand.

4. Content Creation. Your branded bio, social media profiles and brand sound bites may form the foundation for your brand, but the graduate-school level of cerebral connection is the content you create.

Four of the best content-creation tactics include: blogging, podcasting, videocasting and writing a book.

As marketers, we understand that our brand is always evolving, so there’s no time like the present to look at your brand profile and give it a refresh. My next priority is updating my LinkedIn profile. Which brand update will you tackle first? Join the conversation on our Facebook page.

Ellen Moriarty

Marketing Tips for Nonprofits

Nonprofit marketing requires a delicate balance. Often strapped with doing a lot more with a lot less, you still have to find a way to stand out among the other nonprofits vying for donors’ attention—and dollars.

As a nonprofit, your advantage is your story. By harnessing the power of that story and communicating with your audience in an effective and authentic way, you’re one step closer to converting those connections into brand advocates or even champions for your cause. Here are 10 marketing tips that can help you get there:

1. Make your message clear. Let people know who you are and what you stand for. Transparency is important: Donors want to understand exactly how their money being spent and the impact it will have.
2. Create content. Content marketing is a powerful way to demonstrate to donors what you stand for and to share your passion about your goals. Use a marketing automation platform to manage your outreach with greater efficiency.
3. Have a solid social media plan. To reach donors, you need to connect with them where they are—and facebook, twitter, Instagram and Snapchat is where they reside. Post regular content and place ads on these channels and take advantage of analytics to ensure the best ROI.
4. Use hashtags. You can create your own (both brand- and event/campaign-specific) and also use popular nonprofit hashtags to boost your visibility in searches: #charity, #DoGood and #volunteer are great options. 
5. Take SEO seriously. For donors to give money, they have to be able to find you online—so embed social media feeds, ads, blogs and key words to boost SEO.
6. Use video. Tools like Adobe Creative Cloud and Canva make it affordable to edit and create great video content. Then post on social platforms that allow you to livestream content; and embed clips in email campaigns, on your website, etc.
7. Write a blog. This platform gives you the opportunity to share more about your cause and to tell your brand story.
8. Engage social media influencers. According to TapInfluence, “influencer content on social media earns more than 8X the engagement rate of brand-direct content.” Connect with influencers who align with your cause for added visibility.
9. Forge partnerships. Reach out to other nonprofits, corporations and organizations that are in sync with your mission and your values for organic cross-promotion opportunities.
10. Use digital apps. Digital tech apps offer unique functionality ideal for events: push notifications, GPS/map features, schedule of events, social media tags, response polling, video links, program updates—the list goes on.

As with any brand-promoting effort, the key to nonprofit marketing success is to use an integrated strategy that employs multiple channels as part of one seamless campaign.

 

What is the most memorable non-profit marketing campaign that caught your attention? Chime in on our Facebook page.

 

Tim Connor

B2B Marketing 2018: 4 Hot Trends

Digital technology has changed the way we communicate. Whether scheduling a meeting or participating in a video conference, we can now manage those tasks using our digital devices—functionality that makes the everyday a lot easier. It follows then, that to be effective in B2B marketing, digital must be a central part of your approach.
  

A recent article in Entrepreneur magazine explains the shift to digital:

 

“While the traditional B2B model was about targeting the B2B buyers and purchasing managers, the reality is that today any B2B prospect employs younger managers who research online. Typically, millennials, they are digital savvy and they look up the vendor’s digital assets to develop a clear picture of the vendor’s offering.”

 

The article concludes that if you’re talking the researcher’s digital language—and making it easier for them to search and find your value proposition upfront—then you’ll rank higher on the consideration list of the B2B buyer, thus increasing your likelihood of making the sale.

 

For best results, take the time to ensure that your B2B marketing program is aligned with these digital trends:

  

Mobile. To demonstrate your value to potential customers, go to where the millennial researcher is always present: Mobile. (More than 42% of B2B prospects use a mobile device at some point during their mobile journey; and 57 percent of all internet traffic now comes from smartphones and tablets.) To provide a seamless user experience, your website must be responsive to digital: How quickly do your pages load? Are your videos in vertical format? Do they have subtitles? Test drive your site and adjust accordingly.

  

Social Media. Traditionally, social media was considered a lead generation tool for B2C marketing, but more B2B marketers are using these channels to target and communicate with potential prospects. 

 

• 53% of B2B prospects say that social media played a role in their buying decision.
• LinkedIn, with its exploding use of video, is the emerging channel for B2B marketers.

Review your social media plan and identify opportunities for new customer interaction. 

 

Content Marketing & Personalization. As part of a smart content marketing strategy fueled by data, you can ensure you’re delivering the right message at the right time to the right audience. After segmenting your email list, further segment your contacts with demographic data, customer lifecycle positioning, lead nurturing and trigger-based messaging.

 

 

Video. Interactive formats, like video, account for half of all mobile traffic—be sure to incorporate video into your digital presence—on your website, in blogs, on your LinkedIn page, etc. These statistics from Hubspot (April 2018) reinforce the power of video in marketing:

 

• 97% of marketers say video has helped increase user understanding of their product or service.
• 76% say it helped them increase sales.
• 80% of marketers say video has increased dwell time on their website.

At Shamrock, we continue to review our B2B marketing practices and recalibrate based on new trends—and digital is one of them. Our big push is in incorporating more video. What’s yours?

 

Ellen Moriarty

Video Marketing Trends You Need to Know

It’s no surprise that in today’s mobile world, incorporating video in your marketing program is essential to making brand connections with your customers. MarketingProfs today released an infographic that sums up the state of video marketing, capturing the latest data about video and trends to watch in 2018. Here are a few highlights:

•    Video content earns 12 times more shares than text and images combined
•    Viewers retain 95% of a message when they see it in a video, as compared to only 10% when they read text
•    Live streaming video is gaining momentum: 82% of consumers polled preferred live video to static social media posts
•    Bite-sized video content and personalized video will be used more and more: 61% of customers prefer custom and individualized content
•    If you aren’t on Instagram already, consider jumping in: In 2017, 8 out of 10 users followed at
•    The new YouTube mobile sharing app will prompt marketers to create more engaging content

Click here to view infographic

least one business on their feed

The infographic below provides the entire video marketing forecast in format that is quick and easy to digest.

There’s no time like the present to evaluate and realign your marketing strategy to make sure you’re maximizing your efforts and your budget. If you’d like some creative ideas for ways to infuse your existing media outreach with video content, connect with me @emoriarty@shamrockcompanies.net.

Ellen Moriarty

Tips to Maximize Social Media During the Holidays

The holiday season is officially upon us: The ideal time to revisit your year-end social media strategy to make sure you’re taking advantage of every opportunity to make memorable brand connections with your audience. This article (reprinted in its entirety) from MarketingProfs Today is a good read that outlines seven tips for reviewing and recalibrating your social media effort during this most wonderful time of the year: 

Seven Ways to Maximize Social Media This Holiday Season
by Paul Herman  | 
November 21, 2017

It's a familiar feeling—retailers are breaking out the Christmas deals and decorations. It's time for the holidays, and that means busy times are ahead for advertisers and marketers launching new sales and promotions.

But, beyond that, advertisers and retailers have a huge opportunity on social media, with holiday campaigns on Twitter alone generating $6.67 for every $1 spent by advertisers last year.

Being prepared to conquer the holiday rush is a huge advantage, but some brands can easily fall behind before the holiday spirit even hits us. Stay ahead of the competition with the following seven key steps.

1. Define your holiday wish list
The first step for launching any successful ad campaign is to define a set of goals. Every holiday campaign should be built around these two simple questions: What actions do you want your customers/prospects to take, and how will your social strategy help?

Goals can be wide-ranging, from lead generation and driving sales, to boosting brand awareness among a specific target audience. Brands that want to generate leads might launch ads that invite customers to submit their emails in exchange for more content or company information. For the goal of increasing sales on a website, ads can be specially designed to include links to holiday catalogs or special offers.

When such goals are in place, being able to measure success or evaluate a campaign's performance is just as important. Key metrics for marketers looking to improve brand awareness may include social shares, likes, comments, and call-to-action clickthroughs.

Successful brands will set specific, measurable goals for improvement. If a retailer has 100,000 Twitter followers, perhaps its goal might be to increase that number to 120,000 by the end of the holiday season. Regardless of the goal, if it is measurable and clear, it gives the brand something to chase and an ultimate purpose for the campaign.

2. Know the people on your Nice list
Understanding the customer journey is crucial to optimizing a campaign. Brands should create a buyer persona for their key consumer base, outlining who the customers are, what matters to them, where they go to make purchase decisions, and who influences them. Being able to document where they spend their time online, which social channels they use most, and what they're reading or watching on those channels is a huge plus. Finding that crucial information is fairly easy to do, thanks to modern-day marketing tools and resources.

By better understanding an audience, marketers can figure out how to reach them, which is often the biggest hurdle in building a successful campaign. After all, content may be king for the holidays, but context is queen—and they work best in tandem.

3. Listen to your audience (not just sleigh bells)
Social media doesn't exist just to spread a brand message, it's also an important medium for listening. Through social listening, marketers can identify major trends and product keywords in their industries. For instance, knowing those keywords can help marketers identify which social platforms are more popular for a target audience. With that information, they can make smarter decisions about where to spend their money and which products or services to promote on each platform.

Once they have made that decision, retailers can use social to monitor the conversation about its product or services, or one of a competitor's. What are they happy about? What makes them frustrated? What types of things are they looking for? The more a marketer knows about his or her audience, the better and more effective a message will ultimately be.

4. Give the gift of relevance
When you're giving a present, you make sure that gift is a match for the recipient's likes or needs. In social advertising, adding geo-targeting to your campaigns is like that: It makes your ad more likely to be relevant. There are also opportunities to target users by age, gender and interests so that your message reaches the people who want to hear it.

For example, if a marketer is looking to target Facebook users age 18-35 who are interested in fashion, a campaign can easily do just that. Targeting not only provides a way to reach specific audiences but also makes the most out of crucial ad dollars.

5. Be a Secret Santa (but don't be creepy about it)
Shoppers take their time before buying a product and will often browse a bit before taking a break and returning to the website later on. That behavior makes remaining top of mind a huge challenge for brands, and it's where retargeting comes into play.

For example, Best Buy launches ads that ask customers whether they're ready to check out the items in their shopping cart. Even after people have made purchases, Best Buy shows ads with complementary products they might be interested in.

This method can be effective, but also has its limits. Marketers need to make sure messages naturally fit into the content consumers are already reading online.

6. Surprise and delight
Surprise-and-delight tactics are used to nurture a customer relationship through unique experiences that will stay with the customer long after the promotion has ended. These types of tactics are so unique that they're most likely to be shared—and what people share drives what people buy. Today, sharing is the new commerce.

For example, last year, during the holiday season, KLM Royal Dutch Airlines surprised and delighted customers in Amsterdam. Realizing that many holiday travelers spend their transfer time at the airport alone, KLM decided to surprise its customers with a "Bonding Buffet." Travelers sat down on stools around a KLM tower in the airport. Once the stools were filled, a literal buffet of food came down from the top of the tower:

That thoughtful gesture, which drove ample positive attention on social, highlighted the spirit of the holidays and brought travelers together for a uniquely memorable time at the airport.

7. Don't be afraid to start new holiday traditions
In the hectic world of social marketing during the holiday season, brands should not limit themselves to just one type of content. Customers can experience fatigue if they receive similar content from the same source; when the volume of messages rapidly increases during the holidays, that type of fatigue needs to be avoided.

One way to change it up is video ads. Often, videos work as an experiment for marketers, and there is no clear strategy or path to success. When that's the case, A/B-testing different options is a great approach to optimize a campaign based on audience response.

Video advertising on social is still a relatively new tactic, and it gives marketers a lot of creative room to develop out-of-the-box concepts.

Use social to make it a happy holiday season

There is no one way to use social media to grow a brand's holiday presence, but keeping these lucky seven approaches in mind can make all the difference between ending the year on a solid note and missing out on a huge opportunity.

Happy Holidays!

Kill It on Social Media with Video Marketing

The engaging power of video is captivating the social media stage. Live video (Facebook Live) and ephemeral (disappearing) content via Instagram Stories are two trends that are pushing video as an essential element of social media marketing. And with good reason—video makes powerful connections and starts a brand-centered conversation with your customers.

When it comes to quickly and effectively delivering a brand message, there is power in video marketing. According to data from Brightcove, social video generates 1,200% more shares than text and images combined; and video drives 157% increase in organic traffic from search engines.

Why is video important?
At Shamrock, we see video as an absolute essential for helping our clients tell their stories: Video provides instant brand gratification. And regardless of industry or budget, it’s a channel easily incorporated into your marketing program.

Above all, video is the trend in marketing: It is estimated that 80% of all internet traffic will be video by 2019. (Cisco)

How can you put video to work for your brand?
Creating original, compelling, relevant content that makes a brand connection with your audience—that’s the goal of video marketing. For a great example, click on the link below to watch the short video we posted on our Shamrock YouTube channel about the difference between Vector vs Raster files:

Click to view

There’s a lot of great ideas for videos: Roundup The Team—take a camera around the office and have people briefly speak about the latest product introduction or community service activity; focus on Live Customer Service—create a montage that captures customer service and support in action; develop a simple How-To video that shows a process or innovation; or answer customers’ FAQs.

If you’re at a loss for creative direction, click below to access a list of Video Marketing Ideas from MarketingProfs: 21 Video Marketing Ideas for Small-Business Budgets.

A recent study from Ascend2 found that the most effective video for converting sales leads include these topics:

• customer testimonials 
• demo videos
• explainer/tutorial videos 

What’s great about these video themes is that the scripts practically write themselves: Capturing a testimonial or demonstrating a product or service are stories that authentically speak to your brand and its benefit to your customers. In other words: You know your brand best, so use that information to tell your story through video.

And then share your best videos with us on Facebook—we’ll help continue the brand conversation.

All the best,
Tim Connor

Tips For Successful Event Marketing

A successful special event takes more than an engaging program and an open bar, it requires strategic marketing to drive attendance at, and create a buzz surrounding, the event experience.

Following is an essential event marketing checklist to keep the effort on track:

1. Why/Who? Consider these questions first: Why and to whom are you marketing your event? Is this an annual meeting? A women in leadership event? The answers will shape messaging and drive marketing decisions.
2. Survey. Send out a survey prior to the event—the responses will help shape content and can be used to generate ideas for session topics, speakers, etc.
3. Invitations. Start with a save-the-date (card or email) 8 weeks out; and 4 weeks prior, follow with an invitation that provides complete event details.
4. Content. Make it relevant to your audience. If it’s not, leave it out.
5. Email. Take advantage of your regular email campaign schedule and use that as a platform to promote your event.
6. Blog. Beginning four weeks prior to your event, blog weekly. Add videos to engage your audience: If you have footage from the previous year’s event, use that to drive interest and excitement; or create new video highlighting speakers, entertainment, venue, etc.
7. Homepage link. In all communication (email, blog, social channels) provide a link back to your event homepage where people can register.
8. Social media. Take advantage of all social media channels to market your event before, during and after. Facebook is the most popular social media choice leading up to and after an event, while Twitter holds the top spot during events. (Source: FreemanXP, Event Marketing Institute)
9. Track results. Check to see what’s working from the links in different channels (i.e., email, blog, Facebook). Redeploy as applicable.
10. Promo items. Consider your audience and put thought into choosing a useful and/or unique gift.

Prior to the event, I always meet with my team to help outline individual charges: During the event, who do you want to meet? What are you hoping to glean? What does that conversation look like? 

This is the event marketing framework that I’ve found to be most useful. Are there other items that you would add?  Connect with me msmith@shamrockcompanies.net.

Megan Smith

Megan has been with Shamrock for a year and a half and previously in advertising and Event Sales for 14 years.  She has a son who is a freshman in high school and plays baseball and hockey.  She loves Cleveland sports, plus is looking forward to attending the Masters next year.  Megan is the beloved “Kick-Ball Manager” here at Shamrock for our team that competes in Flashes of Hope to raise money for childhood cancer.  

Using Social Media to Increase Engagement in Higher Education

Know your audience: It’s the key to every successful marketing effort.  In the higher education  market, when a campaign is aimed at students, there is one essential link that connects with them above all others: Their cell phones.

A recent study from Baylor University found that female college students spend an average of 10 hours a day on their cell phones, while male students spend nearly eight hours. Most of that time is spent texting, followed by emailing, and checking social media feeds (in that order).

That data helped to formulate a targeted marketing solution for my client: a private university with 10,000 students. The university was looking for a new way to connect with students on campus, to foster a greater sense of school pride, tradition and community involvement.

We proposed an outreach program using social media as the main marketing channel to build those connections. And here’s why:
--It’s immediate. Social media campaigns centered around campus events, activities and performances spark interest and reaction in real time
--It’s transcendent. Social media feeds are effective in creating buzz before and after an event; and are shared with friends/family/community for a broader reach
--It’s engaging. These campaigns generate excitement about campus events that connect people as part of a shared experience—whether students are participants, are following an event feed, or are merely reacting to or sharing a post
--It’s personal. Students want to hear from other students—using students as the voice of the campaign creates a more compelling connection than does the message delivered by a third party

While our campus campaign is still in the planning stages, we do know that the most successful campaigns are those that start with strong, targeted messaging, and that use multiple channels to connect with the audience. When you consider that college students most often have their cell phones in hand, social media and email marketing are two fail-proof ways to make those connections. I’ll be sure to share the campaign results upon conclusion.

Which is the best channel for marketers to connect with you? Consider that question as you craft your next campaign.

Best of luck,

Tom Backus