My Favorite Things
The nonprofit's must-have list for making your marketing or outreach "job" a bit easier in 2008
By Tiffany Meyer, president, Numa Marketing
Sure, it would be nice if I had a big, jazzy TV studio and with each drum role announcement of my favorite things you just knew you'd be flying home with your personal copy ... but hey, I'm not Oprah. Still, just in time for the holidays, I wanted to take a moment to share a few of my favorite web-based resources and handy-dandy tools that have made my job marketing nonprofits like yours a bit easier. Not to mention the fact that each of them are just plain cool.
Take a look — if you don't know about these resources already, my guess is you'll be a die-hard fan very soon. Read Full Article >
NOW AVAILABLE:
Writing a Results-Driven Marketing Plan
The Nonprofit's Guide to
Making Every Dollar Count
by Tiffany A. Meyer
Format: Paper
Size: 8x10, 192pp
List Price: $24.95
SEARCH INSIDE THE BOOK:
Table of Contents (PDF)
Introduction (PDF)
New Web Site Coming in January
Numa Marketing is excited to launch a newly-updated web site this January, equipped with even more nonprofit marketing resources than ever before.
Watch the next issue of The Smart Nonprofit for our new web site announcement.
New e-Book Coming Soon -
If you're like most nonprofits, your board members and long-term volunteers provide critical contact to your customers, funders, and elected officials. Why not make sure you leverage that contact to create positive public support for your organization? Very soon, the second edition of Numa's train-the-trainer toolkit, Turning Volunteers into Marketing Ambassadors will be available for purchase as an e-book. Watch The Smart Nonprofit for more details.
PRODUCT DESCRIPTION:
With this comprehensive, nonprofit-focused handbook you’ll give your marketing the direction, focus, and efficiency you need to maximize the smallest of budgets for optimum results. Each section uses narrative and worksheets to walk you step-by-step to position your organization, develop a simple, results-driven plan, obtain buy-in from administrators and board members, report your progress, and continually improve your program for maximum results.
WHAT PEOPLE ARE SAYING:
"The chapter on Getting Past the No-Budget Myth alone is worth the price of this book."
- Peg Giffles, NPower Seattle
“If you are like me, you’re an accidental marketer without the benefit of extensive marketing training. Writing a Results-Driven Marketing Plan is a very practical, hands-on guide that every overwhelmed nonprofit manager can use to build their marketing plan, and integrate it into every aspect of their organization.”
- Jono Smith, Senior Manager, Network for Good
“Writing a Results Driven Marketing Plan provides busy nonprofit staff with a veritable cookbook to create satisfying communications. The templates simplify (but not dumb down) the process for novice marketers. Those with more experience will find the book brimming with useful tools for working with committees.”
- Jeanne Kojis, Executive Director, Nonprofit Network
Located in the heart of beautiful Pacific Northwest, Numa Marketing is a purposely small firm serving the strategic marketing needs of nonprofit organizations and tribal communities throughout the country.
To us, smart marketing means making every dollar count because your stakeholders, voters and donors want to know you’ve invested wisely. It means a results-driven, strategic approach that maximizes every dollar and leverages volunteer and free resources wherever possible. And, it is exemplified by well-designed publications that garner measurable results and a minimal carbon footprint.
Visit our service page now to learn more about our affordable, strategic marketing services designed specifically for the nonprofit.
My Favorite Things, continued:
This was my most recent discovery — thanks to a colleague who introduced this tool just this past month. WuFoo is a web-based, extremely affordable survey tool that offers much more customization and easy-to-use survey reporting tools than others I've tried. Their basic plan is free, and you can use their tutorials to get up and running with a customer survey in a manner of minutes. Check this resource out at www.wufoo.com
#2 — Google Analytics
Thanks to a colleague, this year I discovered a free and extremely valuable resource for the non-techy to review web site analytics. I've found the Google Analytics site to be very user-friendly, and pretty easy to navigate. While the resource offers the potential to give you access to dozens of types of site visitor data, I usually pick my top 4-5 analytics to focus on, depending on the scope of the client's marketing plan and the objectives they are trying to achieve.
For those of you who do not analyze web site traffic yet, or have avoided it thinking it's either way too expensive or just too time-consuming to bother, I encourage you to check this resource out. You can create an account in minutes, and with just about 1-2 hours each quarter you can begin to make informed decisions about web site improvements, increasing conversion rates, or simply driving more of the "right" traffic to your site.
You can take a preview of Google Analytics or start setting up your free account at www.googleanalytics.com
This web-based tool ranks at the top of my "that's just cool" list this year. If you've ever struggled finding the best word for your marketing copy, or if you're working on naming a service, product, an event, or even your organization, the Visual Thesaurus is a great tool. Just type in a word like "peace" and it instantly creates a visual map of related words. Unlike a typical Thesaurus, the map shows the connections of the synonyms by physically branching them off.
There's no software to install for this service, as it's entirely web based, and works just as effectively on a PC as it does a Mac. Thinkmap offers a free 14-day trial, which is a great way to check out how the service works. An annual subscription is very affordable at just about $30 per year. Check it out at: www.visualthesaurus.com
I discovered RegOnline about two years ago, and am still impressed by the degree of customization, affordability, and efficiency it provides for those of us who manage events. Whether you put on public forums, workshops, or national conferences, this tool is likely to provide you with the administrative support you need so you can focus on the important stuff.
The pricetag for RegOnline varies depending on the size of your events, whether or not you already have a merchant account to accept credit card payments, etc. Typically you pay a per-registrant fee, which helps minimize the risk involved. I used the system for a workshop series I ran two years ago, and found the interface to be extremely efficient. The system walks you step-by-step to create a complete interface for taking registrations, processing event payments, automating email communications like receipts, reminders, tell-a-friend features, etc. Having worked with organizations in the past that have manually taken registrations and payments, and have had no system to automate event reminders, I can say from experience that this system saved me countless hours of administrative time, not to mention helping maximize attendance by means of the email reminders.
You site registration form can also be customized with your organization or event logo, and a color scheme the correlates with your marketing materials. Check it out at www.regonline.com
This resource is a definite must-have for every nonprofit on a budget. iStockPhoto is a web-based stock photography store where you can browse through literally tens of thousands of royalty-free photos, illustrations, video, and flash images. Unike some stock photo CDs and stores, here photos and illustration prices start at just $1 for low-resolution (great for web site or Powerpoint presentation use), to $15 for extra-large sized images used for large-scale designs.
Another great feature I like is the Designer Spotlight. In this section, you can browse through sampledesigns that customers have uploaded — allowing you to see the stock images they started with, and the finished designs. This is a great way to get you thinking outside of the box as you browse images.
Check out this resource at www.istockphoto.com