Resolutions to Keep in 2007
5 resolutions for your nonprofit organization to keep and boost the effectiveness of your marketing efforts
By Tiffany Meyer, president, Numa Marketing
It's that time of year again. People start making those lofty new year's resolutions, the things we've been putting off doing to improve our health, have more fun, reduce stress, spend more time with the family.
How about adding a few new years resolutions for your nonprofit? We've compiled a list of suggestions here ... our top resolutions that nonprofits must meet in 2007 to get noticed. Read full story >>
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Learn the key elements of writing a results-driven marketing plan to boost brand awareness, increase revenue and market share, and ultimately better serve your target markets. Learn marketing plan format basics including setting measurable objectives, identifying target audiences, identifying your top selling points, integrating results-driven marketing strategies, and the importance of evaluation. Walk away ready to get started writing a marketing plan that makes every dollar count. All workshop participants receive our comprehensive handbook, Writing a Results Driven Marketing Plan, filled with worksheets, exercises and tools to walk you step-by-step to complete your marketing plan. Request Customized Pricing and Details
In this interactive session you’ll learn the essential steps to create print marketing pieces that get results. This non-computer or software-specific course is geared toward the non-graphic designer. We’ll cover some fundamental marketing copy writing skills, including purpose, target audience, style and call to action. And we’ll look at some design samples to introduce the concepts of composition, color palette, typography and style in graphic design. Walk away more prepared to strategically plan future designs on your own or with your graphic designer, and a checklist to improve existing collateral. Request Customized Pricing and Details
Ideal for nonprofit managers, community coalitions, public school administrators, outreach program volunteers, AmeriCorps members, and anyone else who works with the media to report both the good news and the bad. You'll learn how to work with the media, and will leave armed with the essential tools to catch reporter’s attention and maximize coverage of your story. Course combines lecture with hands-on activities in an interactive format. Request Customized Pricing and Details
Turn your valuable volunteers, board members, and coalition partners into powerful ambassadors for your brand. This workshop arms participants with the skills and key messages they need to advocate for your organization using consistent brand messages while following protocol to keep your executives happy. Your session fee includes the development of a customized Ambassador Toolkit for all workshop participants. The Toolkit is filled with tips, instructions, branding tools, and talking points to ensure consistent messaging and maximum return on your ambassador program. Request Customized Pricing and Details
The Intuit Financial Freedom Foundation, the philanthropic arm of Intuit — the makers of Turbo Tax— hired Numa in December to upgrade their online Tax Freedom Project promotion toolkit. The Project provides free online tax filing to eligible low-income taxpayers, helping them eliminate filing errors, and claim all eligible deductions. Through this program, Intuit has donated over 12 million returns since 1998. The upgraded promotion toolkit arms community organizations with easy-to-use marketing tools to help get the word out to their communities, customers and the media. In addition, Numa will create a comprehensive national marketing plan for the program, aimed at increasing partners and project users over the next year.
Numa launched its training and handbook design vertical in December with a new client, Sisters of St. Ann, based in British Columbia. Numa was hired to provide graphic design of a 250+ page comprehensive Nonviolent Communication Facilitator’s Handbook that codifies over 30 years of combined training expertise of Lucy Leu, Judy Morin and Raj Gil. The author’s have been nationally recognized for successfully bringing their conflict resolution and communication workshops into prisons throughout the country, and particularly for the substantial results the training has had in reducing conflicts, and dramatically reducing recidivism among returnees.
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.
Resolutions to keep in 2007, continued:
RESOLUTION #1: Make Your Web Copy Relevant
The importance of writing web content that is relevant to your target users (content that speaks specifically to what a group needs or wants) is nothing new. However, many nonprofits in particular struggle to create and integrate relevant — and succinct — copy into their site.
Take that marketing plan back off the shelf and review your organization’s target markets — who are the top 3 visitors you want coming to your site, and what do they want to see or read when they get there? Next, create market-specific content (copy, images, and/or interactive graphics) for each of your target markets. At a minimum, add this content to the top-tier pages of your website this year (those pages that have the highest number of hits such as your homepage). Even if you do nothing else to drive more traffic to your site, the visitors you DO receive will now be much more likely to connect with your organization.
RESOLUTION #2: Boost Our Online Social Savvy
Gone are the days when websites had the monopoly on online interactions. A revolution in online social networks has emerged that is changing the face of how individuals and organizations interact on the web. To stay competitive, nonprofits must stay up to speed on the latest tools of the web, and understand how these tools may (or may not) grab the attention of their target markets. This March, we’ll dig deeper into the myriad of social marketing options available today, and which can be particularly useful to the nonprofit.
RESOLUTION #3: Ask for Permission
As marketing guru Seth Godwin explains in his books “Permission Marketing,” and “The Purple Cow,” media-savvy consumers simply don’t want what they didn’t ask for. Gone are the days of email harvesting and seemingly cheap email campaigns to get the word out. In fact, most emarketing and enewsletter distribution vendors will not allow you to use their service unless you sign a waiver confirming you have permission to contact everyone on your list.
If you want to create a truly successful email marketing campaign, nonprofits must first ask permission to continue to communicate. Watch for our April issue to learn about the art (and science) of permission-based lead capture, tools you can easily integrate into your website so you can keep the conversation going and turn site visitors into valuable customers. In May, with e-News Know How, we’ll provide the steps you need to take now to create and distribute a relevant, content-rich, permission-based eNewsletter that gives you the results you’re looking for.
RESOLUTION #4: Target and Pitch
The search engine marketing industry has grown so fast that many of us are still reeling to catch up with the myriad of acronyms, terminology and strategies to position your site so the right people find it. And yet with the right positioning on the web (matched with relevant content and permission-based lead capture), nonprofits can cost-effectively boost their market share, revenue, fundraising opportunities, membership lists, and even amplify their success with national outreach campaigns.
Next month we’re speaking with search engine marketing expert Kent Lewis to get a handle on what nonprofits absolutely need to do to more successfully target and track the markets they want to reach on the web. Kent will help us understand the terminology and options, while also giving us valuable tips your organization can immediately integrate.
RESOLUTION #5: Track, Track, Track
Even with the wealth of tools available to track response on all of your electronic communications (website, email, enewsletters), many organizations simply are not prepared to do so.
In our May issue we’ll explore one of the most popular communication tools organizations are using today — the eNewsletter. We’ll provide expert tips to focus your eNews content to meet your marketing or PR objectives, to keep production cost-effective and efficient, and most importantly to easily track what content your recipients enjoyed most; critical information to shape your future issues.