Problems with Your Nonprofit’s Message? Nancy Can Help

I’m so excited that Nancy Schwartz is our guest expert for our monthly coaching call next week! As you may know, Nancy recently completed a huge survey on nonprofit messaging and she has some interesting data to share about the nonprofit community feels about its messaging to supporters. Even better, she has some great advice for those of you struggling to come up with the right messages for your organization.

Nancy will speak for 10-15 minutes on the call and the rest of the time will be spent answering questions from our Pass *Plus* holders.  These monthly coaching calls are for Pass *Plus* holders only, which means that they are much more intimate than our usual webinars. We’ll do our very best to make sure everyone who wants to gets to speak to Nancy live during the hour.

To join us, get your Pass *Plus* now. We are running a “sweetheart” special this month, where I’ll buy you a copy of Sarah Durham’s new book, “Brandraising: How Nonprofits Raise Visibility and Money through Smart Communications.” It’s a great book, and Sarah is our guest expert for the March coaching call for Pass *Plus* members.

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The Making of “Do More Than Cross Your Fingers”

The American Red Cross wants every household to do three things: to build an emergency kit, to create a communication and evacuation plan, and to be informed about the disasters that are common in their communities. Fair enough, but how are they going to make it happen? By working the basics of a good marketing strategy: Defining their audience, creating a message that resonates with that audience, and delivering the message through channels their audience already trusts and uses.

Yesterday I spoke with Mark Ferguson, who manages the “Do More than Cross Your Fingers” campaign and other corporate partnerships for the American Red Cross. He shared some of the back story behind what you’ll see at www.redcross.org/domore, which officially launched yesterday.

Defining the Audience: Moms with Kids at Home

Mark says that historical research and experience shows that moms with kids under 18 living at home are especially receptive to messages about disaster preparedness. No surprise there — if anyone is going to care about the nest and the babies in it, it’s mom. But some recent research also shows that 82% of moms say they drive household purchases. So if you are trying to get a family to organize a disaster preparedness kit that will most likely require some purchases, reaching out to the people who decide what to buy makes sense.

Creating the Message: Testing the Campaign Slogan

But what do you say to a busy mom to get her to make this a priority?

Mark says that it was important for the Red Cross to come up with a message that spoke to moms but that also had broader appeal to the American public at large. Even if moms were the target, the message needed to be appropriate for a much wider audience as well.

It was also important, says Mark, for the message to start from where people are now and to help them move forward with their family disaster planning, regardless of how much they may have already done. Through their research, they knew that about 80% of families had taken one of the three key steps (getting a kit, making a plan, or staying informed) and this campaign was about moving them to take another.

To come up with the right message, the Red Cross hired the firm Catchword Branding which specializes in naming. They provided 1,000 possible slogans to the Red Cross, many of which were simple variations on one idea. Using a cross-functional team (marketing, development, disaster preparedness, field staff, etc.), the Red Cross whittled the list down to the best five. Those five were then tested through an online survey with Harris Interactive to find which one resonated best both with moms and with the public at large.

Of the five options, says Mark, one was in the form of a question and one played on the “heroes” theme that the Red Cross has used successfully before. Another one was deemed too snarky or too clever (survey respondents said it just didn’t sound like the Red Cross). The chosen theme, Do More Than Cross Your Fingers, stood out among the five with both moms and the public at large. “It was fresh,” says Mark, “but not in any way offensive.”

I think the message works for two reasons. First, it meets the stated goal of starting where most people really are, which is crossing our fingers. Second, it urges us to take action, to “Do More” and not so subtly points out that finger crossing is not really a valid approach, but without being pushy or preachy about it.

Delivering the Message: Going Where Moms Are and Using Voices They Trust

With a message in hand, the next decision was how to get it out to moms. “We know that moms are really active online,” says Mark, quoting a Nielsen survey this year that said that 20% of the active online population are moms aged 25-54 with at least one child living at home. Thus the campaign centers on redcross.org/domore and all of the other online and offline tactics will point back to that page.

The Red Cross also wanted to emphasize that each family is different and so what’s in their emergency kits should be different too. Thus one of the key components of the website is a game called Prepare 4 that helps you build your own personalized kit.

“One of the goals is to make disaster preparedness simple and interesting,” says Mark, “Not just a brochure or ho-hum shopping list. We wanted something interactive and friendly.” During the game, you answer questions that help you build a kit that’s customized for your family, right down to including something fun for the kids to do while the power is out. At the end of the game, your list of items in emailed to you so that you can go gather up the items from around your house and go shopping for what’s missing.

You can also share what you are including in your personal kit with others in the My Kit section, as spokesperson Jamie Lee Curtis has done on the site via video. The selection of Curtis as the spokesperson is another move that connects well with moms.

The Red Cross’s social media maven Wendy Harman has been reaching out to  Mommy Bloggers (one of the biggest forces within the blogosphere) who have blogged about disaster preparedness before. They are also pursuing coverage in traditional print magazines focused on women and parenting. Cause marketing partnerships with Clorox (a brand many moms use daily) and FedEx (many moms also run small businesses and FedEx is already reaching out to NASCAR moms with the preparedness message) round out the campaign channels. FedEx is distributing disaster preparedness brochures and Clorox is sponsoring a radio media tour.

Measuring Results

Mark says that the Red Cross will use its annual fall survey with Harris Interactive on how well prepared American households are for a disaster to help measure the effectiveness of the campaign, including a survey later this month. They’ll compare those figures to a baseline survey completed in August.

No matter how big or how small your nonprofit may be, going through these basic steps in creating your strategy is always a smart approach. Just like with disaster preparedness, you have to do more than cross your fingers with nonprofit marketing too!

Tags: Red Cross

More Goodies: Get Kivi's Nonprofit Marketing Tips E-Newsletter (2-3 times per month)

Freebie: How to Write a Great Elevator Pitch – The Recording

Did you miss this month’s free webinar on how to write a nonprofit elevator pitch? No worries – the recording is now available online and it’s free with registration.

During the webinar, I reveal my five favorite formulas for nonprofit elevator pitches and apply them to real nonprofits who participated in the webinar live, including Working Dogs for Conservation, Community Support Services, Forward Community Investments, and RISE-Resources for Indispensable Schools and Educators.

You’ll get access to the video recording (wmv), an audio-only mp3, and a pdf of the slides.

Check it out!

Tags: elevator pitch

More Goodies: Get Kivi's Nonprofit Marketing Tips E-Newsletter (2-3 times per month)

How to Write a Great Elevator Pitch – Free Webinar

Wake Forest University’s business school is holding its 10th Annual Elevator Competition soon. Teams of MBA students have to pitch their business plans to venture capitalist judges during a two-minute elevator ride. The finalists then get to make a 20-minute presentation on their business plans, with the winners getting cash and prizes.

I first mentioned this competition on my blog back in 2006 and I’m still waiting for a foundation to replicate this in the nonprofit world! Hint, hint, those of you with good connections at foundations that care about nonprofit marketing!

While we are waiting, it’s a good idea to get your elevator pitch in fine form. To help you do that, I’m hosting a free webinar on February 4, 2009.

During “How to Write a Great Nonprofit Elevator Pitch,” I’ll share a few different formulas for putting your little spiels together. Then we’ll create a few versions of a pitch for three different participants and everyone will get to vote on which versions they like best. You’ll get instructions on how to submit yours as one of the three examples after you register.

This webinar will be similar to the ones I host every week in the Nonprofit Marketing Guide webinar series, so this is your chance to test-drive a webinar for free. You do need to register in advance, however.

FYI, here are a few tips I originally published here on the blog in 2006:

Don’t just repeat your mission statement. Mission statements are often “pie in the sky” or full of buzzwords that don’t actually say what you do.

Tell us what you do and who you do it for. Donors want to know how their support makes a difference on the ground.

Share a quantitative result. How many people did you help last year? How many acres did you save? Whatever it is you measure, throw in a stat about your accomplishments.

Provide some perspective. Put your work in context, in one sentence. Why is what you do so important? What’s the scale of the problem?

Spell out the opportunity. Complete this sentence: “With some additional resources, we could . . . “

Tags: elevator pitch, elevator speech

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Let Nancy and Me Tag Team Your Taglines

Short and Sweet: Boiling Down Your Message So Everyone Gets It It’s This Week’s Webinar Wednesday, December 3, 2008 at 1:00 p.m. Eastern. Details and Registration Here

This Wednesday, Nancy Schwartz of GettingAttention.org and I will be helping several nonprofits revamp their taglines during our webinar, “Short and Sweet: Boiling Down Your Message So Everyone Gets It.” It’s on December 3, 2008 from 1:00 – 2:00 p.m. Eastern (10:00 a.m. Pacific). Join us and we may work on your tagline during the Q & A session!

During the first part of the webinar, Nancy will share some great lessons she learned from analyzing thousands of nonprofit taglines earlier this year. Then I’ll talk about other places where you have fewer than 10 words to get your message across, including e-newsletter subject lines and press release headlines.

With today’s shorter attention spans and smaller spaces for your communications (how many people are reading your group’s emails on a PDA or phone?), you need to learn how to get your message out there in words that are both brief and powerful.

Come learn how with Nancy and me on Wednesday. Registration is just $35 and includes everyone in your office who can fit around one computer screen. Get the details and register.

More Goodies: Get Kivi's Nonprofit Marketing Tips E-Newsletter (2-3 times per month)

Who’s Your Target Audience? Please Not the General Public!

Who is Your Nonprofit’s Target Audience? Figure it out during Thursday’s webinar: Forget the General Public! How to Define and Reach Your Target Audience Photo by practicalowl on Flickr

We chant it together in my in-person nonprofit marketing trainings: “There is no such thing as the general public. There is no such thing as the general public.”

If you are spending time and money trying to reach the general public with your nonprofit’s message, you are wasting it. All of it. OK, maybe just 95% of it. But don’t you want to do better than 5% success?

I’ll show you how to define, research, and yes, target, the people who matter most to your organization’s success during this week’s webinar:

Forget the General Public! How to Define and Reach Your Target Audience

Thursday, October 23, 2008
1:00-2:00 pm Eastern (10:00-11:00 am Pacific)

$35 per connection (everyone squeezing around the speakerphone and computer monitor is fine with me)

I’ll walk you through several examples and give you plenty of tips and resources during the webinar, but if you can’t make it, here is a quick-and-dirty approach that’s far better than going for the “general public.”

Think about the change you are trying to bring about through your work. Then visualize someone taking an action that helps you bring about that change. What does that person in your mind’s eye look like? Where are they? Who are they with?

Now try to think about demographic characteristics that could help define who this person is, such as gender, age, ethnicity, income level, education, employment, hobbies, family status, religion, affiliations, and geographic location. Where would this person get information? How would she spend her free time? How would he spend his disposable income?

Now think about some of the values that would be important to this person. Values can include everything from time, money, sleep and convenience to adventure, power, status, fun, and more. Add those values to your demographic description.

Next, you need to match your message (what you are trying to communicate and the action you want someone to take) to those values. The way you describe volunteer opportunities to a 17-year-old girl will be quite different from how you describe them to a 65-year-old man. They are different demographically and they value different things. Your messages should be customized accordingly.

Learn more about how to make this work for your nonprofit during Thursday’s webinar. Register now to reserve your spot!

More Goodies: Get Kivi's Nonprofit Marketing Tips E-Newsletter (2-3 times per month)

Nonprofit Tagline Challenge: Name My Fundraiser!

Photo by celebdu on Flickr

Calling all of you wonderfully creative, zany, clever, and even snarky nonprofit communicators!

Now is your chance to put to work what you’ve learned from Nancy Schwartz’s Nonprofit Tagline Report on a real fundraising campaign. And you can go wild because it’s not something your boss has to approve. And there are prizes too — good ones — like free webinar passes and an All-Access Pass to Nonprofit Marketing Guide.com for the Grand Prize Winner.

On September 18, I told you how I’m raising money to buy condoms for the Positive Wellness Alliance (PWA) to give away for free to anyone who needs them, including teens who are too afraid to be seen buying them and folks who just don’t have the money to spare.

I’m a new board member for PWA, which helps people infected with and affected by HIV/AIDS in rural North Carolina. (Did you know the rate of infection is dramatically increasing in the South while falling everywhere else in the U.S.?)

With your help, I’ve raised $220 of my $500 goal. You can help by donating $10 now.

Here’s the challenge: Come up with a good tagline for this fundraiser!

Now, because this fundraiser deals with topics that make some people uncomfortable (sex, and who’s having it with whom), I’m actually putting the tagline challenge entries on the ChipIn page. You’ve been warned — some of them are rather bold, to put it mildly! This is not for the faint of heart. If this is simply not your cup of tea, don’t click over.

If you are up for a little creative, good-natured fun for a great cause, however, enter the contest by emailing me your taglines at kivi@ecoscribe.com with TAGLINE in the subject line. If you don’t want me to post your real name on the ChipIn list of entries, tell me in the email that you want to be anonymous or give me a pen name to use instead.

This is a fundraiser after all, so you can greatly increase the odds that your tagline will win a prize by donating! $10 qualifies as an adequate incentive for me to give your tagline some special consideration! Prizes will be awarded in several categories yet to be named by me.

Let the tagline challenge begin!

More Goodies: Get Kivi's Nonprofit Marketing Tips E-Newsletter (2-3 times per month)

We’re Talking Taglines on Friday – Please Join Us

Claire Meyerhoff and I are thrilled to have Nancy Schwartz of Getting Attention as our guest for the Magic Keys Radio Show and Podcast this Friday because she has just released her new Nonprofit Tagline Report. We air live from 1:00 – 1:30 p.m. Eastern (10:00 – 10:30 a.m. Pacific) on Fridays on Blog Talk Radio.

You listen via the ‘net and you can call in your questions live by dialing (347) 996-3142. The recording will be available as a podcast immediately after the live show ends.

Nancy’s report is a definite must-read. During her stop by Magic Keys Radio, Nancy will share her how-tos for successful nonprofit taglines as well as her deadly sins. In this rapid-fire world where you only have seconds to grab someone’s attention, we all need to know how to boil down our messages into just a few words, which is what taglines do.

Don’t miss our interview with Nancy! When you visit our BTR page, you can even set a reminder for yourself so you don’t miss the show. Do it now while you are thinking about it.

More Goodies: Get Kivi's Nonprofit Marketing Tips E-Newsletter (2-3 times per month)