For all of you in the Midwest who have wanted to come to the Total Focus Marketing Plan Workshop, but just couldn’t make it to the coasts, we have great news. Nancy Schwartz and I are bringing the workshop to Chicago on September 19th! Want more good news? Be one of the first 15 people…
You’ve accepted that “the general public” is not a target audience. Congratulations! Now’s the fun part: learning more about the groups of people who really are most important to your success. You can and should do some original research via surveys, interviews, and informal focus groups with people on your lists (which I talk about…
Nancy Schwartz is celebrating a birthday today, but she’s giving out the goodies! Being a nonprofit marketer can be an overwhelming experience. Even the most seasoned of us need guidance now and then – a little inspiration to let us know we are on the right track, or a new way to look at an old problem.…
It’s hard to keep up with how fast communications technology is changing, let alone the implications of those changes. Even if you can’t immediately implement all of the best practices you hear about, it’s important that you understand where our field is headed — and that includes toward much more personalized and integrated communications. But…
The apology that Susan G. Komen for the Cure issued on Friday was the first step. The obligatory resignations are next. But if Komen is going to repair the damage done by its behavior last week, they have quite a few more steps in the process. “What should Komen do next?” That’s the question many…
Last week on the main Nonprofit Marketing Guide site (you are reading the blog now), I published an article called, “Blah, Blah, Blah: What to Do When You Write Too Much.” In today’s guest post, Erica Mills of Claxon Marketing takes it to the next step by showing how specific words can actually debilitate your…
(Updates to this post can be found at the bottom.) Yesterday afternoon, and continuing into today, I believe we are witnessing the accidental rebranding of what is surely one of America’s biggest and most well-known, and even well-loved, nonprofit brands. Komen for the Cure, it seems, is no longer a breast cancer charity, but a…
Hating statistics and other cold hard facts, and loving stories instead, is very popular in our field right now. I’m mostly on that bandwagon too. But what if you could use a good statistic to help tell your story? I saw this Austim Speaks PSA with Toni Braxton on TV recently, and it caught my…
Nancy Schwartz asked, “What are your dreams for nonprofits?” My dream for your nonprofit is that you decide what you are really all about — what makes you different — and that you be that organization, and forget the rest. Consider this excerpt from Peter Bregman’s book, 18 Minutes: Find Your Focus, Master Distraction, and Get…
As I’ve said before, presidential campaigns are great for nonprofit marketers and fundraisers because they give us a sneak peek into how we’ll be engaging our supporters and motivating them to volunteer and donate in the years to come. The current edition of Newsweek has a very interesting description of what the Obama campaign is…
Every good report these days must have an infographic, so here’s ours for the 2012 Nonprofit Communications Trends Report! Feel free to repost and otherwise share far and wide. Nearly 1,300 nonprofits participated in the survey for the report. We’ve also made separate graphics for each of the five chunks of data below, if you…
What are your biggest nonprofit content marketing challenges? Marketing Profs and the Content Marketing Institute recently released a survey of business-to-business communicators, and found that producing the kind of content that engages prospects/customers was the top challenge, followed by producing enough content, and having a budget to produce content. I’d love to know what…
