Tuesday, January 5, 2016

11 Impressive B2C Campaigns That B2B Marketers Can Learn From

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Time for another brainstorm session ...

After scratching out a list of possibilities, you turn to your computer for inspiration. Consider your go-to sources: Do you immediately navigate to your competitor's blog? Are your bookmarks filled with favorite content from companies in your industry?

Constructive thinking doesn't happen inside of a vacuum. Instead, our best ideas come when we take a step outside the scope of our work and seek inspiration from unlikely sources. For B2B marketers, this means that the creative spark you're looking for might not be found directly within your industry. In fact, there's actually a lot B2B marketers can learn by observing the approach of B2C companies.

Of course, B2B and B2C marketing have their long list of differences. With B2B marketing, the door is open to technical jargon and long, deliberate marketing funnels. Yet, B2C marketers often have more room to stretch their imagination with lofty expectations for either witty or tear-jerking campaigns.

But despite the dissimilarity between the two, there is an opportunity to surface fresh ideas to by exploring out-of-the-box examples. And with a bit of inspiration and original execution, your B2B campaigns can rival the creativity of the most buzz-worthy consumer marketing.

11 B2C Campaigns for B2B Marketers to Learn from in 2016

1) Chobani

It is easy to think that only companies with an extensive catalog of products can pull of beautiful visual marketing. But what about when you specialize in one item?

With colorful photos of kale Caesar salad, mushroom flatbread pizza, and peach cheesecake, Chobani is a great example of a brand that leverages diverse photography to highlight a single product. 

Even if you market for a niche B2B business with one main product, there are still endless possibilities for your visual marketing. As you determine a visual strategy for social media, especially Instagram, start by thinking beyond the product itself to the many ways or locations your product can be used.

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2) Tesco

Based in the UK, Tesco is an international grocery store and a reliable source of information for anyone hoping to make their home run a little smoother. On their blog, Tesco Living, shoppers can find how-to articles with easy-to-follow instructions and ample pictures. Topics range from family favorite holiday recipes to summertime craft ideas for your preschooler.

By thoughtfully identifying common challenges of grocery shoppers, Tesco Living proves to be an exceptional example of helpful inbound marketing. Tesco then continues to impress by providing the solutions on a clean, easily navigable platform. 

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3) Starbucks

Starbucks was an early adopter of social media and today continues to use industry-leading photos to attract customers. However, most B2B marketers can't say they have a product as enticing as a cup of coffee to fill their social calendar. Nevertheless, marketers of any industry would value from the coffee chain's omni-channel approach to marketing and selling.

Starbucks creates a user-friendly experience through a myriad of special features on its Facebook page, including special contests, a store locator, international links, and job postings.

To streamline the buying process even further, Starbucks created an app to simplify mobile payments and bypass lengthy lines. While it's unrealistic that all companies should aspire to create their own native app, Starbucks shows how brands should smooth the buyer's journey with each interaction.

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4) Spotify

Few brands master personalization quite like Spotify. By leveraging the user's music interests, Spotify only sends emails with content that is both relevant and rewarding -- whether it's an announcement of their favorite band releasing a new album or news of a local concert.

However, the music streaming platform shows that personalization is no longer just for email marketing. Spotify now curates Discover Weekly, a customized playlist filled with songs an individual user has yet to uncover. To close out the year, Spotify presented each user with a "Year in Music" microsite telling the story of their 2015 music habits.

As you consider how to add a human touch to your marketing campaigns, think how you can expand beyond email personalization tokens to impress your customers.

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5) Herschel Supply Co.

Adventure is the theme of Herschel Supply's visual marketing. Browse the backpack retailer's Instagram account to find breathtaking photos of mountaintop views and chaotic city streets.

However, Herschel Supply gives marketers more than just high quality photos to envy. The majority of the brand's visual content comes directly from their customers posting with the hashtag #WellTravelled. 

Like Herschel Supply, consider how your brand can use social media to create a community, not simply a list of followers. This way, customers become stakeholders in your marketing and voices in how your product story is told. 

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6) Everlane

No matter the platform, each piece of Everlane's content works toward the same goal: transparency. By illustrating the "how" and "why" behind what they do, Everlane breaks down the barrier between the customer and their favorite brand. For example, the fashion retailer uses Snapchat to send messages to their customers that feel honest and personal. And the brand's Instagram account features backstage shots of the clothing production process.

If you are looking for a new approach to gain trust and loyalty from the businesses you sell to, consider how you can increase transparency as you explain sourcing and pricing on your social media and blog.

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7) Taco Bell

There are few ways to illustrate your brand personality quite like including humor. But before you decide there is no room in B2B marketing to pull a joke, consider the approach of Taco Bell. On the fast food chain's Twitter account, you'll find a robust collection of hand-drawn doodles and goofy GIFs.

However, it's not just Taco Bell's young audience that allows them to execute their humor so well. Credit goes to the brand's bold, consistent voice. Taco Bell does not test the waters with a few jokes here and there, but commits completely. Whatever you determine your brand voice to be -- from witty and sarcastic to encouraging and empowering -- strive for consistency.

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8) Threadless

There is no doubt that Threadless knows their audience well. On the retailer's blog, you'll rarely catch the writers talking about their funky t-shirt designs. Instead, Threadless has created a content haven for graphic designers and illustrators with just the right touch of quirkiness and personality.

Each post is packed with images, showcasing doodles straight from the desks of their customers. Meanwhile, Threadless understands the reader's desire for visual inspiration and keeps the copy to a minimum. Of course, this approach is not right for every brand. But the more you know your audience, the more you'll be able to cater your content to the style your readers like best. 

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9) TOMS

Visual storytelling has always been a key ingredient in the marketing success of TOMS. By sharing the stories behind their one-for-one giving model, TOMS is able to gain customers who are all-in with the company's mission. Therefore, it's of little surprise that their social media accounts often look more like the work of photojournalists than marketers.

So, when you already know you do something well, why not pursue it further? This is exactly what TOMS has done with the release of their latest piece of visual marketing, a virtual reality video that takes the audience alongside on a giving trip. Viewers can drag the frame or tilt their smartphone for a seamless 360-degree view of the surroundings. While visual marketing may not be your strongest asset, determine what you do best and consider how you can push the bar and build more buzz around your brand.

10) EDEKA

EDEKA reminds marketers that commercials don't have to feel quite like commercials. In their 2015 holiday advertisement, the German supermarket tells the story of a grandfather who will do just about anything to get his busy children and grandchildren home for the holidays. If you're looking to explore video marketing, make note of both the empathy and character development used to transform this commercial into a sharable piece of inbound content. 

Unsure how your B2B brand could use storytelling to market your product? Remember, you don't have to bring your audience to tears. But making a human connection through storytelling could be just what your brand needs to add interest to your B2B marketing.

11) Purina

Once you pinpoint your winning campaign idea, challenge yourself to imagine all the possible formats your content could take. Consider Purina as an example. The pet food company partnered with BuzzFeed to create an adorable video sharing the first day of bonding between a man and his new puppy. But, Purina didn't stop there. Sequels were made to continue the tale, including "Our First Poop" and "We Met a Girl." The campaign is then wrapped up in a microsite to guide people through the adventure of raising a puppy.

As content marketing blurs the line between retailer and publisher, consider how you can expand the scope of your campaigns and experiment with new media and storytelling trends.

Looking for more examples to spark your inspiration? Check out our latest ebook: 32 Enviable Examples of Inbound Marketing.

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How to Curate Your Social Content With Reddit

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Are you looking for new content to share to your fans and followers? Have you considered Reddit as a source for valuable content? Using Reddit will reveal unique and interesting content that helps you stand out from the crowd. In this post you’ll discover how to use Reddit for content curation and inspiration. #1: Find [...]

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How to Generate Leads With Social Media Quizzes

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Do you want to generate more leads? Have you considered using social media quizzes to connect with prospects? Quizzes are a great way to engage your audience, gather feedback and build your email list. In this article you’ll discover how to create social media quizzes that generate leads. #1: Establish a Goal A successful quiz [...]

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Monday, January 4, 2016

7 Essential Skills Marketers Need to Succeed This Year [Infographic]

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From changes in consumer behavior to evolving social media algorithms, the marketing world is constantly progressing. To be successful, today's marketers need to have an advanced skill set that covers everything from content creation and social media to web behavior and analytics.

What skills do marketers need most to keep up with the industry and do their jobs well?

Check out the infographic below from Formstack to learn seven skills marketers need to succeed and why. Use it as a guideline to assess your own strengths and weaknesses so you can focus on building the skills you need to start or continue a lucrative marketing career.

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11 Brilliant Tools for Organizing, Developing & Sharing Your Ideas

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Having an idea is one thing; executing on it is another entirely.

Ideas come to us in all shapes and sizes, in all levels of importance, and at all different times of day. Sometimes, we get inspired by something we read online and want to capture it and comment on it. Other times, we come up with an idea out of nowhere and want to jot it down, or say it out loud into our phones before we forget it.

When we have these ideas, it's far too easy to forget them or let them slip through the cracks -- especially if we don't have a system for organizing them. Thankfully, there are some amazing tools out there that can help us track and organize ideas in all different situations.

Here are the best tools out there for organizing your ideas -- including note-taking tools, visual organization tools, collaboration tools, and general organization tools.

The Best Note-Taking Tools

1) Evernote 

Price: Free for Basic, $24.99/yr. for Plus, or $49.99/yr. for Premium

Evernote is one of the better-known apps for note-taking and organizing information. I most often use it for organizing research and interview notes, drafting blog posts and ebooks, saving articles to read later, and storing important information -- like my favorite code snippets -- for easy access.

The best part about it is that it syncs across all your devices. So if you think of your next big campaign idea when you're out with friends, all you have to do is whip out your smartphone, open Evernote, and either jot down your idea, record your idea with its audio recording feature, or even take a picture.

It also has a number of free add-on products that make saving stuff to Evernote easier, like their Chrome extension Evernote Web Clipper that lets you save texts, links, and images you see online into your Evernote account with one click. 

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Image Credit: Focusalot

Like what you see? Here's another blog post we wrote on how using Evernote can simplify a marketer's life.

2) Microsoft OneNote

Price: Free

Similar to Evernote, Microsoft Onenote lets you take notes and share them across all your devices. The kicker is that you need to be a Microsoft user: In order to access OneNote, your device has to have Microsoft Office installed or have access to the OneNote website. Also, unlike Evernote, it doesn't have an audio recording capability.

If that's not a problem for you, OneNote can be a powerful tool. It lets you take and organize notes and import documents and images, including PDFs. Another cool feature? If you send or forward emails to me@onenote.com from your account, they'll go straight into your notebook.

There are a number of apps that connect directly with OneNote, too. One of my favorites is their integration with Feedly, which is a news aggregator app: You can save articles to OneNote directly from Feedly with one click.

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Image Credit: SnapFiles

The Best Visual Organization Tools

3) Trello 

Price: Free for Basic, $8.33/user/mo. for Business Class, or $20.83/user/yr. for Enterprise

Trello is a well-known app that's especially good for tracking and visualizing the progress of your ideas. Using their card-based layout, you can create a card for every idea and then jot notes in there, organize these ideas into categories or lists, create task lists and checklists within cards, color-code them, attach files, and so on. To track the progress of that idea, simply drag and drop the card into a new location.

For example, I used to drag and drop blog post ideas among columns, which I named "Idea Backlog," "In Queue," "Research/Interview Stage," "Draft in Progress," "In Editorial," "Scheduled," and "Published." Okay fine, the last one was called "DUNZO." To each her own.

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Image Credit: Cloud Coach

4) MindMeister

Price: Free

If you're looking for more of a mind mapping tool for brainstorming and planning, MindMeister is a great choice. It has plenty of diagram templates to choose from, along with a built-in icon library to make organizing easier (and more fun). It is entirely web-based, though, so the interface isn't quite as flexible as an app, and you'll need working internet to access your mind maps.

If you want to share your mind maps with others, you can share them publicly and/or collaborate with colleagues on them in real time. In the screenshot below, you'll notice the chat feature open at the bottom.

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Image Credit: MindMeister

5) XMind

Price: Free for Basic, $8.33/user/mo. for Business Class, or $20.83/user/yr. for Enterprise

While MindMeister is a great basic mind mapping tool, if you're looking for something more professional, then XMind might be perfect for you. John Halko, mechanical design lead at prototyping company Oat Foundry, uses XMind to “organize everything from business strategies to product needs and specifications.”

It offers cloud storage and automatically syncs across your Macs and PCs instead of existing entirely on the web, like MindMeister does. Plus, their recently redesigned interface is beautiful and intuitive. It has a plethora of predesigned templates and themes to choose from, along with an icon library.

If you're using one of the more advanced versions, you can map out the progress of different tasks using what they call a Gantt Chart -- including start and end dates, assignee, priority, and progress. You can also use their Timeline feature to show events in chronological order to track milestones and schedules of different projects.

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Image Credit: XMind

6) Pinterest

Price: Free

Finally, if you're just looking to organize ideas and inspiration, Pinterest is a simple, fun, and social way to do it in a visually pleasing way.

When you're brainstorming ideas for a piece of marketing content or a campaign, you might use Pinterest to save articles, visual content, or other useful pieces of information you find on the internet. That way, when you're writing the post or looking for inspiration, you can go back to your boards. Another way to use Pinterest is to save images and other visual content for social media you can pull from at any point -- like prepping for vacation.

Here's an example of someone who uses Pinterest to collect design ideas and inspiration:

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The Best Collaboration Tools

7) Google Docs

Price: Free

While Google Docs can be a great note-taking tool thanks to its familiar, document-style layout, its best features are the ones related to collaborating with others. It's super easy to share files, and multiple people can edit the same file -- even at the same time and in real time. Watch this video to learn more about how to share using Google Docs:

There are a few, lesser-known features in Google Docs related to collaboration. For example, if you want to ask questions about, make notes in, or highlight changes you've made in a Google Doc you're working on, you can leave comments directly in the document. The comments can act as a conversation thread, as people can reply to them and carry on a conversation.

Another example? The Revision History feature lets you see all of the changes you and someone else has ever made in a Google Doc, and when. Read about the awesome, lesser-known features of Google Docs here.

(HubSpot customers: Did you know HubSpot integrates with Google Docs? Learn more here.)

8) Basecamp

Price: Free for Individual Account, $29/mo. for Team Account, $79/mo. for Team Account with Clients

There are a lot of collaborative project management tools out there, but Basecamp is one of the best out there for managing projects, groups, and client work. It works really well for communication around teams and projects. Plus, the user interface is simple, intuitive, and easy to navigate. 

When you want to discuss projects and share files, you can use either the instant chat feature or forum-style messaging. The calendar function lets you schedule appointments, events, and milestones. The to-do list feature lets you list out shared team tasks -- and, within each task, you can create a series of to-dos and assign them to individual team members, or leave them open for people to assign themselves.

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Image Credit: filehorse

9) Box

Price: $5/mo./user for Starter, $15/mo./user for Business, Individual Pricing Plans for Enterprise

If you're less interested in detailed collaboration and more into file sharing, Box is a great cloud-based platform where you can store, share, and manage all your company's files. It's private and secure, too, so any confidential business information you want to share can be stored safely. Plus, it's accessible across all your devices, including mobile and tablet.

While its file-sharing features are the most well-known, you can also collaborate with colleagues using the commenting, @mention-ing, and task assignment features. This is a great help in cutting down on email. If you want to stay updated on what's happening with specific content, you can also choose to get notifications every time someone uploads, edits, comments, or downloads something.

Finally, Box integrates with a number of apps you may already use regularly, like HubSpot (learn more here), Google Apps, Okta, Slack, and over 1,400 more. Here's a promotional video right from the source that'll give you some insight into their value proposition:

General Organization Tools

10) Gmail

Price: Free

A lot of ideas, resources, and sources of inspiration are inevitably going to come at you through email -- and it's far too easy for these emails to get lost in your inbox. For many of us, our emails become our to-do lists, in a way. Some of our emails are threads around a pending projects, while others are ideas your boss sends you that you don't want to forget.

So, in addition to another organization tool, it's really helpful to organize your email account in a way that makes it easy to find and sort through those emails. Thanks to Gmail's labeling system and multiple inbox features, there are some great options for organizing your emails.

  • The Multiple Inboxes feature lets you create new, mini inboxes alongside your primary inbox to organize your inbox into multiple sections based on email type. Click here for step-by-step instructions.
  • The Special Stars labeling feature, alongside Multiple Inboxes, is my personal favorite: You can set up multiple inboxes to organize emails into categories, like "Needs Action/Reply," "Awaiting Reply," or "Delegated," and then use "special stars" (i.e. one of Gmail's labeling systems) to easily stick different emails into their appropriate inboxes with one click. Click here for step-by-step instructions. (Bonus: Achieving and maintaining inbox zero is also part of this methodology.

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(Read this blog post to learn about more tools for organizing your email inbox.)

11) Diigo

Price: Free for Basic, $7/yr. for Social, $40/yr. or $5/yr. for Standard, $59/yr. or $6/mo. for Professional

If you want to organize your ideas by highlighting passages on webpages, adding sticky notes, and sharing with friends, then give Diigo a try. It's a social bookmarking website that lets you tag and save online resources like webpages, and then highlight and add notes to the sections on those resources and webpages that inspire you or that you'd like to comment on. For example, if you see a website design you like and want to share it with a colleague along with comments, you can capture the page, mark it up, and share it.

Using the Outliner feature, you can organize your links, references, and notes to create a simple but structured research base. Here's a video from Diigo that shows you how it works:

Which tools do you use to organize your ideas? Share with us in the comments.

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4 Challenges Facing Nonprofit Marketers in 2016 (And How To Beat Them)

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Nonprofits have two goals: to win supporters to their cause, and to convert those supporters to donors or members to support their work. To achieve both in 2016, marketers will need to become more savvy than ever. 

But where should you start? The first step is to take a look at the marketing landscape at large to see where it’s moving—and what obstacles could be a roadblock to your success. Here are a few trends that could make life challenging for nonprofits in 2016, along with some strategies that can ensure you end the year better than you started.

In 2016, Nonprofits Will Square Off Against...

1)The Slow End of Print

Media-watchers have bemoaned the end of print and paper for more than a decade. While the internet hasn’t completely put an end to the old ways, paper-based media and marketing is facing a host of modern issues. Direct mail still makes money, but most donors that respond to these efforts are over 55. There are still plenty of years ahead for this group to donate, but demographic trends clearly suggest that direct mail shouldn’t be your only strategy.

Additionally, print marketing collateral offers far less tracking capabilities than it's digital counterparts. How many people opened and read that mailer you just sent out? You may never know.

So What Do You Do?

The simple answer is move online. M+R’s 2015 Benchmarks found that online revenue was up 13 percent between 2013 and 2014. Much of that growth was driven by online monthly giving, which was up 32 percent (compared to 9 percent for one-time gifts). Demographics are only going to accelerate these trends. Millennials became the largest generation in the workforce this year, and these money-makers are more willing and likely to give via text or online than Gen Xer’s or Baby Boomers.

The even better answer is think comprehensively. You may recruit a potential donor online, but that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t incorporate them into your direct mail campaigns, and vice versa. The key is to increase the number of touches and give people plenty of opportunities to donate. Then, you want to track how they gave to see how your specific donor base responds to the ask medium.

2) Proliferation of Social Media

The sheer number of apps and platforms out there can be daunting for even the savviest of social media users. Beyond the basics—Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter—you’ve got Tumblr, Snapchat, Instagram, Pinterest and more that are vying for ad dollars and marketing efforts from organizations and companies looking to spread their message.

To complicate this, exposure on social media is increasingly becoming a pay-to-play game where reach extends only as far as your ad spend. This means that your investments in 2016 aren’t just in staff or volunteer time, but in cold, hard cash. For nonprofits mindful of their Charity Navigator ratings, high spending on marketing campaigns without much return can be damaging.

There’s also an optics concern. The last thing you want to do is create a presence on a social media platform and let it die. If a potential donor or supporter Googles your nonprofit, only to find a Facebook page where the latest post is from 2012, it doesn’t inspire confidence in the organization. That said, you also don’t want to miss the boat on new technology that can help you reach a new audience or engage your supporters in a new way. Instagram wasn’t even on the radar five years ago, but is now one of  the most influential platforms for nonprofits, ranking amongst Facebook and Twitter.

So What Do You Do?

The most important thing is to understand who your audience is, then figure out where they are. For organizations with a younger target audience, Instagram and Pinterest might be worth consideration. Organizations with a more mature audience on the other hand, should look to more established platforms like Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn. Figure out the platforms that are best at reaching your audience, and go from there. 

During this planning process, you should also formalize your social media strategy. This doesn’t have to mean hiring a dedicated social media staffer (though if you have the funds, go for it!). Rather, incorporate social media interaction into your existing staff’s duties. That could mean following up every email blast with a tweet, or assigning each staff person a day to post to Facebook or a specific platform to manage by building out a robust social media calendar ahead of time.

The more accountability you create, the better chance you have of keeping your social media current, relevant and enticing to potential donors and supporters. 

3) The Move to Mobile

The growth of mobile usage isn’t a new story, but this trend isn’t just here to stay—it’s accelerating. Earlier in 2015, comScore released a report showing mobile usage has increased by an eye-popping 394 percent since 2010. The Pew Research Center found that beyond this increase in mobile usage, smartphones are the main or only point of entry for a significant number of Americans. Ten percent of Americans do not have home broadband, and 15 percent say that they lack options to access the Internet other than through their smartphones.

This has implications for nonprofits both in reaching potential supporters and donors, but also in providing assistance and furthering their mission. A local organization focused on poverty may have a snappy, flash-based website to help low-income families find access to social services, but its target audience may not have a device that can read it. This also presents a tricky problem for nonprofits without the financial cushion to redesign existing resources.

So What Do You Do?

Think mobile first. This doesn’t mean you need to pay a software engineer thousands of dollars to design your organization a custom app, but it does mean taking a hard look at what you already have and seeing where you can make adjustments for a smaller screen. Make sure your website is on a mobile-friendly platform that optimizes the look, feel, and user experience of the site for any mobile device. 

If this sounds overwhelming, start where it counts most: your donation or member registration page. Start by shortening your forms so they renders better on small screens, or taking advantage of auto-filling information stored on mobile devices. This can make the donation process easier and smoother for your supporters, allowing them to make the transition to donors or members.

Don’t forget to leverage others’ investments in mobile by promoting more content on Facebook, Twitter or other social media platforms that are already spending the money to make their mobile experience great.

People Aren’t Willing to Part with Their Money

Here are some hard, disheartening facts that every donation-based nonprofit (and for profit) is up against:

  • Millennials today make $2,000 less (adjusted for inflation) than their parents did at the same age.
  • Researchers have predicted that today’s millennials are nearly 10 times less likely to become millionaires than baby boomers.
  • Real and perceived economic trends really do affect spending: Millennials have stingy spending habits similar to their depression-era grandparents.
  • While a majority of millennials do make charitable contributions, they’re total gifts only comprise one-tenth of charitable giving.
  • People still think we’re in a recession. This varies a lot by geography and political persuasion, but as recently as October 2015—six full years after the Great Recession ended, according to economists—a Fox News poll found that 78 percent of voters don’t buy it.
  • It’s not just millennials. Gallup found that while baby boomers overall are spending more than they did a year ago, that’s less true for the younger boomers.

So What Do I Do?

Converting donors is less about persuasion and more about relationship building—much like dating. You wouldn’t whip out an engagement ring or ask someone to move in on the first date would you? You’re at the get-to-know-you stage, where you’re both learning about who the other is and whether you want to take further steps.

The same principles apply to the organization/supporter relationship. Rather than asking for money right away, create other methods of engagement or “conversations” that give supporters a chance to get to know your organization and build an emotional attachment to your work and mission. Then, by the time you’re asking for cash, it isn’t such a hard sell. 

There are lots of ways to execute this. Supporters can be asked to download pamphlets or issue guides, sign up for newsletters, or share stories and information about your work among their networks. Petition campaigns and other advocacy opportunities are a particularly great way to spread your message and prime potential donors. Signing a petition moves folks from passive to active supporters of your cause, deepening their attachment to it and you. A recent white paper found that fundraising as much as doubled when attached to an advocacy ask.

Bring on 2016

Sure, the coming year is going to be a challenging one. But nonprofit marketers who are prepared for the oncoming hurdles will be able to not just leap them with ease, but continue their sprint toward growing awareness, donations, and members. 

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Facebook Live: What Marketers Need to Know

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Have you heard of Facebook Live video? Do you want to use Facebook Live for business? Facebook Live lets you connect with your fans, friends and followers by sharing real-time video of what you’re seeing and doing. In this article you’ll discover how to broadcast with Facebook Live and use Live video in your marketing. What Is Facebook Live? Facebook [...]

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