Nonprofit Marketing; Know Thy Audience

You’ve got a great message. Anybody would support it.  Right?  You want to launch fast, using any and all media available, while the issue is still hot. Throw crumbs on the water; wait for the flood of responses to come pouring in.

Not so fast!  I don’t want to pour cold water on your plans, but you need to slow down.

New research released by Georgetown University’s Center for Social Impact Communications and Ogilvy PR studied the difference in responses between black, white and Hispanic adults to nonprofit, charitable and political causes on social networks.

The study finds that ethnicity plays a huge role in how people perceive messages and influences whether they get involved further.  Depending on your message and your media, you could get widely divergent responses.

Let’s plunge right in.

First consider your media.  Are you using traditional direct mail, print, radio and TV or hipper social media?  The media you use can affect the response you get.

70% of blacks and 61% of Hispanics say they are more likely to support causes presented in direct mail, print, radio and TV rather than online; 76% of whites agreed.  That’s an overwhelming vote of confidence for traditional media.  But as our population ages, the traditional media may lose ground to social media.

It’s happened so fast, that it’s hard to remember, but just a few years ago there was no social media.  Today, 62% of blacks and 64% of Hispanics said social-networking sites made it easier to support a cause. But only 54% of whites agreed.

Of those who do use social media, Blacks and Hispanics were also more favorably inclined toward Facebook, Twitter and blogs as vehicles to “spread a message” at 58% and 51%  respectively.  Whites lagged at 34%.

Whites are also less likely to use Twitter at all. In another study conducted by Princeton Survey Research Associates International just 9% of white internet users said they used Twitter, but 25% of blacks and 19% of Hispanics said they Tweeted. 10% of black internet users Tweet on a typical day, compared with 5% of Hispanics and 3% of whites.

Feel like you’re drowning?  It gets worse!  An earlier study shows that women and men use social media in different ways.  Women like FaceBook; men like YouTube.  Women look to interact and share information with others; men want to get information.

Putting aside the gender issue, there are solid demographic reasons why these three ethnic groups react so differently.

African-Americans and Hispanics tend to be younger and more technology-aware.  Because they may also be less well off, they may use mobile devices to access the web.  Having the smaller platform makes Twitter more attractive to them.

White donors, who are typically older, Tweet less, which is consistent with other findings that tweeting declines with age.  They are more comfortable with traditional media.

Finally consider your message.  The three demographic groups respond quite differently.  For instance, among donors: 

• 46% of black online contributors gave to feed the hungry, compared with 38% of Hispanics and whites.
• 34% of black donors online gave to fight diabetes, compared to 32% of Hispanics and 24% of whites. 
• 31% of Hispanic donors support groups that fight global warming, but only 25% of whites and black donors do.

So what are you to make of this sea of statistics?

Despite the tsunami of interest in social media, social networking and blogs, these new media are a distant second to the traditional media of direct mail, newspapers, radio and TV if you’re looking for where your audience is getting their information.

As Julie Dixon, deputy director at the Georgetown Center, reiterates “what the study shows... is not to put all your eggs into the social-media basket.  Instead organizations should tailor their communications strategy based on how their audience is likely to engage.”

It all comes down to know thy audience before you launch.

Get with it. Get Social.

If you're a youngster, you may have trouble fathoming this concept, so I'm here to help you. Give your thumbs a rest for a minute or two, and read on.

In the ancient times (before the last 5 years) when you wanted to talk with someone—say, your client—you picked up the phone and you spoke to him. Now I know in this day and age that practice of actually talking to each other sounds remarkably quaint. But it worked. Communication happened.

Then came email. Forget the phone. When you wanted to talk with your client, you sent him an email. It was fast but you had to wait for his response back. His response might necessitate another query from you which also demanded a response back.

And that was the big problem with email. It could take hours to have what had been a simple 5-minute phone conversation. Worse yet, in all the back-and-forthing, misunderstandings crept in.

Some PhD candidate somewhere (I've forgotten the exact details in a senior moment) discovered that 90% of emails were misinterpreted. It was shocking! If you ran your business (or love life, for that matter) on what you thought you had said and what you thought you had heard back, 90% of the time you would be wrong. Yikes! Communications where happening, but maybe not the communications you needed. On the other hand, you could at least have a paper trail that showed where the train went off the track.

But now I'm getting off track.

Today, 79% of corporations use Social Media today to interact with consumers. They use these communications to maintain top-of-mind presence, drive sales, get feedback, and award customer-loyalty.

The Altimeter Group cites that there are 600M (600,000,000) Facebook accounts and these 600M folks spend an incredible 700B (7,000,000,000) minutes per month on Facebook. Twitter is second with 175M users sending about 95M tweets a day. My calculator can't even figure out what this comes to on a monthly basis. Anyway, LinkedIn is third at 85M users. YouTube is another social biggie, but not quite in the same way.

If you are comfortable with the technology, and have the time each day to devote to the cause, you may find sending messages and responding to what comes back a rewarding experience. You'll be in good company. Virgin CEO Sir Richard Branson, Marriot CEO Bill Marriott and Sun Microsystems CEO Jonathan Schwartz all write their own blogs and tweets.

On the other hand, if you are like many busy people today (who don't have a support staff of thousands), maybe you want to write your own material, then have a trusted associate distribute it and respond on your behalf.

In many large organizations there are entire departments of tweeters and social media mavens, sending out tweets, blogs, text messages and checking in with Friends on FaceBook and folks in various interest groups.

Why are these firms devoting so much energy and resources to this effort?

Because it works!

Properly executed, social media does indeed maintain top-of-mind presence. A well-written blog, delivered regularly, builds community. It's one of today's communication tools of choice, and communication—whether by print, phone or by blog—builds community.

Social Media does drive sales (think text messaging, or an email click here to link to our new catalog)... get feedback (PURLs, informal focus groups and surveys)...
inspire folks to act (give to earthquake recovery, sign up for a whitepaper, register for a free webinar)... and award customer-loyalty (Panera and Ruby Tuesdays are masters of rewarding customer loyalty.)

Social Media supplements—not replaces—your other marketing efforts. It can not replace direct mail letters, catalogs in the mailbox or ads on the radio. What it can do is make your audience more receptive when your direct mail letter or catalog gets in their hands.

You learned in Marketing 101 that successful marketing is about building a relationship between your company and your customer. If you first heard this sage advice in the last century, you'll remember there were fewer avenues you could use then.

It's so easy today, though the rule of relationships still applies. Social Media is the perfect tool to build relationships. It works. And yes, it can be fun.

Get with it.

Say it Ain't So! You're Too Busy to be Social?

Dearest CEO/BMOC or other overworked executive,

Don't think you have time to get involved in social media? Hmmm. Remember 15 years ago? You didn't have time to use email either. Hah! How times have changed.

Get with it.

I know you're busy. I know you are overcommitted. Spare time is precious. So I'll keep my comments to you short as well, thus respecting your time. I promise I won't take more than 2 minutes today.

Here are a few tips to help you get in the swing of things socially:

1. Write your own content. Your own voice will be more genuine than a hired hack.

2. Schedule time for social media into your day. Just 10 to 15 minutes twice a day will be enough at first to learn the ropes.

3. Don't get distracted. Remember why you're using social media. Is it to build your business, get business leads, or reinforce your web presence? Is it to keep up with your teenagers? Keep your eyes on the prize.

4. Focus on 5 or 6 relevant sites. We're taking baby steps here, remember?

5. Share information, ideas. People appreciate others who contribute to the conversation.

6. Remember, it's not just about you. When you find interesting content outside of yourself and your business, share it. Start a conversation…or add to one.

7. Showcase your expertise. Succinctly. People will learn to value your wisdom.

8. Hire a social media expert to help. You write the content, but let a "pro" distribute it. It will save you time, and keep you focused.

Think it's all just too much? If Virgin CEO Sir Richard Branson, Marriot CEO Bill Marriott and Sun Microsystems CEO Jonathan Schwartz can write their own blogs and tweets, so can you.

I'd say more, but I'm out of time I had allocated for this task today.

Ta Ta!

Belly Up to the Barcodes, Boys!

Barcodes have come a long way from the UPC codes that took grocery stores by storm in the 1970s.

On one day recently —Black Friday, 2010—product barcode scanning was 30 times higher than the same day in 2009. Thirty times in just 12 months! If my retirement fund behaved that way I wouldn't have to keep working until I'm 80. But that's another story.

In order of popularity, toy scans beat out electronics (#2) and housewares (#3). But books beat out everybody. Seems that folks with smart phones also like to read. Hmmm. I thought they liked to text each other and compare notes on who had more electronica on their phone. Shows what I know.

Anyway, the huge increase in barcode usage started with the acceptance of smart phone technology. Just a few years ago smart phones were simply clever ads on TV. Today 30% of us—phone-using Americans, that is—have smart phones with their myriad downloadable applications. "Apps" for the cognoscente.

Among those apps are ways to find the best deal on a specific item in a specific geographic area, price comparisons, manufacturers' coupons, and offers from restaurants where you can relax between forays into the maelstrom at the mall.

Jumping on the barcode bandwagon, Big Box retailers like Toys R US and Target as well as cyber behemoth Amazon are using barcodes to push product.

Toys R Us stores have barcode scanners so sales clerks can scan mobile e-mail coupons straight from the smart phones. Target lets customers earn points simply for entering the store and scanning certain items. No purchase necessary.

Amazon lets users scan items in brick-and-mortar stores see if they can get a better deal through the online retailing giant. (Jeff Bezos, Amazon's founder and muse wasn't Times' Man of the Year a decade ago just because he had a pretty face!)

But barcodes are a lot more flexible than just aiding shopaholics. They have a real place in marketing for smaller companies, too! Companies like yours and mine.

For instance, want to get people from your corporate brochure or business card to your really kickin' website? A QR code does the trick. Point. Click. Show off your flash.

I mean, how impressive is that?

QR codes are also popping up on road signs, billboards, window posters, bus signage, newspaper advertising, church bulletins, sports programs and even clothing.

I've seen them on "For Sale" signs in front of million dollar houses; take a cyber tour of your dream home and never leave your car.

Click on the sign in the restaurant window to see the daily specials.

Click on the politician's roadside sign and watch him tell you his policy statement on road congestion while you're stuck in traffic.

Click on the barcoded tee shirt worn by a landscaping company employee and see what the company can do to help your weed-infested lawn even as you see guided tours of their favorite success stories.

Once you know what QR codes and a bit of imagination can do for your marketing, you'll see a thousand uses.

It's what you do with it that counts.

Belly up to the barcode, boys. It's almost closing time and you need to get with it.

Are you reading this on your phone?

It's a new year. It's time to reconsider and rethink everything. As a friend, I'm doing this in your own best interest. Believe me.

Ahem.

Here's a gentle test to get your self-examination started. You know you're an old fogey if:

• You use your cell phone simply as a phone.
• You watch movies on a VCR.
• You listen to your tunes on a turn table.
• You use your oven more than your microwave.
• You think GPS may mean something. You just can't remember what.
• You like email.

Email? I can hear you gasping in disbelief. Email — the communication mainstay coursing through corporate and personal discourse — that email? The very email I'm reading? Passe?

Yes, dear friend, the new generation (your kids, no doubt) think email is so last year.

The Young People — the folks who communicate with emoticons, speak in mysterious alphabetic cryptographics known only to the initiated, and text addictively with peers — these YPs think email is laborious.

OK. They may have a point. Email has a "courtesy" protocol. You have to type in a subject line, type in a message, close properly with your electronic signature, and then wait for it to be received and responded to. Email allows clarity and thoughtfulness.

But texting is a greyhound. It's built for speed, if not for absolute clarity of message. Reflecting the immediacy of conversation, texting has the same flow as a casual comment. And, unfortunately, the same ephemeral thought. I mean, how much deep thought can go into WTF?

Reality check, folks. These YP are making changes that we old codgers will have to adapt to. Or die. Or maybe find ourselves in communications limbo with younger family members and co-workers.

Statistics bear out the communications sea change. Yahoo and Hotmail email volume peaked in November 2009 and have slid 6% since; in the 12- to 17-year old cohort the decline is a much more precipitous 18%.

Even Facebook is getting hipper. After realizing that most subject lines are left blank or at best have "Yo" or "Hi," Facebook is axing the obviously underutilized line. It's also cancelling the "cc" and "bcc" options, thus loping off the email look and mimicking text formats. With one final bow to the YP need-for-speed, hitting the Enter key now launches the message with the alacrity of texting.

Today, the old fogeys — parents, teachers and bosses — are driving the demand for email. These martinets demand precision of thought and well-honed arguments in email form. Go figure. They run the banks, the schools and the corporations of the world.

But that intense communication style may not always be with us. In the not-so-distant future when the YPs become the parents, teachers and bosses, then texting may become de rigueur. Then speed rather than absolute message accuracy may become the preference.

The 20-somethings are caught in the middle. And they are feeling it.

The New York Times recently interviewed 23-year old Adam Horowitz who works as a technology consultant, where he uses email all day. But after work he communicates with friends almost entirely via texting. When he texts his younger brothers, 12 and 19, he notices that they send messages even shorter, faster than his.

"When they text me" he says, "it comes across in broken English. I have no idea what they're saying. I may not text in full sentences, but at least there's punctuation to get my point across. I guess I'm old school."

How about that, Dear Friend? He's an old fogey and he's only 23!

There's hope for us really old fogeys.

Me? I'm still figuring out the whole texting thing. After all, I hope to have Grandkids one day.

Charity Begins at Home

Old timers like me are generous donors to charities. Maybe it’s because we have more available funds, maybe because it’s become an ingrained lifestyle decision honed over decades of generosity. But recent statistics show that Baby Boomers—born 1946 to 1964—give $901 a year to 5.2 groups. We're exceeded only by older siblings and parents who give an average of $1066 a year to 6.3 charities.

So what kind of role models were we to our children? The study says we did OK!

Gen Xers—born 1965 to 1980—give on average $796 to 4.2 organizations a year, and the youngsters out there, the Gen Yers—born 1981 to 1991—give $341 to 3.6 groups a year.

Hence, as people age their charitable contributions increase, as do the number of charities they support. What is also changing is the number of ways nonprofits can approach donors.

Gen X and Gen Y combined now make up more than half of the available pool of potential donors, and they don’t seem to have the “brand loyalty” that their seniors do. So figuring out how to reach these upwardly mobile donors—and keep them donating!—is critical to nonprofits.

There used to be a limited number of tried-and-true ways to reach and influence potential contributors. The explosion of social media and the internet has made that effort exponentially more difficult. Now it gets really complicated.

Retail. Just over half of all age groups say they have made contributions at the grocery or retail store, but older folk still prefer to receive their information through direct mail. Younger folk have a variety of paths from which they get information, and no single channel predominates.

Internet. 35% of the Xers had gone on a charity’s web site to make a contribution as had 29% of the Yers in the past 2 years. What had gotten them to that website in the first place is still TBD.

Social Media. 36% of those under 30 years old said they had shared information about a charity with friends in the past month and 29% posted information on a nonprofit organization on their own Facebook page.

Text messaging. Text messaging is gaining wide acceptance. 77% said they had heard about opportunities to contribute to Haiti earthquake relief via their cell phones and 36% indicated their willingness to make a cell phone contribution. But there is a generational divide. Cell phones generated contributions from 13-14% of the X and Yers, but only 4% from the Boomers.

Social Events. Younger people tend to like social events such as 5K runs and galas. They also are generous volunteers. On the other hand, they tend to give simply because they are asked to do so and without conducting much research. By comparison, older donors like to know how much of the donation goes to overhead expenses.

Direct Mail. Still a very viable tool, Direct Mail got attention —and money— from 43% of the Xers and 26% of the Yers in the last year. Individuals born before 1965 voiced a strong preference for direct mail; people born after 1965 preferred web sites.

As the number of donation avenues increases, the old metrics of nonprofit fund tracking is becoming obsolete. An individual may have first learned about a nonprofit from a friend who directed the individual to a Facebook page which got him to a website. Or it may have come from an invitation to join in a 5K, an overhead public service announcement, an ad in a newspaper or even a direct mail solicitation.

The multi-channel nature of today’s giving environment necessitates a more global perspective on response rates and specific media ROI. Nonprofits have figured that much out. Nonprofits haven’t figured out how to compute the value of various input sources: internet vs DM (direct mail) vs WoM (word of mouth) vs text messaging vs Social Media vs special events, etc.

The world is changing. If you don’t know what is working, you don’t know why it’s working and then you don’t know how you can make it better.

Like so many things, it used to be simpler.

Social Media Proves Men and Women are Different Animals

Anyone who has been married more than a year knows that it is an Undeniable Truth that men and women look at things differently. Women want to voice their needs, upsets and concerns, but men want to fix those issues.

Married women want girlfriends with whom to talk because their men don’t listen to them. On the other hand, married men who want girlfriends that aren’t looking for scintillating conversation, but that’s getting way off track.

Back to business. Social media is only reinforcing the age-old divide.

Facebook, it seems, is dominated by women. Of the 400 million+ members, 57% are women but the site attracts 46 million more women visitors than men each month. Plus female Facebookers have 8% more friends and do 62% of the sharing.

“The world’s gone social. And women are more social than men” explains Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg.

Facebook is not alone in its female bias. Women are the majority users on Twitter, MySpace, Bebo and Flickr.

Why? Sociologists will tell you that girls are taught from birth to share information. It’s a skill passed down from our stone-age grandmothers who had to learn to cooperate to survive. (“You watch the kids and scare off the wolves; I’ll go forage for berries for dinner.”) That same cooperation is apparent on-line today as women query each other about toilet training, dealing with difficult bosses, and shopping preferences.

Men, on the other hand, gravitate toward Digg, YouTube and LinkedIn which are content-driven sites. Statistics show that men use YouTube 20% more than women, perhaps because the site is about finding, consuming and passing along content. It is not about conversation or sharing ideas.

Men also blog more and are more likely to comment on other blogs. (Side note: from the blog responses I’ve read, men tend to be confrontational and competitive. [“You are such an idiot!”] Women’s comments are more supportive of the writer [“That was really funny!”])

Men, it seems, see Social Media as a tool to gather information to increase their status. For in today’s society information is power.

It figures. The same sociologists will say that men are taught to be competitive from birth. Our cave-dwelling spear-wielding male ancestors probably jostled for credit for making the kill-of-the-day the way they now fight for the fastest computer or the corner office. It’s all about status within a community.

So what can a savvy marketer do to span this chasm? Retailers are figuring it out.

Getting a woman to say she prefers your brand is tremendously influential to her friends. Since twice as many women as men say they share purchasing preferences on line, some of the most successful fashion brands—Tommy Hilfiger and Urban Outfitters among them—sponsor virtual fashion shows to engage their adoring public. And not coincidentally, to sell product.

Some marketers are using games—long popular with men and growing in popularity with women—to win eyeball time, and possibly win new converts to their product line.

Similarly, both men and women respond to tweets or text messages from their favorite retailers. (“Half price burritos tonight at _______’s from 5:00 to 7:00. Bring this message with you to participate.”)

Men, however, ever looking for the competitive leg up, like to get content from articles. After all, one never knows when that new factoid can be a valuable weapon in one’s arsenal. Hence, savvy marketers are using “transactional” sites like LinkedIn, YouTube and Twitter to post provocative material hoping to spark manly interest.

Yes, difference in communication style is as old as gender.

Long after Thomas Edison and long before Feminism, some man somewhere asked “What are the three fastest forms of communication?”

His troglodyte friend responded “Telegraph…telephone…Tell a woman.”

Men guffawed. Women winced.

Social Media types say “Thank Goodness!”

The Final Word on Words

Please fasten your seatbelts. This is an article on words, but it takes a lot of numbers to have this conversation fully. Ready? Here we go…

The University of California in San Diego reports that Americans consumed 3.6x10²¹ bytes of data in 2008. That works out to 34 gigabytes per day per person or approximately 100,500 words for each of us.

If the average American reads 200 words a minute, that would come to 502.5 minutes a day—or 8.375 hours a day—spent in processing words. But of course, we live in an electronic world, so we’re getting a lot of these communications through our ears.

45% of the words we consume come from television. Computers eat up 26% of our word diet, with radio taking 11%, print media 9%, and phone conversations a mere 5%. Of course, this study was done before Texting and Tweeting became the Big Deals that they are today, so the 2010 figures might be significantly different.

A trade industry group, CTIA, claims that 110 billion text messages were sent in the US in 2008, up from 2 billion in 2003. In 2008, we Americans spent 23 hours a year texting ourselves, which begs the question about what we did with the other 8,737 hours that year.

But fear not. We are an ingenious, puritanical people. We certainly do not want to have 8,737 empty hours a year. We know that idle hands are the Devil’s workshop. So we have plunged wholeheartedly into texting. At least our thumbs—if not our brains—are very busy.

I can only surmise from personal observation that text messaging is growing exponentially. Case in Point: My husband and I went out to dinner recently and sat next to a 20-something couple. They never spoke during the entire meal, as each was focused entirely on his/her personal texting. I assume they were not texting each other, but I did not have the chutzpah to ask.

And I haven’t even addressed Tweeting. According to Gigatweet, the preeminent Twitter Tracker, since 2006 Americans have posted 8 trillion+ tweets.

The UCSD study did not take into consideration talking face-to-face, (aka conversation!), but a study conducted one year earlier found that both men and women speak an average of 16,000 words per day. (Hah! Take that, men! You can—and do—get a word in edgewise!)

I suspect that this study—conducted in California—did not take into account regional speech patterns. I’ve often heard people from the South say that New Yorkers “wear out their ears” because they talk so fast. Conversely, friends from New York claim to fall asleep waiting for Southerners to finish a sentence. My guess is that the New Yawkers spit out 20,000 words while drawling Southerners are slowly making their way through 12,000.

So what does this have to do with marketing?

Plenty! Words—communication—is the crux of marketing.

Since there are words flying around us all day long, make the ones you use count for something. After all, you want your message to stand out.

Here are a few ideas to help your message stand out:

• Be brief. There’s a lot of competition for attention.
• Use active verbs. They enliven your message.
• Pick the right nouns and ease up on adjectives.
• Vary the length of your sentences. Doing so changes the pace.
• Know when enough is enough. No one likes a blowhard.

Hence, my final words today are: The End.