Marketing 101 Archives - Page 2 of 10

Don’t be a fraud

May 18, 2016 by Erica Barnhart

[The Language Lab makes it easy for you to put research to work for you and your mission. Each installment gives you research-backed intel on one specific way you can work happier, smarter, and more effectively. To stay in the know, sign up to get Language Lab missives delivered directly to your inbox.]

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The One Thing You Need to Know:
Avoid jargon and keep readability high if you want to avoid coming off as deceptive and, in turn, turning off your supporters.

What’s all this about being a fraud?
When you’re communicating, you want people to trust you, right? You don’t want them wondering if you’re legit.Turns out, there are specific cues that send a “I’m not being straight with you” message, including:

Using longer words
Using fewer unique words
Using lots of punctuation
Having lower readability
Being full of jargon

Are you making matters worse?
Based on research done by the Chronicle of Philanthropy, we know that one in three Americans lack faith in charities. What if you’re sending out those “I’m not being straight with you” cues without even knowing it?

From the Wordifier research, we know one thing that’s definitely making matters worse: on average nonprofits only use 810 unique words on their websites. That’s a mere .03% of the words available in the English language. Does the miniscule number of words nonprofits use reinforce mistrust? As a sector, could we increase donors’ faith in charities by increasing the number of unique words we use?

So what can you do to increase trust?

Use proper punctuation. Here are some tips from Harvard College if you’re murky on punctuation. Grammarly is also an excellent resource on all things grammar.
Use shorter words: Thsrs is a great tool for shortening up your words. As is the Hemingway Editor.
Use a wider variety of words: The Wordifier can help you with this.
Use serial commas: Okay, nothing in the research I’m citing says anything about this, but it’s always a good idea. Here’s why.
Increase your readability: Turn on the Readability statistics in Word or use a tool like this one.
Avoid jargon: The Chronicle of Philanthropy just ran a super article on jargon eradication. (Disclaimer: I’m quoted in this piece.)

Want a deeper dive?
Check out this report and this one for text analysis of fraudulent writing.

Also think about signing up for Claxon University–home of clear and compelling communication that raises awareness, increases donations, and does more good in the world!

If you use ‘if,’ then…

May 4, 2016 by Erica Barnhart

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The One Thing You Need to Know: If you want to achieve your goals, then use the words if and then. (See what I did there? Neat, eh?)

What Works?

Last week, we talked about multi-objective optimization–a concept and term that can give even the sharpest social sector trailblazers a brain cramp. So this week, I wanted to give you something that you could instantly and easily use!

This week, we’re focusing on you, you, you. Can you apply this research to your organization? Likely, yes. But this is meant to make your life easier, happier, and more fulfilling.

Here goes.

Studies have identified a ridiculously easy way to increase your chances of success by roughly 300%. (Oh yeaaaaah.)

In her book, 9 Things Successful People Do Differently (a petit book that packs a big punch), Heidi Grant Halvorson advises that you decide in advance on when, specifically, you will achieve your goals. The in advance part is key. And that’s where ‘if’ and ‘then’ come in.

For instance:

If it is 11:30 on a Tuesday or Thursday, then I will go for a 30-minute walk.

If I drink a cup of coffee in the morning, then I will drink a glass of water as well.

If it is 8pm on Sunday, then I will call my parents.

If you really want some goal-achieving magic to happen, put these things on your calendar.

That’s it. Nothing this week on what doesn’t work. Just what does work.

Want more?

If you want to read about the other eight things that successful people do differently but you don’t want to commit to buying the book, then read Halvorson’s Harvard Business Review article.

Hat tip to the magnificent Eric Barker at Barking up the Wrong Tree for putting this research on our radar.

Tackling Tough Trade-offs

April 21, 2016 by Erica Barnhart

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The One Thing You Need to Know: If you want your messaging to work, get super clear on for whom and for what you are optimizing.

What Works?

With the Claxon Method, we encourage organizations to identify one organizational goal and then, based on that, one marketing objective. This clarity of focus allows you to optimize your little heart out.

But sometimes, you have two or more objectives you have to take into account. What do you do then? You do a little thing called multi-objective optimization. (Scary term, I know. But not a scary concept AND extremely useful. Stick with me.)

Even if you don’t know the term, you have experienced multi-objective optimization first-hand. Multi-objective optimization simply means making the best decision when faced with two or more conflicting objectives.

For social sector organizations, you might recall Sharon Oster, in her 1995 book Strategic Management for Nonprofit Organizations (chapter 7 on product mix and pricing), talking about a Product Portfolio Map, and suggesting you plot different programs according to contribution to mission and contribution to economic viability. It was a ground-breaking way to look at the dilemma of the double bottom line. Although she didn’t use the term, she was suggesting you do multi-objective optimization.

This type of analysis isn’t limited to the trade-off between mission and revenue, however. You may need to optimize your website for two different audiences or encourage your supporters to both donate and volunteer. Or maybe you’re like NPR and need to figure out whether short or long Facebook post works best.

Real-world example: NPR wondered what length of Facebook post worked best for them. Initially, their stated objective was driving traffic to their site. So they were looking at click-thru rate. Fair ‘nuff.

But their mission is to “…create a more informed public — one challenged and invigorated by a deeper understanding and appreciation of events, ideas and cultures.” That got them wondering: isn’t it possible that someone could learn just as much from a longer post even if they didn’t go to the site to learn more?

And just like that, NPR had two objectives for which they were optimizing: click-through rates and ‘show more’ clicks on longer posts. But rather than say which one really was more important, they mushed things together and came up with an “adjusted click-thru rate”.

After the mushing, they decided they should do more posts that are under 120 characters, but still do some longer posts now and again. This is a fine decision if click-thru is their tippy top priority. If people learning is their tippy top priority, then the longer posts might be the better way to go. Either way, the question is: what’s the trade-off between longer and shorter posts?

Bottom Line:

We live in a world of trade-offs. Keep your objectives prioritized. If you have to re-write your website and get an annual report out the door, that’s a lot of words to crank out (trust me, I’ve been there!). What’s the trade-off between spending more time one over the other? How much are you willing to sacrifice on the annual report in order to write dazzling website copy? Or vice-versa.

Often, a chart is the easiest way to see where you want to land. If we plot the NPR example, it looks like this:

npr trade offs title.png

Want more?

If we had had NPR’s raw data, we would’ve created a 3D plot. Cuz those are super fly! If you want to create a super cool 3D plot of your own, check out the spiffy Plot.ly. If that sounds scary BUT you still want to know what length your posts should be, or figure out how to optimize your words for another set of competing priorities, hire us. We like this stuff.

Nonprofit vs. Non-profit: Does a hyphen make a difference?

February 24, 2016 by Erica Barnhart

Ever wondered whether you should use “nonprofit” or “non-profit”? If you’re in the U.S. or Canada, the answer is: non-profit.

With the hyphen.

I confess I’ve never liked the hyphen in there. It looks clunky. Or sloppy. Or something. So I’ve been a long-time fan of the visually tidier “nonprofit”.

Boy oh boy, was I wrong. At least if my goal was to use a term that would make it as easy as possible for people wanting to market their non-profit to find their way to us here at Claxon. (In my defense, if visual tidiness was my goal, I would’ve been totally justified in eschewing the hyphen.)

Here’s the deal: Using Google Trends, we learn that people search for “non-profit” way more than they search for “nonprofits”. Adding that little hyphen ups your search engine results which, in turn, ups your odds of someone making their way to your website.

Now, what if you’re interested in attracting folks abroad? The hyphen/no-hyphen debate isn’t even relevant. That’s because in places like the U.K., they don’t use either “nonprofit” or “non-profit”. Nope. They use “charity”.

In the U.S., the word charity has a somewhat antiquated feel. It conjures up images of Oliver Twist asking in his most adorable little boy voice if he can please, sir, have some more. Charity connotes a hand out, rather than a hand up.

Not so in the U.K. They have charities. Lots and lots of charities!

So if you’re a U.S. organization or Canadian organisation wanting to grab the attention of donors in the U.K., charity is your term of choice.

This handy dandy chart shows which terms are used most often in each geography.

	US	Canada	UK
Nonprofit	40	7	1
Non-profit	100	63	6
Charity	23	39	100

The graph below will reinforce that if you have a global audience, your hands-down winner is “charity”.

Post Readability Stats: Reading Ease 69.3, Grade Level 6.4

Lesson 2: What do you want to be known for?

September 18, 2015 by Erica Barnhart

This is part of a series introducing you to Claxon University, where nonprofits can learn everything I know for $949.

Claxon University’s first course is Words on a Mission. Each of the twelve lessons in the course asks a fundamental question a nonprofit needs to answer in order to develop high-impact messaging. In each post in this series, I’ll share what the question is, along with a snippet from the video lecture.

Lesson 2: What do you want to be known for?

Lesson 2: Know Statement from Claxon University on Vimeo.

Post Readability Stats: Reading Ease 66.8, Grade Level 8.3.

140 Characters of Pure Persona Bliss

July 28, 2015 by Erica Barnhart

In my last post, I fleetingly mentioned 140 character personas. These deserve more air time. They’re super cool. They have the power to transform your nonprofit’s messaging.

Meet Jia Zhang. He is a graduate student at MIT’s Social Computing Group and a visual journalist intern at FiveThirtyEight. Zhang noticed the following:

Census data is often seen at a large scale — atlases, research studies and interactive visualizations all offer the view from 10,000 feet. But there are people inside those top-line numbers. And when you start to look at the people in the data sets, you get a glimpse of their lives. Just a few descriptors — how much they work, whom they take care of, where they were born — can give us a sense of the people around us.

http://fivethirtyeight.com/datalab/introducing-censusamericans-a-twitter-bot-for-america/

Called censusAmericans, it tweets short biographies of Americans based on data they provided to the U.S. Census Bureau between 2009 and 2013. Using a small Python program, the bot reconstitutes numbers and codes from the data into mini-narratives. Once an hour, it turns a row of data into a real person.

This clever Twitter bot mines census data and dishes up gems like these:

And–bam!–just like that you get a good sense for these people. Can’t you just see how their story might unfold? Can you see how what these three people care about might differ? How their day-to-day lives would look really different from person to person? Knowing that–and expanding on it to create a full persona–is the stuff of messaging magic.

If you don’t have the time, or feel overwhelmed at the prospect of, creating a full-blown persona, create a 140 character one. It’s a whole heckuva lot better than not having a persona at all! Zhang has made it easy–simply look through the censusAmericans Twitter stream for inspiration that auto-magically regenerates every hour!

Two Great Tools for Perfecting your Personas

July 25, 2015 by Erica Barnhart

Personas are a super important part of getting your messaging to resonate with different target audiences. That’s why we’ve written so many posts on it on blogs. Like this one, and this one, and this one, for instance.

Refresher: Personas get you out of your head and into the heads–and ultimately hearts–of your donors, supporters, volunteers, board members, etc. They allow you to understand the motivations and behaviors of different types of people. This means you can optimize your messaging and the mechanisms in which you use that messaging, e.g. website, Twitter, appeal letters, etc.

In Claxon University’s Words on a Mission course, nonprofits create a persona in Lesson 7. In prepping the Study Guide for that lesson, we came across two suuuuuuuuuuper funective (fun + effective) tools for building personas. They give you extremely useful info on people in different zip codes and couldn’t be easier to use.

1) ESRI’s Zip Lookup

They’ve created a series of different target audience groups. Clack in any zip code in the country and you get a quick n’ dirty sense of who is living in that area. I tried 98118, the most diverse zip code in the country as of a few years ago. Here’s what I learned:

ESRI Screen Shot 1

And when you click on one of the titles, you get info about that group:

ESRI Screen Shot 2

You can also quickly see info about income by zip code, county, state and the country as a whole. Super spiffy.

2) Nielson’s MyBestSegments Tool

You can also search by zip code using this tool. Their breakdowns are a little more granular. You get information like this:

Nielson Zip look up

And then you can click on segments for a description, like this one for the Big City Blues segment.

Again, super spiffiness abounds on this site.

These are both great jumping off points for nonprofits who are savvy enough to create personas. Yes, you’ll still have to do work to create a persona that makes sense for your marketing objectives. But these free tools mean you can get all sorts of really good data in about as long as it takes you to say, “Do I have to create a persona?!” (Answer: Only if you want fabulous messaging that helps you successfully achieve your goals…up to you.)

P.S. Need some quick inspiration to get you going? Behold–personas in a 140 characters or less, all based on census data. Short, sweet n’ geeky.

***Want to engage more people more deeply in your mission? Grab your seat at Claxon University!***

Do you know many nonprofits in your state have a website?

July 16, 2015 by Erica Barnhart

In a post earlier this week, I shared a startling new finding from our Wordifier research: more than 50% of nonprofits don’t have a website.*

A state by state breakdown shows us how much this varies depending on geography. In Maine, for instance, 65% of nonprofits have a website. Whereas in New Mexico and Wyoming, a scant 29% do.

This map breaks it down state by state.

research, nonprofits, websites

The five states with the highest percentage of nonprofits with websites?

1. Maine: 65%

2. DC: 64%

3. Washington: 61%

4. Idaho & Puerto Rico: 60%

5. Vermont: 59%

And the five states with the lowest percentage of nonprofits with websites?

46. Alabama: 37%

47. Rhode Island: 36%

48. Arkansas: 33%

49 & 50. Wyoming & New Mexico: 29%

Makes you wonder: how easy/hard are nonprofits in your state making it for supporters to find them on-line?

***If you want your nonprofit to stand out from the crowd–whether on-line, in-person, or in print–check out Claxon University.***

*Reminder about what we mean by “no website”: We mean when pulling our sample, we didn’t find an independent url for ~50+% of the nonprofits for which we were searching. Some might have had an online presence, e.g. Facebook pages or a webpage on a connected, but separate organization. For instance, it’s very common for Friends of the Library and PTAs/PTSAs to have a web presence as a page on the related organization’s site, but often not their very own site. Other organizations, businesses, social clubs, or even other nonprofits with a foundation or scholarship might have mentioned the 501c3 arm, or maybe just mention that they have a scholarship, but it is the parent organization that has the website, so that didn’t count.

New Research Shows More Than 50% of Nonprofits Don’t Have a Website

July 14, 2015 by Erica Barnhart

Would this little girl be able to find your nonprofit online?

When we did the research for The Wordifier–the free online tool that helps you increase your impact by amplifying your words–we stumbled upon a very interesting (and startling) finding: more than 50% of nonprofits don’t have a website.

Actually, to be specific, what we can say is that we are 95% confident that 46.33% to 49.03% of nonprofits DO have websites. Meaning we’re 95% confident that a tidge over 50% do NOT.*

Think about that for a minute: A potential donor hears about your organization. They want to learn more. They go online. They search for your organization. If you’re a nonprofit, there’s only a 50/50 chance they’ll find you because there’s only a 50% chance you’re easily found online. That’s a VBP: a Very Big Problem.

No matter how amazing, compelling, and wonderous your work is, people aren’t going to put in a lot of effort into learning more about you. They’re busy and have bigger fish to fry.

Bottom line: The easier you make it for people to find you, the easier you make it for them to support your work.

Your next step: Search for your organization’s name on-line. Do you show up on the first page of search results? If not, making that happen should be a top priority for your organization.

***Knowing which words to use when talking about your organization is key to your on-line strategy. If you’re unsure about the words you’re using, check out Claxon University’s course, Words on a Mission. Might be the Rolaids for your messaging-related indigestion.***

*Just so we’re clear on what we mean by “no website”: we mean when pulling our sample, we didn’t find an independent url for ~50+% of the nonprofits for which we were searching. Some might have had an online presence, e.g. Facebook pages or a webpage on a connected, but separate organization. For instance, it’s very common for Friends of the Library and PTAs/PTSAs to have a web presence as a page on the related organization’s site, but often not their very own site. Other organizations, businesses, social clubs, or even other nonprofits with a foundation or scholarship might have mentioned the 501c3 arm, or maybe just mention that they have a scholarship, but it is the parent organization that has the website, so that didn’t count.

Who are your best supporters? [8 of 15]

November 13, 2014 by Sarah Healy

[This is part eight of our 1, 2, 3 Marketing Tree Step-by-Step series, written by our fabulous intern, Vicki. If you’re new to the series, you can catch up on previous posts. If you haven’t already gotten a 1, 2, 3 Marketing Tree, now is a great time to either buy the awesome poster-size version or download the free version, so you can follow along. You can find the free version in Claxon’s DIY tools a la carte menu or in the Marketing 101 Toolkit. You can buy the super spiffy poster here.]

Now that you’ve figured out WHAT success looks like for your organization, we’re going to move on to WHO you need to reach in order to be successful.

Have you ever wondered what your future supporters will be like? Probably a lot like your current supporters.

In the next three branches of the 1, 2, 3, Marketing Tree, you will:

Name some common characteristics of your best supporters – past and present.
Figure out why your best supporters say they like you, and
Also identify how your best supporters find out about you.

In working through this part of the Tree, there really is no substitute for good data. There are many ways for your perceptions to be biased. Consider creating a survey. I have worked on projects where I thought I knew what supporters wanted. Then I did a survey. It turned out that the most vocal supporters weren’t actually representative of the majority. With this new knowledge I was able to adjust programming to match the interests of the target audience as a whole and check future suggestions for improvements against those broader interests.

The impact of gender differences is an interesting case in point. Women volunteer more than men, but you may be hearing from more men. Men and women talk about the same amount, but they talk about different things. Studies show that men tend to talk in more assertive ways, sometimes interrupting women (no offense, guys). It may just be, however, that women have different conversational conventions from men; being more talkative in small groups or when the topic is children, and more assertive with compliments. The take home point? It’s complicated, so do a survey.

Talking with supporters, one-on-one or in groups, can be another powerful way to connect with your supporters and to learn from their perspective on your organization. In addition to being able to learn what drives their engagement on a deeper level, a conversation can make them feel valued and strengthen the emotional bond they feel with you and your organization.

If you are trying to learn about your supporters in this way, there are a few things you should be mindful of (yes, I know that’s a dangling participle…cut me some slack):

Listen more than you talk.
Give them explicit permission to say what they aren’t happy about. Many people are afraid to mention these things for fear of hurting feeling or seeming rude, but it is often the most important thing to hear. Ask them for negative feedback and tell them how valuable you find it. You’ll still want to focus on what they do like. You are looking for things to use in marketing after all. But, don’t miss this valuable opportunity to learn ways to improve.
Listen more than you talk.
Select people at random. You probably can’t talk to all of your supporters, and if you pick the first people to come to mind you will just confirm the misperceptions you already have from hearing the most vocal people. If you take a list of your best supporters in Excel (all, major donors, long term donors, or however it makes sense for you to define “best”), you can create a column of random numbers using =RAND() and then sort by that column to put them in random order. This is super easy. I promise.
Listen more than you talk. Am I revealing too much about my own weakness here? Seriously though, this is a common bad habit. Let’s work on it together.

EXAMPLE: CHIRP

Let’s look at how Chirp, the school for birds founded by Claxon’s mascot, Roxie, identifies its best supporters. (Check out previous posts for the full back-story.)

For Chirp’s first avian cohort, the students all came through personal connections with school founders. Birds also came as a whole flock, rather than enrolling just a few students from each group. This exemplifies the social nature of bird culture.

Because Chirp is small, it is possible to talk to all their students. Since the founders were already having regular one-on-one interactions with them in the school, however, they decided that the benefits of an anonymous survey outweighed the benefits of discussing the organization in person.

The lack of opposable thumbs makes writing difficult for birds. To compensate, they took advantage of an online survey builder so that the students could peck their answers out on a keyboard.

When the results came in, they found that the students enjoyed classes where they were mixed with members of other flocks. They most valued the way their new wordy knowledge enabled them to engage with birds from other communities. Not at all what the executive team at Chirp would’ve predicted!

In the coming year, in order to expand, Chirp will have to reach new and different flocks. Thinking about this problem has their feathers ruffled. You may be wondering what to do if you want to expand into a new demographic, raise general awareness, or convert people who are opposed to your organization. We’ll cover that next week. In the meantime: enjoy getting to know your supporters!