goal setting Archives - Claxon Communication

Raising Awareness isn’t a goal

September 27, 2016 by Erica Barnhart

Gearing up for Claxon’s webinar on October 12, I was reminded of the somewhat troubling poll results from the last webinar. I had asked what everyone’s top goal was for the year. Not surprisingly, fundraising topped the list with 60%. Nothing troubling or surprising about that.

The troubling part comes in with the Raising Awareness results. 22% said this was their top goal. (See pie chart for details.)

You might be saying, “What’s wrong with that, Erica? You have to raise awareness in order to raise money, recruit volunteers, attract amazing staff. That’s a legit goal.”

Raising awareness for the sake of it is a waste of time. Don’t get me wrong: I am all for raising awareness…so long as you are very clear on what, specifically, raising awareness is going to do for you. Think of raising awareness as a pre-cursor to other goals, i.e. you raise awareness so that you can achieve other goals.

You raise awareness so that:

You can increase year-end donations by 175%.
You can recruit 3 new absolutely awesome board members.
You can land a 5 year, $500,000 grant.

As you set out to set your goals, remember the Claxon Method:

WHAT does success look like?
WHO do you need to reach in order to be successful?
HOW are you going to reach your ideal supporters?

If you don’t set a SMART goal in response to #1, you can’t identify your target audience (#2), and then it’s a crap shoot on what messaging and mechanisms will work for #3. Crap shoots may be fun, but they aren’t strategic.

Goal-setting may not be glamorous, but it’s suuuuuuuuper important. And that’s why we’re going to talk about how to apply SMART goal-setting to your year-end fundraising on the October 12 webinar. (We’ll also talk about fun stuff like calls-to-action and which stories will be the most powerful and whatnot. Didn’t want you thinking it was going to dull. Never!)

Be sure to sign up for your spot!

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Reading Ease: 67.8, Grade Level: 6.7

Lesson 5: What are your Organizational Goals & Marketing Objectives?

October 1, 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 5: What are your Organizational Goals & Marketing Objectives?

Lesson 5: Raising Awareness from Claxon University on Vimeo.

Marketing Game Plan for Idaho Gives

March 22, 2013 by Erica Barnhart

My marketing advice is…drink more coffee!

May 2, is going to be a big day in Idaho. It’ll be their first-ever statewide celebration of giving–aptly called Idaho Gives.

Thanks to the Idaho Nonprofit Center, the wonderful masterminds behind Idaho Gives, I have gotten to train nonprofits from all over the state on how to create a Marketing Game Plans for this statewide give-a-palooza.

These one day give-fests are awesome from nonprofits. Why? Because they force you to get your marketing in line with your mission and your goals. (The lure of free money and golden tickets can have that effect.)

Now, when people come to a marketing training, they usually think we’re going to spend most of our time talking about Facebook, e-blasts and, if we’re really, really lucky, Pinterest.

Instead, we talk a lot about what their goals are and who they need to engage to reach those goals. Why so little talk of Pinterest and Instagram and all the fun stuff? I like the fun stuff as much as the next marketing-obsessed speaker, but here’s what I’ve learned over the years: that part comes pretty easy once you know your WHAT (your goals) and your WHO (the people you should engage).

And you know what isn’t fun at all? Wasting your time and money. And that’s what you’re doing when you skip the What and the Who. Because without that information, you can’t make good choices. Doh.

At times, you might skip those two all-important first steps and get results by random luck. Good for you. But you can’t take random luck to the bank time and time again, now can you? No, you can’t. Not unless you’re George Clooney’s gang from Ocean’s Thirteen. (Oh but look, they did meticulous planning before taking their loot to the bank too, so scratch that!)

It’s through planning that you figure out how to tailor your messages. As Gayla Hatfield of Hope Preschool and Memorial Community Center told the Coeur d’Alene Press, they weren’t clear on who they really needed to reach and were “spewing too much info out.” Now she knows how to target her message and she’s “better prepared” for fundraising in general and Idaho Gives in particular.

Planning may not be as fun as pinning and, as you can see in the picture above, it requires quite a bit of caffeine (note how many coffee cups are strewn across the table) and not everyone will find it riveting (note the woman on her mobile, who was actually very engaged much of the time, I swear, but happened to not be when this particular pic was snapped…what are the odds?), but if you’re serious about marketing advancing your mission, planning is the way it’s gotta be.

The Idaho nonprofits who rolled up their sleeves, filled up their coffee mugs, and did their planning will likely have a very good day on May 2. I can’t wait to see their plans turn into action..and engagement…and donations!

[For the record: In one of the trainings, the group was having so much fun, I laughed until I cried. I really, truly did. (Thanks to Dawn Burke of The Rat Retreat for being such a sport!) Proof that planning can be both fun and productive.]