Marketability by David Kinard

Where Do You Spend Your Creative Energy?

2011-01-09T20:21:00.000-08:00

I've been embarrassed lately. My last blog post was four months ago, and I was starting to feel like a failure for not writing. In fact, as a person whose strength is in communications, I had started to doubt whether or not I should even have a blog if I wasn't going to keep it current.

However, after a lot of introspection, I realized that my blog isn't so much about me being a writer, and having something of utter importance to say. Rather, it was an outlet for my creative impulses. And, after looking back over my life, I realized that much of my life's journey is plotted with phases of creative expressions -- all good, but none defined to just one area.

I love to cook, and lately I've been doing a lot of it. I reorganized my recipes, created a customized cookbook, and have been working through some new culinary experiments (much to the demise of my waistline). In the recent past I found my greatest outlet for my creativity to be at work creating strategies and communication plans for my employer, before that it was writing, before that speaking, before that...and the list goes on (mostly in a circular motion as I tend to revolve around writing, cooking, speaking, working).

I also found that when my need for creative expression had been met that I defaulted to absorbing other content -- watching movies, listening to books, reading articles, playing games with my kids, or just letting another obsession take over for awhile (like cleaning my house, or organizing the basement, or some other lower-level, obsessive-compulsive behavior).

Okay, so what does all this mean. First, I've gotten over the guilt for not writing more frequently. Also, I've become very comfortable with the idea that whatever my outlet is -- the important thing is that I am expressing it. When I worked in higher education, the faculty operated under the saying, "Publish or perish." This drove the professors to always be writing something -- and it rubbed off on me a bit causing me to think that I had to produce something in all my creative outlets in order to be legitimate in any of them. Simply not true.

I see it this way -- we need to be true to our whole selves. We are not just butchers, bakers, and candlestick makers. We are multi-talented, multi-faceted people with many possible expressions of our being. The important thing is to spend that creative energy, not bottle it up. And, most importantly, allow for that energy to change what it looks like over time.

So, in 2011, there will still be blog posts (I am still doing lots of author interviews and will be posting my backlog of them soon), but they will all be guilt-free. I'll write them when it makes sense, and not feel the least bit guilty about not writing.

How will you spend your creative energy in 2011? What areas (note the plural) will you cover?

-- David Kinard, PCM
(photo credit: AnaMaria Maestas-Wertz)

Deliver Some Happiness -- and some Shoes!

2010-08-23T08:28:00.000-07:00

It might be easy to think that just because you sell shoes, you're nothing more than a shoe store. But that kind of limited thinking has never been a part of Tony Hsieh's world. He's a dreamer -- and a dangerous one because he has a significant dream he wants to share with other business leaders to not just make it a better place, but a happier one.

Tony is the CEO of Zappos -- the once online shoe store. Now, as a part of the Amazon.com umbrella, they're a full on retailer. But though they've been purchased by another dreamer (Jeff Bezos), Tony and his dedicated team are pushing boundaries others dare to even acknowledge.

Tony is one of today's most successful, young business leaders. In 1996 he co-founded LinkExchange which sold to Mcirosoft for $265 million, and in October of 2009 he sold Zappos to Amazon for $1.2 billion. But aside from these -- which I doubt Tony would put at the top of his list of accomplishments -- Tony has a belief that workplace morale has been sacrificed to the pressure cooker at most companies. He's going against the grain of today's cutthroat tactics by employing a more humane and simple approach. In one word, it's happiness. By creating a radically different culture committed to making employees and customers happy, Tony thinks that the world could become a better place.

At the core of Tony's happiness philosophy are elements such as perceived progress, control, connectedness, and being a part of something bigger than yourself. When combined, these create an environment where employees, and ultimately the customers, have a greater sense of pleasure, engagement, and meaningful contribution.

What I like about this approach is that it is not just lip service. Tony puts his money where his mouth is and actually works hard to get his new employees to quit, and to keep his long term employees engaged and progressing up the ladder. About midway through their new employee orientation, each participant is offered a cash reward to quit. Tony shared they're not getting as many takers as they used to, and are thinking about raising the amount -- again. The point is not to pay off short-timers, but to ensure that the people staying are there for the right reasons. "We need to hire more slowly, and fire more quickly," said Tony. Unfortunately, it's too often the other way around."

But the key take away here is not to financially incent your new employees to quit. Nor is it to focus only on the hiring, firing, and career track of your staff. Rather, it is about discovering the deep truth all of us share -- that we desperately want to be known, and to know. Combine this with a sense of purpose and an engaging environment and we thrive. Take away any of these and we start to wither and our worst comes out of us.

Tony is not the first person to have a happiness philosophy -- and let's hope he's not the last. And what is remarkable is that it isn't that hard to have one, either. As marketers we have the best opportunity to embark upon this type of journey with our companies and customers -- the trick is finding the right way to do it.

The book, Delivering Happiness: A Path to Profits, Passion, and Purpose might just be one of the most important books you read this year. Take a listen to my interview with Tony and decide for yourself. But, whatever you do, don't walk away from this idea that the business world can operate with a different set of rules -- ones that value all people, all ideas, and purpose over profits.

-- David Kinard, PCM

C'mon, You can Trust Me!

2010-07-23T08:27:00.000-07:00

"TRUST ME." How many times have you been asked to give someone your trust? Companies ask you for it all the time -- either implicitly or explicitly. And what is amazing is how often we grant that trust without considering what we're doing. But, things have been changing, and for awhile now the skeptic in each of us is beginning to wonder, "Is my trust misplaced?"

I recently had the chance to interview author Michael Maslansky of the new book The Language of Trust: Selling Ideas in a World of Skeptics. His book is based on a decade of quantitative and qualitative research with thousands of individuals. In it, the book illustrates why it is harder than ever to trust -- especially given recent examples in the media including Tiger Woods, Toyota, banks, politicians, BP, and countless CEOs. Maslansky states that whatever the message, the public assumes that there is an underlying agenda and that companies are regularly putting their own interests in front of the customer's.

Maslansky offers some new, contrarian rules to communications (e.g. the truth is NOT enough), and some new principles for credible communication (problems don't sell as much as solutions). But more than those lists, I think what I found the most interesting were why today's consumers were more skeptical than ever. The fundamental truth he offered was that we have been promised more than what has been delivered -- too many times. As more sophisticated consumers, we have more information available to us today and can easily see behind the curtain to how the magic really works -- and we're not impressed. And more than anything, we no longer have to trust what we're being told. We can source check anyone and anything.

The book offers some great advice and weaves into it a sense of accountability that I found refreshing. The podcast expands of some of the stories in the book and gives you a feel of the genuine nature of Maslansky's purpose for writing the book.

-- David Kinard, PCM

Measuring Social Media

2010-07-19T08:30:00.000-07:00

Social media metrics are all the rage, but I still think people are asking the wrong questions. More often than not, I get asked how to measure the effectiveness of a Facebook page, a Twitter feed, or even a blog. The problem is not in measuring those tools, but in what to measure. Most of the time, we focus on the tool, and not the strategy or the thing that we're trying to effect.

For instance, the other day I was asked by one of our departments if our health plan could use Facebook. My response was "Sure, but why?" There is this overwhelming sense that we need to be using social media, but no real reason why. Without fully understanding the why a tool gets used, the measure of effectiveness is always going to fall short of usability.

I had the privilege of interviewing Jim Sterne, an international and seasoned veteran in the relationship between marketing and customer interactions. For 25 years he's been working with companies, helping them measure the value of the Internet as a medium for creating and strengthening customer relationships. He's written six books, the latest being Social Media Metrics: How to Measure and Optimize Your Marketing Investment. You can listen to my podcast interview here.

Sterne reinforces the need for having solid business objectives. If a marketer fails to start with a clearly defined problem they're trying to solve, or a quantifiable gain/achievement they're trying to make, then measuring social media tools as a means to achieve those objectives is going to be difficult at best, and likely less actionable than you want.

All that said, I did ask Sterne what he thought was the single most important thing to look at when evaluating social media as a tool. He offers three things: 1) Did the tool help you to earn more? 2) Did the tool help you to spend less? 3) Did the tool make your customers happier? Though this sounds pretty basic, I have to agree that this approach is fundamentally the best. Social media doesn't have to be complicated, and it can be measured -- we just need to start with clearer objectives so we know what we're trying to measure.

Lastly, I asked Sterne who should own social media in the organization. You'll appreciate his answer in the podcast. But I'll hint at his response..."who owns the telephone?"

-- David Kinard, PCM

Managing in an Era of Distrust

2010-07-14T09:27:00.000-07:00

As always I so enjoy speaking with my friends at Maritz Research. Rick Garlick, senior director of consulting for Maritz Research, joined me again to talk about their annual study on the state of workplace engagement. This is the third or fourth year I've talked with Rick about the study, and this year some interesting changes were uncovered.

It's not surprising, given the recent history of corporate America, that a victim of the upheaval in the workplace has been trust, specifically trust in our senior leaders and direct managers. What was surprising this year was the addition of a lack of trust with co-workers. The study, now in it's 9th or 10th year (sorry Rick, I can't remember) showcases trends in workplace trust. Rick's expert advice is showing how that erosion of trust is impacting customers and customer service.

Maritz has done a lot of work on the relationship between employee and employer values. They've found that those companies which pay significant attention to values and building trust are regularly top performers. Their counterparts are those who try to win at all costs, typically losing at all levels.

In my interview with Rick I asked him what actions to take to improve trust in the workplace. His suggestions are:

Open and transparent communications
Follow through and keep promises
Fix the disconnectedness and isolation; bring people together
Use community service projects as a means to the greater end

This last suggestion struck me like a lightening bolt. I realized that many cause-related organizations are NOT creating opportunities for their corporate counterparts to support them via volunteerism. If they are, the approach is usually "we need your help." What if the pitch was changed around to: "Hey big business. Your trust and morale are at the lowest they've ever been. We have a solution. We are the solution. Bring your teams together, align around a common goal, get people talking and sharing. Get them over here for work projects and make a difference while you get your company back on track." Now that's a meaningful proposition!!

As always, Rick is a great source of information so be sure to listen to the podcast. And, check back next year for Rick's annual visit to talk about their latest study results.

-- David Kinard, PCM

Can Non Profits Use Referrals?

2010-07-06T08:59:00.000-07:00

I had a great time interviewing John Jantsch -- author of the book The Referral Engine: Teaching Your Business to Market Itself. It was a great addition to the continuum of books I've read lately having to do with ways to market in this new landscape (see Gilbreath, or Halligan). But I'll admit, I was initially skeptical of the book as I worried it would be some multi-level scheme machine. It wasn't and it's something you should seriously consider reading if you're interested in growing your organization.

What was most refreshing about this book was Jantsch's solid marketing sensibility surrounded by a keen people-sense. I so appreciated his emphasis on being genuine and authentic and his emphasis on staying away from referral-mill style activities. In fact, his idea of creating an "authentic referral strategy" has nothing to do with you but everything to do with who your ideal, narrowly-defined customer. This outward-focus is what separates Jantsch's book from the chaff.

Trust and confidence reign supreme as the key ingredients of what makes a referrer good for your company. Thus, the way to get a good referral is to be trustworthy, and to engender confidence with each customer experience and interaction. And then, having delivered on your promise to the customer, with some education of what you need/want them to do for you, you're ready to have that customer introduce you to others.

But the question that was burning in my head the whole time I was chatting with Jantsch was "would this work with non profits or cause-related organizations?" I believe the answer is YES. By their very nature cause-related organizations and non profits are naturally social. They have an inherent talkable reason for being. The challenge, however, lies in the organization's ability to have a talkable difference for being -- that thing which separates them from every other good cause out there.

In the back of Jantsch's book are 12+ elements that can be mixed and matched to create a referral strategy. Non profits would be wise to spend time reviewing these elements to see which matched well with their capabilities. (And the referrals are not just for more "customers" but also for donor development, media relations, etc.) And if you need help getting started, the back of the book also offers several "snack-sized suggestions".

-- David Kinard, PCM

The Law of the Harvest

2010-06-27T20:18:00.000-07:00

I was at a foundation event a few weeks ago, meeting new people and was introduced to a young man who is early in his career, very talented, and obviously a doer. We chatted briefly about what he wanted to be doing and I said something to the effect of him taking the next few years to build up his experience and credibility. His reply caught me off guard.

"Hell to the no! I am not waiting that long. I am making it happen now."

I smiled a knowing smile. I know in my own life, there are far too many instances where I thought I could speed things up a bit, take a short cut, or even skip to the end and hope that the results would be just as good as if I had worked hard the entire time. And I know that each time I've ended up short of the goal.

There is a universal truth called the Law of the Harvest -- masterfully articulated by Stephen Covey, it says two key things: you reap what you sow, and it takes time to cultivate meaningful results. The easy example is the person who wants to lose weight and goes on a crash diet only to gain the weight again a few weeks later versus the person who commits themselves to a changed diet and lifestyle of exercise who earns their weight loss. Or the student who skips classes, crams the night before an exam, hoping to do well on the test versus the person who attends all the classes, regularly reviews their notes, and gets a good night's sleep the night before the test.

How many times have I said, "Hell to the no!" and decided to jump to the end result only to find my victory shallow and short lived...too many.

I think many of today's non profits and cause-related organizations are dealing with the Law of the Harvest in two ways. First, they are constantly battling the expectations of their communities to get to a solution and achieve results all the while knowing that the most effective and permanent solutions are ones that require the long view. Second, these same organizations often operate with a mindset that they can skip certain steps, cut corners, and achieve amazing results.

When it comes to marketing causes, all too often I see organizations skipping the essentials: Customer segmentation, brand positioning, core messaging, and strategy. Rather, these organizations toss out into the marketplace brochures, flyers, advertisements, and donor requests hoping to increase their ability to do more and get more. Most likely, they'll see an increase in need but not in resources.

If your cause is the field you're planting in, and the impact you want to see in the world are the seeds you sow, do you honestly believe that you can skip the growing season, skip the weeding, skip the watering, skip the fertilizing, skip the pest control -- and still reap amazing results? I didn't think so.

As you work in your business, I encourage you to take time to work ON your business. Build out those fundamentals and properly plant/prepare/and work the field of your cause. Pay attention to the Law of the Harvest ensuring that you'll reap what you've sown, and that your harvest is as full as possible.

- David Kinard, PCM

The Bees' Needs

2010-05-20T08:27:00.000-07:00

My 13-year old daughter recently gave a speech at her Speech Club on the plight of bees in our world. Not only was I impressed by the quality of her speech (she "performed" it for me at home) but the weighty import of her content struck me. I thought I'd share it with you.

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Some of you may have heard that the honey bees have been disappearing. Maybe you’ve heard about it in detail or maybe just in passing. Well, no matter how you’ve heard about it, it’s true. The honey bees are disappearing, and at an alarming rate. And it’s not just in the US, it’s happening all over the world. Today, I will give you some history on the disappearance of the honeybees, explain a couple of the reasons for their disappearance, tell you why the honey bees’ disappearance is a problem, and what the future could possibly look like if the honey bees disappear for good.

From 1972 to 2006, there was a dramatic reduction in the number of feral honeybees in the U.S. They are now almost absent, and there is a significant, though gradual, decline in the number of colonies maintained by beekeepers. From 2006 to 2008, the number of colonies that were lost rose. In the winter of 2006 to 2007, beekeepers in the US lost approximately 32% percent of their honey bees. In the winter of 2007 to 2008, they lost approximately 36%. However, in 2008 to 2009, they only lost 29%. Now, this isn’t just happening in the United States, it’s around the globe. Beekeepers have seen similar disappearances in Belgium, France, the Netherlands, Greece, Italy, Portugal, and Spain. It really is a problem everywhere.

Albert Einstein once said, “If the bee disappeared off the surface of the earth, then man would only have four years of life left. No more bees, no more pollination, no more plants, no more animals, no more man.” While I’m not sure it would be quite that drastic, the absence of the bees would most definitely take its toll. About one third of the human diet comes from insect-pollinated plants, and honeybees are responsible for about 80 percent of that pollination, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture. To give you an idea of what would happen if honeybees were to disappear, here’s a partial list of the foods they pollinate.

Almonds
Asparagus
Apples
Avocados
Broccoli
Blueberries
Cranberries
Cherries
Kiwi fruit
Carrots
Citrus- (oranges, lemons, limes, grapefruit, tangerines, etc.)
Peaches
Macadamia nuts
Pears
Nectarines
Plums
Grapes
Cauliflower
Celery
Cucumbers
Onions
Legume seeds-(beans, peas, lentils)
Pumpkins
Squash
Sunflowers
Apricots
Strawberries
Olives
Cantaloupe
Watermelon
Honeydew
Peanuts
Cotton
Soybeans
Sugar beets
Canola
Alfalfa

You might have noticed that list includes a lot of things we enjoy every day. And not just the things we enjoy, but that animals enjoy too. Like cows. They eat alfalfa, which is pollinated by honeybees. Ultimately, if the honeybees completely disappear, we could lose many sources of protein and fruits and vegetables, possibly ending up eating nothing but grains and water. Unless another pollinator, such as another insect, bird, or bat came along, we would have to manually pollinate a lot of the foods we eat. Manual pollination is a tedious and tiresome job, and nowhere near as efficient as pollination by honeybees.

Chinese pear farmer Cao Xing Yuan, who was interviewed for the US documentary “Silence of the Bees”, knows just how tough manual pollination is. Ever since the bees in his region were wiped out by pesticides 20 years ago, he and his neighbors have had to scrub pollen from the pear trees, dry it by hand, and then carefully dust it onto each pear blossom. It is a slow, laborious task, and much less efficient than employing honeybees, whose colonies visit up to 3 million blossoms per day. Life without bees is not a pleasant thought, but it is a plausible one. It would be better for everyone, bees included, if we could find ways to stop them from disappearing.

One of the bigger problems the honeybees are facing is starvation. The Apiary Inspectors of America did a survey of the losses of honeybee colonies in the United States and found that 32% percent of these losses were attributed to starvation. This could mean that the beekeepers didn’t leave enough resources for the bees over the winter, or the cold weather affected the bees, and they ate their food prematurely, not leaving enough to last them the winter. Beekeepers can purchase sugar syrups to supplement feedings, but a lot of the beekeepers didn’t have the money to do that. They crossed their fingers and some of them won, and some of them lost. Lost their bees, that is.

The other cause for starvation is contaminated pollen. Contaminated pollen stored in hives can end up causing bees to get sick and die. Honeybees collect pollen for vitamins, minerals, and protein. They don’t eat it right away, they add their own bacteria, fungi, and yeast to it, and leave it to ferment in hive cells until it makes “bee bread”. If honeybees collect pollen from a flower that was treated with pesticides and herbicides, it messes up the balance of the bacteria, fungi, and yeast. When the honeybees try to make ‘bee bread’ using contaminated pollen, the fermentation process doesn’t work, and it then interferes with the honeybees’ health by limiting their nutrition.

Another thing that could be hurting the honeybees is really, the bee industry. Honey isn’t a moneymaker anymore, because we import so much of our honey from third-world countries, so most of the money that beekeepers make is made from pollinating the almond crop in California. Bees are imported from the other states because California’s foothill, coastal, mountain, and desert areas can support only about a half million colonies on a year-round basis. Because of this, beginning in late January, beekeepers move in and place about 1 million honeybee colonies to pollinate California’s 500 acres of almonds. Bees are imported from all over the country, to pollinate one kind of flower. This isn’t good for the bees. Bees are meant to gather lots of different pollens from separate places. And they’re not used to being trucked across the country. If you add in the stresses of herbicides and pesticides and a lack of food, these bees are going to suffer!

If any of you are at all interested in this subject, I would very much encourage you to read about it. It’s really interesting, and there’s a lot that I wasn’t able to mention. If I were to share everything I wanted to do with this subject, this speech would be way too long for speech club. The honeybees’ disappearance is a fascinating and important part of our lives, and the more people who know about it, the more people who could maybe help to save them. Because if we want the honeybees to survive, we have to be aware of the problems they face, and try to take care of the bees’ needs.

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What struck me the most after I listened and then read her speech was the opportunity this kind of learning presents to your cause. If my teenager daughter can write this simple report, share it with friends about the importance of bees, what could an army of teenagers accomplish for your organization? In other words, if you want to get real grassroots involvement, attention, and discussion going -- get some kids to write about it.

-- David Kinard, PCM

Begin With the End in Mind -- Visioning for Success

2010-05-17T13:11:00.000-07:00

Years ago I heard a startling statistic that 95% of all small businesses in the United States fail within the first five years. This is a staggering number but not surprising. Even big businesses are not immune to the challenges of today’s warp-speed and constantly fluctuating marketplace. In fact, one third of the 1970 Fortune 500 had ceased to exist by 1983; and by 1995 nearly two-thirds had vanished. So what can we do to help our businesses survive, grow and flourish?

Begin With The End In Mind

We create plans all the time: plans to go to dinner and a movie with friends, plans for an exotic vacation, we plan our household budgets and plan for our retirements. In all, every plan we make is an attempt to help us move from where we are to where we want to be in the most convenient, effective and efficient way possible.

Surprisingly, however, many entrepreneurs are operating without one of the most important plans they need—a strategic plan. As a critical business development tool, this plan is the keystone to helping you remained focused, profitable and innovative. At its most fundamental level, a strategic plan defines what success looks, feels, smells, and tastes like, and then creates a roadmap from that point backwards to where you are starting.

Describing Success

At the center of the strategic plan is a well conceived vision which consists of two major components: a core ideology and envisioned future.

The core ideology has two parts: core values—tenets which serve as guiding principles for your work, and a core purpose—the reason for being.

The envisioned future consists of a 10-30 year audacious goal, plus a vivid description of what it will be like to achieve that goal.

You best Vision will represent the beliefs you find challenging and particularly important—a reason to dedicate your energies. It creates a picture of your future company and describes something to be proud of.

Planning a Revolution

In our marketplace there are many businesses providing similar services. The best way to help you succeed is to create something different. Don’t be “another” provider of a commodity product or service. Rather, redefine the market and uncover unmet needs. As Jerry Garcia of the Grateful Dead once said, “You don’t want to be considered the best at what you do. You wan to be the only one doing what you do.”

When thinking about the strategy for your company and in writing your own plan, you’ll want to consider four key questions:

What “unique” service or product does your business provide and what “real” needs does it fill?
Who are the potential customers for your product or service, how many of them are there, and why will they purchase your solution from you? What’s in it for them?
How will you reach your potential customers? How does the competition currently reach them?
Where will you get the financial resources to start and operate your business until it becomes profitable?

Despite the critical importance of a business plan, many entrepreneurs drag their feet when it comes to preparing a written document. They argue that the market changes too fast, they’re too small or that they just don't have enough time. But just as a builder won't begin construction without a blueprint, eager entrepreneurs should not rush into creating a company without a business plan.

While most small businesses end up closing within the first five years, I am sure they didn’t begin with that goal in mind. As you either begin your business, or even if you’re in your tenth year, perhaps today is a good time to create or brush off your strategic plan for the future.

-- David Kinard, PCM

2010-03-21T08:26:00.000-07:00

A baby's giggle is the most addictive sound in the world -- or so author and neuromarketer Martin Lindstrom would have us believe. And based on what the science is telling us, it would be wise to do so. Lindstrom, author of the worldwide bestseller Buyology has released his second book Brand Sense and he's tackling the world of sound and how our brains just can't help but override our rational thinking when it comes to certain sounds. The 10 most addictive sounds in the world:

A baby's giggle
Intel's chime
A vibrating phone
ATM/cash register sounds
National Geographic
MTV
T-Mobile
McDonald's
Star Spangled Banner
State Farm

Please note, 7 of the top ten are human-manufactured sounds. What you're not finding in this list are birds chirping, the ocean surf, or a babbling brook. And what is staggering is that most of these sounds are linked to branded products -- addictive sounds that tend to make us think of these products and/or feel emotionally attached to them. I asked Lindstrom what made a sound addictive. He noted three qualities:

emotional engagement
remembrance/stickyness
the ability to continue to listen to the sound over and over

It occurred to me that these same standards of addictiveness apply across all levels of marketing and communications. Three critical elements we should always be striving toward achieving. Lindstrom just happens to point out that the integration of sounds -- the most powerful of the senses -- into our marketing could very well be a significant turning point in the near future of what makes a marketing message/icon pull better than the competition. So what does this mean for the average, every-day marketer? First, listen to my podcast interview with Martin to get the full picture for yourself. You can buy his book as well: Brand Sense, or his first book Buyology. You can read, listen, and develop your own plan. But I suggest you start with some simple steps:Identify what makes you unique.

Brainstorm ways you can appeal to all the senses of your audience. Don't just work on the visual -- because your logo has oh-s0-little impact in the broader scheme of things.
Create multi-sense experiences at all stages of your marketing stream -- upstream awareness and downstream sales (Buyology has great research in it identifying how Coke rules American Idol brand awareness without even running commercials during the broadcast).
Pilot, test, and improve.

I'd love your feedback on Lindstrom's research and the impact to your marketing -- or the ethics of this as well.

-- David Kinard, PCM

SWITCH -- 3 Myths about Change

2010-03-14T19:49:00.000-07:00

When I last spoke with authors Chip and Dan Heath, they ad just published their first book, Made to Stick. It was an instant success and frankly one of my all time favorite reads. It outlined how marketers/communicators could embed life and memorability into their communications. Now they’ve come back to us with a completely different book – about change. But as I was reading SWITCH, it occurred to me that these two topics aren’t really that different. Listen to the podcast interview is here.

Much of their new book talks about the rider and elephant – the basis for why change fails, what we need to think about when attempting change, and the unique roles each of these two characters play in making change stick.

Their book also takes head on the myths surrounding change and starts to debunk them into three very easy to understand new truths – the Health brothers call them surprises:

What looks like a people problem is really a situation problem.
What looks like laziness is often exhaustion.
What looks like resistance is often a lack of clarity.

While much of what they write about can be easily shelved into the change management slot, or even corporate communications, I think there are some marketing application opportunities here, too. Among the many stories they use to illustrate their book, one great story is the example of how two health researchers were trying to find ways to get people to eat a healthier diet – it’s their 1% milk story.

So, can marketers use the ideas in this book to help them craft their messaging and sell more products or increase usage? Absolutely. Can communicators use the lessons in this book to help communicate change in their organizations? Absolutely – in fact I am already putting into place their ideas for destination postcards.

If you are a marketer or communicator who wants to – and please forgive the term – be a change agent in their work or profession – this interview identifies where you should start. After all, being good at communicating change is the first step to becoming better at leading change.

What are your reactions to the Heath brothers latest book? What did you think of Made to Stick? How are these two books helping you in your marketing and communicating efforts?

-- David Kinard, PCM

How to Change Things -- And Yourself

2010-02-17T22:01:00.000-08:00

I am not one to get all gushy about business books. I read a lot of them on a nearly one-a-week basis because of my podcast interviews with the American Marketing Association. However, I am so pleased to be reading Switch: How to Change Things When Change Is Hard. This is the second book by co-authors and brother writing team Chip and Dan Heath.

Their first book, Made to Stick, was a New York Times bestseller and is a must-read for any communicator of any type -- period.

Okay, so for the gushing...

I am a whole 24 pages into this book and it appears to be another must read. Within the first chapter I've already learned about three surprising elements of change and how to apply them to my advantage.

What looks like resistance is often due to a lack of clarity.
What looks like laziness is often exhaustion.
What looks like a people problem is often a situation problem.

I'll admit, I was surprised at the admittedly simple description of why change fails so often, but equally excited at the opportunity to unlock these ideas in my own work life. And what's even better is that next week I'll be interviewing Chip and Dan about their new book -- the podcast will be posted soon after.

If you have questions you'd like me to ask Chip or Dan, let me know. I'll be happy to include what I can in the podcast interview.

-- David Kinard, PCM

Rethinking about Reorganizing

2010-02-15T09:54:00.000-08:00

Silos block us from thinking in a coordinated fashion about our customers, says author Ranjay Gulati. I had the pleasure of talking with him about his new book Reorganize for Resilience. It's one part common sense and 99 parts practical advice on how to break down silos and focus on integrated solutions that drive customer value.

Specifically, Gulati writes about five levers we can pull to reorganize ourselves for resilience:

Coordination
Cooperation
Clout
Capabilities
Connections

Gulati also said in my interview with him that sometimes customers can't always articulate what they want, but that is where our creative efforts should be. I was struck by this statement in terms of how non profits work to solve problems for people who are often so overcome by their situations that articulation of solutions is beyond their capabilities. The irony, however, is this invaluable skill employed on behalf of the populations served is often lacking when it comes to funders. Funding organizations and peoples have problems too that need to be solved -- albeit different ones. Helping them to articulate their needs in terms of ROI for support is essential in driving up participation and dollar amounts.

What donor problems have you uncovered? What have been your solutions? Did you have to breakdown any organizational silos in your non profit or the donating org to get a solution in place?

-- David Kinard, PCM

Why are You Still Unemployed?

2010-02-11T17:04:00.000-08:00

I need to be careful in this post as I am going through the process of hiring a new team member in my department. But I wanted to give some feedback to those of you who may be unemployed and can't seem to break through to an interview, or even a job offer. And, as always, I'll bring this around to why non profits continue to struggle with their marketing and what they can do to fix it.

First, your resume is your elevator speech. It is your first and last impression. It needs to be packaged to set you apart from all the other noise. For example, I am hiring a graphic designer and we've had more than 40 people apply for this position so far (actually, I think we have more than that -- those are only the resumes I've seen). My first pass was to go through the resumes and remove any resume that wasn't designed. If you can't package your own content, how should I expect you to package my company's content?

While not everyone is applying for a graphic design position -- you are applying for something and trying to sell yourself. How have you packaged your content? How do you stand apart from the rest of the crowd? Are you one of many, or one of one? Non profits have the same issue when it comes to their direct mail and other promotions. Have you packaged yourself in the same envelope, same tri-fold, same flyer as everyone else? How do you stand apart?

Second, in your resume and cover letter you have to make me the subject of your focus. Nearly all the resumes I review are focused on the person. Well, it's the standard convention, right?!? However, occasionally there is one that stands apart because it talks about what you will do for me, what I get from hiring you, what the benefit to me is. Those that make this leap from self-focus to value proposition make the second cut.

Non profits spend a lot of time talking about themselves, the work they do, how important it is, and how good they are at doing it. Yes, that's all fine and well, but so what? At the end of the day there are hundreds of thousands of other companies also performing in a similar fashion and saying the same things. Tell me how your work will improve my life. Tell me how supporting you will benefit me. The value of answering these questions in this way demonstrates you understand your audience and that you can solve their problems or address their needs. Doing so puts you light years ahead of everyone else.

Finally, deliver on the promise. Your resume has been picked and you're scheduled for an interview. An expectation has been set -- by you -- based on the impact and positioning of your resume content. Make sure you meet that expectation, and over deliver against it. Prep, study, learn, absorb. Don't come into the interview cold. Have questions ready, read blogs, search the Web for links, Google the interviewer; whatever you do, don't do nothing!

Non profits who capture the hearts, minds, hands, and pocketbooks of their audiences must also be sure to deliver the experience that target is expecting. Recently I got a group of people together to donate money to a cause that buys livestock for people around the world. The brochure was amazing and I was looking for an equally amazing high once I put in my credit card information and hit the send button. I was less than thrilled with the confirmation screen and follow up since then and am not as jazzed to support them again. Something got lost between the promise, and its delivery.

So, why are you still unemployed? I am sure there are lots of really good reasons. It's a tough economy and a tight job market. I get that. But you need to make sure you're not sabotaging yourself by missing these simple three points.

-- David Kinard, PCM

Go Back and Change Someone's Mind

2010-02-06T09:33:00.000-08:00

I've had the chance to interview Jack Trout three times in my career. The first time I was working to get him to come to Seattle and speak to my chapter of the American Marketing Association. The second time was when we talked about his (then) new book In Search of the Obvious. This time, I spoke with Jack about his latest book -- one that revisits his seminal work of nearly 30 years ago.

While positioning was all about the battle for the mind, Repositioning is about adjusting those perceptions once they've been made. He liberally uses the examples of Mac versus the PC -- how Mac changed the argument from one of technology to the type of person you wanted to be. This is just one of the three keys he mentions: competition, change, and crisis.

Trout spends a lot of time talking about the difference between value and price -- and how they're not the same thing. While that may seem obvious, it isn't common practice. What stirs someone to want to make an investment into a product -- to find that there is something special in that product or service? Trout says it's about repositioning your argument based on what they're telling you.

While this may seem tried and true Trout, you're right. Trout has been selling the same choir book for more than 30 years now, but it is so fundamental and so truly important that the refresh is welcome. While we can learn from history, and other people's mistakes, I think we can also learn from Trout on how to set ourselves apart from the masses, and deeply entrench our value promises in the minds of our audiences.

Specific to non profits, Trout suggests that everything he's written completely relates. He goes one step further to note that not only do non profits need to get really good at what they do, but they also have to be seen as specialists. I can't agree more on these two points. Non profits must be experts at doing what they do, but they also have to be seen as niche experts and leaders -- those practitioners worthy of special consideration and funding.

-- David Kinard, PCM

Going Viral

2010-01-31T21:22:00.000-08:00

Though his book at times reads like a gripping novel, Adam Penenberg has written a roadmap for any marketer wanting to know more about how viral works, how to think viral, and why viral happens the way it does. Penenberg writes from the trenches as he provides the back story on how some of today's most successful viral companies started. But the podcast takes you deeper into how to make viral happen for your company.

Gripping is insufficient to describe Pennenberg's ideas. I am usually pretty good at taking notes while I am interviewing someone, but I was so enthralled in listening I found my notepad relatively blank after our twenty minute discussion. However, here's what I asked Adam -- you can listen to the answers in the podcast interview:

What is a viral loop?
Is this someting you create or something that just happens to you?
What is a viral coefficient and can you use them in real time to predict your viral success?
What is the difference, if any, between stickyness and viral?

And loads more....

-- David Kinard, PCM

How Evolved is Your Marketing?

2009-12-27T19:48:00.000-08:00

What has changed about today's consumer that makes meaningful marketing more relevant than previous types of marketing? What is meaningful marketing? Those are just some of the questions I asked Bob Gilbreath, chief marketing strategist at Bridge Worldwide, one of the nation's largest digital advertising agencies. He's also the author of The Next Evolution of Marketing: Connect with Your Customers by Marketing with Meaning.

In the podcast interview, I asked Bob if the evolution in marketing he writes about has been primarily driven by media consumption or by some other factor. Of course, it's a mixture of things. But after interviewing lots of people like Bob over the past five years, I think that there's a common thread of time-starved people who are controlling their media rather than merely absorbing whatever comes their way. In other words, we're all functioning with a bit of attention-deficit and therefore are looking for media that is going to fill needs rather than just time.

Gilbreath takes the ubiquitous Maslow's hierarchy of needs and transforms it into a new pyramid that is broken into three main categories. At the bottom is Meaningful Solutions -- those marketing efforts that provide information, incentives, and services. One level up is Connections -- those marketing efforts that create entertaining experiences that are shared amongst others, along with the introduction to personalization. Finally, at the top of the pyramid is Achievement -- those marketing efforts that enable a user to learn a skill, improve their community/world, and cause-related marketing efforts.

In essence, Gilbreath's book is about the fact that marketing is evolving to the point where those companies that can improve the lives of their customers through the marketing itself will win out over those companies who simply try to buy usage and loyalty.

What does this mean to the non profit? A whole hell of a lot.

This past November, I received a gift catalog from Heifer International. It was one of the many in the mail but this one stood out amongst the others. Not because they used flashy printing or graphics, but the simple message that communicated it was the most important gift catalog in the world. That catalog became the pivot point for my Christmas giving, enabling me to gather together like minded people who contributed to a joint gift. This gift allowed several of us to make a meaningful contribution to our world -- a far more meaningful use of our money than things wrapped in plastic and cardboard boxes. And, at the end of the purchase experience, Heifer enabled me to share my experience with others (though their system could have been better in this regard).

The point is, I think people are looking for meaning, especially when it comes to their money. So, for the non profit the evolution is not to just rely on traditional direct mail and the annual fundraiser, but to CREATE meaningful experiences for those who flitter around the periphery of your organization, drawing them deeper into the core of your cause, and increasing the meaning at each step (think Gilbreath's hierarchy noted above).

How are you creating meaning in your marketing? Share your story here!

-- David Kinard, PCM

Inbound Marketing -- Move from Megaphone to Hub

2009-11-24T08:23:00.000-08:00

How do you transform a web site from a "one-t0-many" megaphone to a collaborative platform that engages your target community? That's one of the key questions -- and answers -- you'll find in the new book Inbound Marketing by author Brian Halligan, co-founder of Hubspot.com. I recently had the chance to interview him for the AMA podcast (listen here) and he's got a practical and knowledgeable perspective on moving from traditional broadcast marketing to what really works in today's consumer-driven marketplace.

Fundamentally, shopping has changed in the last five years, but many marketers have not yet caught on to this shift. If you look at the online presence for way too many companies, their sites are brochure-ware, listing their stuff in a way that makes sense to them. Even with all the knowledge, research, and consumer input we have at our fingertips today, marketers still are holding fast to the "I've built it so they should come" mantra that drove most of the last thirty years of marketing's efforts.

Today, however, consumer find their preferred products and services through HUBs -- web sites that have lots of ways in and connections to relevant and remarkable content. This is a simple, key difference that Halligan highlights in his book as one key to success. Your web site should have lots of connections (think a major airport versus a small town single-runway airport). Those connections are ways into the site -- whether they be from other flights, or different transportation means (think trains, buses, taxis, consumer-driven cars, etc). The point is there are lots of ways in, and once you're there, you are rewarded with great content.

It used to be said that content is king for the web. After listening to Brian, I think this is still true, but we have lost sight of what makes for good content. He suggests making it REMARKABLE. In other words, content that others will WANT to remark about in their own communication channels, or on your own site. Simply bragging about your stuff doesn't suffice. You may have achieved your keyword density, but you've deprived the reader of the ability to engage in a conversation.

Halligan's book, Inbound Marketing, reads like a user manual for how to generate leads in a world where the marketing rules have changed (see David Meerman Scott for those rules). Halligan provides very specific instructions on how to use popular social media channels, and how to set up your own efforts, measure them, and then try again. It's an easily accessible read for those who are just starting out to those who think they know everything but want a nice refresher.

He's got two pages of resources and tools he likes to use -- but in the interview he suggests using Website Grader to evaluate your site's HUB potential.

If you've read the book, or after listening to the interview, please let me know what you think. I'd enjoy hearing your opinion on Inbound Marketing.

-- David Kinard, PCM

Holiday Travel Takes $4 Billion Hit

2009-11-18T19:38:00.000-08:00

Are you staying home this holiday season? According to a recent poll by Maritz Research Hospitality Group -- you are!

For the past few years, it's been my pleasure to interview Rick Garlick, senior director of consulting and strategic implementation, at Maritz Research. They do an annual poll -- and have done one for a decade now -- about holiday travel plans. Though we have weathered 911, high gas prices, economic sluggishness, and other ailments in the past, it seems that this year these woes have finally taken their toll on Americans and we're staying home, traveling less, and spending less on hospitality this holiday season.

"Holiday travel has been remarkably reslilient," said Garlick. "This year for the first time in a decade we're seeing a drop in travel and spending." And while that drop is only 3%, it equates to a whopping $4.05 billion less spent this holiday season, mostly in airfare. When asked what people are going to do this year, 80% of them said they're going to stay home with family or friends.

Click here to listen to my podcast interview with Rick.

Okay, so what does this mean for your non profit? I asked Rick what marketers should do as they head into the holiday season to mitigate the loss of revenue in the travel and hospitality sector and his advice is OH SO RELEVANT to all of us I thought I'd pass it along to you.

1. Understand what your brand stands for and target a particular type of customer. This seems like common sense, but isn't often common practice. Many non profits try to be all things to all people (especially in their fundraising efforts) and end up communicating a generic, vanilla, and so-so message. Knowing who you are and who you serve means also knowing who you are not and clearly defining and drawing those boundaries. It's okay to say no as a non profit, and the first place we need to say no is in our brands.

2. Add value.
Good advice but this also can be poorly executed. The knee jerk reaction to this means cut prices or lower access costs. Not a good idea -- and most experts agree. Adding value does not always mean reducing costs. It means adding value through HIGH VALUE experiences (read my entries here, here, and here).

3. Be original. (this is my idea, not Rick's)
Jerry Garcia of the Grateful Dead said it best, "You don't want to be considered the best at what you do. You want to be the only one doing what you do." As a non profit are you essential? Are you critical? If you're not there, does another organization just pick up after you or are you so unique and special that important needs go unmet? Work on your compelling, credible, unique contribution and market that year-round. Your essentiality (nice new word, huh!) will help to mitigate any down turn.

Would you add to this list?

-- David Kinard, PCM

How Entitled are You?

2009-10-11T20:49:00.001-07:00

Maybe this has happened to you. It seems to happen a lot to me, or at least I notice it happening. Your standing in line and someone steps in front of you. They take cuts. They don’t ask permission. They simply move in front of you, or try to surreptitiously sneak into the line pretending to be unaware of the discourtesy they’ve just shown everyone around them. Or worse, they just don’t care.

There is a lady at my bus stop. We all arrive about the same time and wait for the bus in an random grouping. When the bus approaches, prospective riders begin to form a line and wait to board the bus. This lady waits until the bus stops and will walk right up to the door and get on, completely ignoring the line. I’ve watched her several times, and can see in her eyes she knows what she’s doing.

I remember once I was at the Orlando airport preparing to return home from a speaking engagement. It was crowded and very busy and we had to take our checked baggage to a special room because the conveyor belt behind the ticket agents had broken. So, there I stood in line and as I approached the front, another traveler walked up and stood next to me, even though there were many people behind me. As we approached the special room, this person moved in front of me and dropped of their bag.

I rarely say anything to these people. It just isn’t that important to me who gets on the bus or drops off their bags first. I figure we’ll all get there and if a person feels the need to disregard everyone else, or feels they’re entitled to something, that’s fine with me. There are more fruitful things to spend my energy on than arguing with someone who feels they need to go first.

But I wonder how many times I feel a sense of entitlement in my life. I don’t have to think hard to remember the many times where I’ve taken rather than asked, when I’ve gone first although I should have waited, or when my pride has convinced me that I deserve something at the expense of someone else.

Today I think I will invite someone to take my place in line, humbly offer my seat on the bus to another, or perhaps give to someone with a generous attitude rather than take from a sense of entitlement. It's something I can do.

-- David Kinard, PCM

What Women (and Non Profits) Want

2009-10-06T11:56:00.000-07:00

I just finished a great podcast interview with Michael Silverstein, senior partner at Boston Consulting Group and coauthor of Women Want More. (Just to wet your whistle, according to Silverstein, women around the world want more of three basic things: Money, Time, and Love -- and they control about $20 trillion in consumer spending world wide.) The podcast will be available soon, but this whole interview got me thinking about what do non profits want.

I think the non profit list is the same: More money, more time, and more love.

For the purists out there, I would agree that the ultimate want is to not be needed anymore, to have the cause or need they are trying to meet actually met. But for the sake of discussion, let's assume that although a superior goal, the means to achieve it is still more money, time, and love.

I don't know any non profit leader that feels they have enough money. And this isn't necessarily a bad thing -- just a fact of the business. Even Josette Sheeran, executive director of the World Food Programme, who is credited with being a remarkably successful fundraiser after raising more than $5 billion in 2008, would like more money. According to Silverstein, Sheeran says that with $10 billion the world could rid itself of hunger. She needs more money.

And most non profits are always looking for more hours in the day to get everything done. Unfortunately, some non profits are not set up to work with volunteers -- there is no system or method for those who want to give their time for the cause to be engaged. But for many, even the 169.7 million hours of volunteer time each year in the US is not enough to meet current needs.

And love...non profits need more love. What I mean by this is that non profits need more people to fall in love with their causes, their goals, and their visions. Some are naturally easier than others to love, but some make it inexplicably hard. Take Oxfam's Trailwalker program, it's designed with engaging people in personal and constructive ways. Quite a contrast to PETA's efforts to stop the clubbing of baby seals. Both are worthy issues, but one generates love, the other divisiveness.

I asked Silverstein what marketers should do if they wanted to genuinely and respectfully meet the needs of women and tap into the trillion dollar female economy. He noted a four step process that I am adapting for non profits. The 4 R's he notes are the same -- I've just changed their focus a bit.

RECOGNIZE the value of your constituents. What value does each category of constituent have for your non profit -- and what value do you offer them in return. Without this fundamental knowledge, you won't know if you're spending your time, energy, and money in the right places.
RESEARCH the satisfaction of your constituents with your organization, and their usability of what you offer. You've got to figure out the degree of relevance and usage barriers for your offerings.
RESPOND to these insights in a respectful and precisely targeted way. Focus your energy to maximize your ability to generate money, time, and love.
REFINE the process based on real time learning and keep it going. Constantly improve. Kaizen!

What do you think non profits want more of? Would you add to the list of three? What else would you suggest non profits do to get started in their efforts to generate more money, time, and love?

-- David Kinard, PCM

The Fall of Fundraising

2009-09-25T08:08:00.000-07:00

I may be the only non profit marketer who is thinking this right now, but I think fall is a horrible time to do fundraising. To be more clear, rather I think it's a horrible idea to wait until fall to do fundraising. In fact, I think it's downright wasteful, irresponsible, and fails to appreciate the relational aspects of generating support for an organization.

As marketers, we know that it would be silly of us to be quiet for nine months of the year and then try to make all our annual sales quota in the last three months. We also know that in order to get consumers to buy our products or services, we need to constantly remind them of our value, our uniqueness, and the big damn difference we can make in their lives or businesses.

But since it's fundraising, let's ignore the simple laws of relationships and marketing and postpone everything until the last minute; 'cause that is the way we've always done it, right?!?!

Don't get me wrong, there's a good reason for our current practice in that many giving organizations will begin evaluating their budgets and see what they have left in terms of dollars to spend. Some may even be looking for some tax benefits. And still others are preparing for the following year so it makes sense to get on their radar screen now. BUT, way too many non profit marketers try to do ALL parts of their fundraising in these last three months. Again, not a good idea.

I will freely admit that I am not an expert in fundraising. Yes, I've generated monies for the organizations I've been involved in, but not to the extent that professional development people have. But I am an expert marketer and I do understand human nature -- and one key element to keep in mind is that fundraising begins at the moment your organization is first introduced to someone and continues until either you close your doors or that person's will is finally executed. Fundraising is a way of being, a way of communicating, a golden thread that must be woven through every communication and interaction with your community. This is not to say that you're always asking for money. On the contrary, what it means is that you're always giving your community reasons for them to see the value in supporting your mission.

Perhaps this fall, as you begin writing your annual ask letter and start your push through the end of 2009, you'll also begin a parallel path of looking at how you can retool your organization's interactions and communications with your community to create reasons for funding, create opportunities to demonstrate value, and communicate your big damn difference in such a way that people come to you with open wallets before you even ask them.

-- David Kinard, PCM

What Are Your 2010 Priorities?

2009-09-21T14:48:00.000-07:00

Believe it or not, we're quickly approaching the telltale time of the year where marketers start peering into their crystal balls and try to predict what's going to happen in the coming year -- or otherwise known as the annual budgeting process. The challenge, however, is knowing what is going to be important, and what should be culled away as chaff.

According to a survey by virtual events provider Unisfair, your priorities are simple: Grow customers (or members), show how smart you are, and serve your customers in richer/fuller ways.

But while marketers may all think those are reasonable priorities, how to achieve those results vary widely. Not surprisingly, all things social media and online continue to drive to the top of the tactic list for most marketers.

But before you go out and plan your online strategy, build your budgets, or even set in stone your own priorities for 2010, ask yourself a simple question -- WHY DO YOU EXIST? And please, don't write the generic answer that's quick and easy to come by. Write a detailed and specific answer, one that defines your reason for being. Then you're ready to ask yourself the burning questions related to 2010 priorities such as:

How do we do this better?
How do we reach people who need what we have?
How do we find resources that match our vision and goals?
How do we engage in dialogue and communication to generate conversations?
How will we know if we made a big-damn-difference at the end of 2010?

Or, you can take the easy path and just do more of what you did this year -- more of the same -- hoping for a different outcomes (isn't that the definition of insanity?).

-- David Kinard, PCM

Making a Big, Damn, Difference

2009-09-20T20:11:00.001-07:00

Recently, I unplugged. I decided to unplug from the socially-networked world and just be quiet. I found myself getting caught up in all the hype and frenetic pace of blogging, twittering, RSS-ing, and Facebooking that I forgot what I was doing there in the first place. You see, I started this blog because I wanted to equip and enable marketers to increase their ability to market for good (and yes, the double entendre is intended). But what I found was that I started posting just to keep up rather than because I had something to say that was important.

Earlier this month, marketing celebrity and pontificater Seth Godin wrote a blog entry entitled The Problem with Non. I think it's safe to say that non profit marketers and leaders got their underpants in a twist over the things he noted. Seth being right or wrong isn't the point of this blog entry. Many have already voiced their opinions to what he said (read here, here, and here). What struck me, and frankly pulled me from my self-imposed social media fasting, was that non profits continue to struggle to find their own voices.

Even in a sea of communications options, and with decades of instruction on how to craft stories, generate dialogue, and connect on an intimate level with communities, most non profits still fail at what I think is the single most important part of what they do -- telling the world why they are the only option for solving the problem they address. Jerry Garcia of the Grateful Dead said it best, "You don't want to be considered the best at what you do. You want to be the only one doing what you're doing." I love that.

To me, it isn't (as Seth notes) that non profits have failed at taking advantage of social media, but that most interactions with non profits are non events in themselves. Godin asks, "When was the last time you had an interaction with a non profit that blew you away?" Sadly, I think the answer is not frequently enough.

YES, there are non profits out there that are changing lives via one, two, or two hundred people at a time. YES, there are non profits that are making a difference in the world by building schools, feeding the hungry, digging wells, and even holding the hand of a lonely person who is on their death bed. YES, there are non profits that are blowing people away on a regular basis. But again, I think those are the exceptions, not the rule.

Finding our voices as non profits isn't about finding the tool to carry it. It's about being unique, being special, being the only ones. It's about making a big-damn-difference and then TELLING and SHOWING how if you weren't there that something huge and important would be lost.

I am ranting, I know. But to me we have an important opportunity right now to do our craft better...to not just accept the mediocrity forced upon us by our tight budgets or lack of resources. We have an opportunity to become the topic, become the solution, and become the voice that is heard from the mountain tops.

Earlier I noted that I took some time off to stop and listen. To unplug. I think that break was refreshing. It reminded me of my own purpose, and got me thinking about how non profits market -- and what we do well and what we fail to do. So, here's to a reenergized season of marketing for good. And while we're on this journey together, let's see if we can become the big-damn-difference we're trying to make in the world.

-- David Kinard, PCM

11 Rules for Today's Marketer

2009-07-12T20:24:00.000-07:00

In today’s competitive world, there are many different beliefs about how to market a product or service. Regardless of approach, however, there are some core concepts that are found in every successful marketing program, effort and plan. By incorporating these traits into your marketing activities, you will increase the effectiveness of your marketing communications.

Commitment: No matter what your produce or service is, a solid commitment to the marketing process is required for success. Fervency, passion, and dedication are all essential.

Investment: Famous author and critic of his day, Mark Twain once wrote that if you can’t afford to advertise, place one last ad saying “Going Out of Business.” Rather than thinking how much you “have to” spend on marketing, consider “what investment” you want to make to ensure your organization’s future.

Consistency: Keeping in front of your customer’s eyes and in their ears ensures you’re also in their minds. Marketing is not effective when it is here today and gone tomorrow. A constant stream of messages increases top of mind consumer awareness.

Quality: Ensure your marketing is top quality. Your ads, newsletters, brochures—whatever you do—sends a message about your organization, product and service. If the visuals are poor, so will be the reader’s perception. Your marketing must confidently go head-to-head with your competitors.

Patience: The rapid rate of technological advancement has tricked us into thinking that our marketing must be an instant and huge success. On the contrary, since our marketing is building a relationship and perception in people’s minds, success comes much more slowly.

Assortment: Effective marketing uses a variety of tools to get the job done. There are many traditional mediums everyone uses, so sometimes doing something a little bit different may provide you the edge you need. Don’t get fooled into believing that one size fits all.

Adaptive: Because our world is changing on a daily basis, so must our marketing efforts. Stay away from the “We’ve always done it that way” mentality and constantly ensure your marketing efforts are focused on today’s customers—not last years.

Convenience: Elaborate and complex marketing programs or efforts tire people out. Make sure your communications or programs are simple and easy for the recipient to use or read. Successful marketing and red-tape don’t mix.

Amazement: Seek to astound, amaze and surprise through your marketing efforts. Today, successful marketing is about differentiating yourself by the experience you provide your customers. Don’t just try to satisfy, but amaze!

Measure: Successful marketing employs clear evaluative tools and check points to measure its efforts. Most everything we do in business has clear goals and evaluation processes tied to it. Measuring our marketing allows us to make course corrections as needed and provides confidence in the investment made.

Change the Rules: Jerry Garcia, formerly of the Grateful Dead, once said, “You don’t want to be the best at what you do. You want to be the only one doing what you’re doing.” When companies compete, they lose their focus on creating and delivering value for their customers. Instead, their focus is on the competition. Make sure your company’s focus is on providing value, not trying to beat the competition.

These are my rules. What rules would you add? For more rules, listen to my interview with David Meerman Scott, author of the New Rules of Marketing and PR...he's got some ideas on what rules we should be following today. I'd love to hear what rules you're trying to follow and live by.

-- David Kinard, PCM

What to do with New Community Members

2009-07-09T09:06:00.000-07:00

Every year a lot of time, energy and money is put into acquiring new members for associations and member communities. And it usually pays off with growth on the membership rosters. But when all these new members arrive, it is equally important that the organization, and any regional or local outlets, engage these new members and deliver on the promise of value and community that originally attracted the new member.

While retention is important during the entire course of a person’s or company’s membership, here are some suggestions on things you can do to transform new members into champions for your organization within the first three months.

To Begin With:

Make sure your organization has at least one person at the local level whose sole job is to welcome new members. This person should be highly social, love picking up the phone and calling people, and is highly informed and well networked in the community to be able to connect and introduce new members to other like-minded members.

Within 24 hours of acquiring a new member via online channel:

The organization's leading spokesperson (e.g. president, administrator, chief voice, etc) should send a personal email welcoming the individual to the community, outline where to find more information, who to contact with questions, tell them what to expect to happen in the next few weeks, AND MOST IMPORTANTLY give the person something to do to engage with the community right away.

Within one week of notification of acquiring a new member:

If the new member joined through an offline channel, the same process is followed as noted above for an online membership. This can be done via a small card welcoming the new member. Be sure to invite the new member to the next meeting (online or offline), and include the leader's business card in the greeting so the new member can start to develop their own network.

Within one month of acquiring a new member:

A phone call by your membership coordinator is helpful to fully connect the new member to all that your organization has to offer. This is the chance to answer any questions the new member may have, ensure they know about upcoming events, information, the organization's website, etc.

If you hold regular offline meetings:

Make sure to highlight any new members you may have at each meeting. You can do this in two ways:

Have new members wear a special sticker on their name badge or their lapel. This will help identify them to any board members as VIPs who deserve a special welcome and handshake.
Have a board member sit next to a new member and introduce them during the meeting announcements. This allows the spotlight to shine upon them without the new member feeling pressure to talk at their first meeting.
Have the president invite a few new members to sit at his/her meeting table as special guests.
Be sure to have plenty of membership applications at each table for non-members to use as they see how well you treat new members.

Within three months of acquiring a new member:

Call the new member back and see how things are going. Help answer any remaining questions they may have, encourage them to participate in programs, and highlight any volunteer opportunities that may be available. Pass their name on to your volunteer coordinator for follow up (and if you don't have one, just think of what might happen if you did).

Other ways you can help make new members feel welcome:

Host a new member orientation -- this works online as well as offline. Personally invite new members.
Prepare and distribute new member packets that provide reference information, contact information and other important facts about your organization.
Create a buddy system pairing new members to more seasoned members. The more seasoned member is responsible for helping that new member for the year (inviting them to every meeting, introducing them to others, calling for mid-year check ups, getting them plugged into volunteer opportunities).
Give them something to do. Having new members become engaged through short-term, quick volunteer opportunities is an easy way to helping them take ownership in their membership, and the local group.
Highlight new members on your web site. Put a photo up and list their contact information.
Highlight new members in your newsletter with a photo, bio, etc.
Send a recognition or thank you letter to their employer and copy them on it.
Send a press release to local newspapers highlighting new members, copy the new member on it.
Hold special new member meet-and-greet events.
Pay attention if a new member isn’t participating...contact them and let them know they’re missed.

What else would you add to this list? What has worked for you in the past? What's working for you now?

-- David Kinard, PCM

Customer Service vs Customer Orientation

2009-07-05T20:04:00.000-07:00

If you review the titles of customer service representatives in companies today, you’ll find some real gems: Customer Advocate, Customer Care Representative, and Customer Champion are some of my favorites. These position titles rank high on my list because I think they’re great identifiers of how companies are set up to systematically abuse and mistreat their customers.

Yes, you read it right. All too often our businesses are designed not from a customer-service perspective, but from a company-service perspective. This in mind, it is no surprise then that businesses today need advocates and champions for their customers—employees who are, by nature of their title, charged to do battle with the company on behalf of the customer.

A study a few years ago of customers that stopped doing business with a company cited the top reasons why those customers left. The number one reason, beating out all the others combined was an attitude of indifference by employees or staff. 68% of the customers who defected said they were tired of being treated like a number, or a non-person. More than two-thirds of customers said they were tired of being ignored.

This statistic has some hardcore bottom line lessons for us. If the standard statistic is true—that it takes at least five times more to obtain a new customer than to keep an existing one—businesses today are wasting billions of dollars by the simple act of not caring for their current customer base. Believe it or not, but the situation is actually worse than that. Companies today are doubling their losses by losing existing customers due to an attitude of indifference AND by spending more money to acquire new customers into a system that doesn’t work—a system that will ultimately abuse those new customers too!

Ironically enough, the solution is rather simple. Organize and design the business to meet the needs of the customer. Peter Drucker once said that “marketing is so basic that it cannot be considered a separate function. It is the whole business seen from the point of view of its final result, that is, from the customer’s point of view….Business success is not determined by the producer, but by the customer.”

Bottom line business success is achieved through sustainable customer success. To help your customers become successful, the solution begins with taking one step to change a policy or procedure that, from the customers’ perspective, is cumbersome and alienating. It's the difference between offering customer service to being customer-oriented. Service suggests you need to offer a guide to understand your rules, policies, and bureaucracy. Orientation suggests your entire organization is designed around providing customer value and removing anything and everything that stands in the way of that goal.

As you consider your own company, what feedback have you heard from your customers about how your business is set up? What would they change if they had a voice? If you don’t know, take some time this week and call five of your top customers and ask them these two simple questions: “What are the ways that we make it easy for you to be our customer?” and “In what ways do we make it difficult to be our customer?

-- David Kinard, PCM

[photo credit: Pete Blackshaw]

What Brand are You?

2009-07-05T16:05:00.000-07:00

A lot of mileage has come out of the concept of turning ourselves into brands. And for good reason. The idea that we can transform ourselves from marketplace automatons into vibrant, passionate and focused super-doers has a lot of energy around it. In fact, so much energy that more and more people today are heeding the call to brand themselves.

But what is a brand and how do I become one?

While there are many definitions, I have always like this one the best: A brand is a promise held in the mind of a consumer of an individualized, personal and consistent experience from a product, person, or organization. In other words, a brand says, “You can count on me. I am dependable, and will meet needs that no one else can. I am unique and special, and that there is no one out there like me.”

Key to understanding the power of a personal brand is understanding four aspects of the above definition.

Experience—brands are not icons, names or the product or service. They are the experience someone has using that product or service, or engaging with that person.
Individualized and Personal—great brands connect to people in ways that are unique to each person. They’re intimate, emotional, and special.
Consistent—strong brands can be counted on to deliver the same experience over and over again. Consistency in delivering a good experience drives loyalty.
Promise—likely the most important part of the equation, brands are promises made by the provider of the type of experience the user will receive. Promises are commitments and consistent delivery on the brand promise increases trust – the number one factor of any brand’s success.

With all this in mind, it isn’t hard to see how we can turn ourselves into brands. Think of people who have become brands—Oprah, Martha Stewart, Michael Jordan, Richard Branson, Jerry Garcia, Elvis, Madonna,…and the list goes on. These individuals actualized their potential to deliver an individualized, personal and consistent experience to the world.

But you don’t have to wait until you’re rich and famous to be a brand. You can start wherever you are by simply changing your mindset from employee to owner, resident to citizen, follower to leader. Becoming a brand means you become CEO of your life and contribution. You turn yourself into ME, Inc., and consistently deliver on the promise of you.

Keith Wyche, president of Pitney Bowes Operations, created an incredible chart which helps to outline three critical elements of a personal brand. He calls it his PEP model: Perception, Exposure, Performance. I interviewed Keith awhile back on my radio program. You can listen to the interview here.

I also interviewed Sherri Thomas, author of 5 Steps to a Powerful Personal Brand. In her interview, she offers specific strategies to move forward in your career by building your personal brand.

Both Sherri and Keith will provide you some excellent ideas on how to build and develop your own personal brand.

-- David Kinard, PCM

22 Ideas to Help Grow and Retain Your Association’s Membership

2009-06-27T19:23:00.000-07:00

I am a big believer in creating member communities around causes. There is so much evidence to suggest that creating a groundswell and affinity around an issue is likely the most powerful way to accomplish significant change. Many associations and member communities today, despite their origins, lack the vitality and activities to keep people interested and engaged in their causes. Here are 22 simple, low-tech, and powerful things you can do to grow and retain your community members.

Featured member profiles

Create a book profiling members and how the association has helped them. Treat this like a newspaper or magazine article. Use member photos, highlight their current employment situations, their accomplishments and credentials, and why they became members of the association. Make sure to focus on how they are better because of their membership. Include contact information for those people so that readers can reach them with questions.

Pre-program slideshows

Create a PowerPoint or other type of computerized slideshow that runs before each and every program you offer. This is a background item that people can watch or read at their leisure before a program or during a networking time. It also helps people see who is who if you have photos of members with their names (e.g., group shots, board members). Have some music playing in the background and put the show on repeat so that it runs by itself. Although the length of a show will vary, try to have enough slides so that the show only repeats twice. Make sure you have someone handy with a digital camera during each program taking pictures for the next slideshow.

Featured benefit: In each printed publication put a special box that regularly highlights a member benefit.

You likely send out many different types of communications to your membership and prospects each month. In all your communications, whether they be print, electronic or broadcast (voicemails, multimedia) make sure to highlight a specific benefit of membership. Make the benefit quantifiable in some way, perhaps through a statistic or a testimonial from a member. The greatest impact of this practice happens over time by limiting yourself to one benefit in each communication and frequently varying which benefit you highlight.

On various pages of your website, have spots that highlight specific member benefits. Rotate these frequently.

Just as you want to have specific membership benefits highlighted in your publications, so too should you have specific benefits highlighted throughout your website. Listing them in one place is a good idea. But it is also a good idea to weave them throughout your web pages. This helps to remind visitors to your site about key advantages they might have if there were members.

For each new membership application received on a specific program day, provide a free audio CD of the speaker/program. Or send out other special audio CDs to new members as a gift.

This is an inexpensive way of providing an incentive for taking immediate action. If a prospect is enjoying the day’s program, and you couple that experience with targeted reasons (benefits) to join, the free audio CD can provide an added reason to join. You can also provide a “free gift with membership” to new members by giving them an audio CD of a different program you’ve offered. No matter what program you provide them on CD, make sure it is something that has real and lasting value. You want to make this something that they’re going to want to listen to again and again, or perhaps share with a friend. Make sure to label the CD with your association’s name and contact information, and put a short commercial in the CD as well.

Send birthday cards to members.

One reason why people join associations is for the affinity benefit. People join communities because they feel good when they are recognized and remembered. Many member applications ask for birthdates (or at least they should – month and date only, no year). Capture this information and put it into your database. Then, on a regular basis, send members birthday cards with a handwritten note or signature. People will be amazed you remembered – especially when others did not!

Send anniversary cards to members on their renewal dates.

Each year members receive their renewal notices and a request for money from the association. Anniversary cards are a nice way of recognizing and honoring those members who have demonstrated loyalty to the association. Celebrate the first, third, fifth, seventh, tenth, fifteenth, and every fifth year after that. Honor these people by adding a ribbon to their nametags, sending cards, or putting their names in the newsletter. Basically, do anything that recognizes them and says “thank you.”

Staff a resource/information table.

Many associations have a display table at their programs. This table has information on it that people can go to and get if they want it. But many of these tables are stuck in the back corner with no one staffing them. Keeping the table is a good idea and making sure it is full of current and targeted information is imperative. Putting this table in the way of traffic is an even better idea, and having some of your most outgoing people staff this table creates a powerful tool for capturing new members and reinforcing the value proposition to existing members. Make sure the table staff do not get into social conversations. Their job is to provide information, make connections for people and help answer questions.

Have greeters/ambassadors at every meeting.

Many visitors to your association’s meetings may feel a sense of anxiety or discomfort if they don’t know anyone or are unsure as to how things work. They may not know where to sit or know anyone to talk to. Having a greeter at the door who shakes hands with everyone in a warm and friendly manner and notices visitors is a great way to help people feel welcome. When visitors do come through the line, they are immediately matched to an association ambassador (who is waiting nearby). This ambassador can walk them through the room, introduce them to people, and sit by them during the program. This ambassador is also prepared with a membership packet and is well versed on why membership is of value. Spending time with the visitor to answer questions and even guide them through completing the membership application can have a positive and immediate impact on membership growth.

Personal notes/cards

There are few things that help to make prospects and new members feel more welcome than a personal note or card from an association or chapter president. A handwritten card with a few welcoming words can go a long way toward helping to increase member engagement and loyalty. Sending cards on a monthly basis to new and renewing members is one way to help members feel that they’re important, they matter, and they’re more than just a number to the association.

Phone-a-thons

Yes, they’re popular again, and rightfully so. Calling people on the phone to let them know you’re thinking about them and their future is a very positive way of growing and keeping your membership. Phone-a-thons should be staffed by members who really understand the value of the association’s benefits and have a personal story they can tell about how the association has benefited them. This type of activity works well for recruiting members and getting members to renew. These don’t have to be big to make an impact, either. Having a group of ten volunteers make 10 calls month each means you’re hitting at least 100 people each month – 1200 people a year.

Advertise calendar in local papers.

Most local newspapers have some type of community calendar section. Your association’s meetings for the month/week should be sent to the calendar editor of the local print media approximately two weeks in advance of the meeting date or the publication date.

Send out press releases to companies.

Unless your program or association activities are really “news”-worthy, most local media are not going to pick up the story. But that doesn’t mean you can’t send out press releases. Just send them to local area businesses instead. You’ll want to have a list of actual prospect names to send information to, and you’ll want to write each press release to be enticing: o one is going to care that a new board was elected, but someone will care if that new board has a plan to help the person advance his or her career. Try to limit press releases to once a month or quarterly. If you send them out too frequently, they’ll lose their impact.

Give a commercial to new members and make them really big stars for a day.

At each meeting, celebrate new members by having them stand and be recognized. You can even offer them a self-promoting, 30-second commercial as they introduce themselves. This is a great way to help them engage with their new membership community and also network, promote their business, or look for an employment opportunity. You can also have them write two or three sentences about themselves and put this information on your website or newsletter. This is also a great way to “celebrate” anniversary members.

Hold prospective member orientations.

Many times a regular member meeting is not the best place to help prospects or visitors learn everything they need to know about your association. Holding a separate prospective member or new member orientation is a positive way to recruit and retain. You can have these orientations just prior to your regular meeting (not after – people want to go home or back to work), or on a separate day. Make sure to show the value of membership, identify all the different benefits and how to use them for maximum results, and make it fun by allowing people to network with one another and make new friends.

Create specific, national and local value.

Every association that has a national organization and local or regional groups has the challenge of integrating the value from each level and helping members engage with that value. The national organization has to think about the big picture credibility and brand recognition of the association – and it can often provide bigger value items that are difficult for the smaller, local groups to generate. At the same time, local groups must provide value specific to their areas. Neither can survive without the other, and neither can survive by relying on the other to create and deliver value to members. Both must participate. Both must offer a value proposition. Both must engage the members in an integrated manner.

“Every Member One Member” local level contest

This contest is known by many names, but its purpose is the same. Each member is charged with getting just one new member during a specific time period. Hold this contest two times each year for a 45-day period (have one contest period just before your national convention). Give prizes and recognition to those members who achieve the goal of bringing in one new member – and give over-the-top recognition to those members who bring in more than one new member. Prizes and awards are always a good idea, but be sure to recognize everyone. Even be sure to recognize the new members. One way is to have their nametag say “PERSON told me about ASSOCIATION NAME!”

Create special business cards with coupons for boards.

It isn’t expensive these days to have business cards created for board members, and the payoff can be significant. Not only does this get your association’s name even further into the marketplace, but it also helps prospects and new members connect names with the association. This is also a great networking tool for board members who are in the community. When the topic of the association comes up, they can use their association- business card to encourage follow-up.

Put ads in your own newsletter.

Most associations have some type of newsletter, whether it is electronic or print. However, many associations will write an article about their news items or events when an advertisement will do the job much better. Don’t limit advertising to your sponsors or vendors; use this space to create ads that promote your events, programs or benefits of membership.

Partner, and participate in all national/local activities.

There is no doubt that local associations rely on their national organizations to some degree for credibility, infrastructure and member benefits. In the same manner, the national organization relies on the local groups to convey information and provide local support for its efforts. Unfortunately, however, some organizations fail to communicate with one another and each is left not knowing what the other is doing. It is important not just to inform, but also to create partnerships between the national and local bodies. This provides prospective and current members, the media and the community a unified voice for the association’s vision. And it engages the best each group offers for dynamic and powerful efforts.

Link sponsorships to membership.

Many associations promote the importance of members buying from and working with other members. This is a good message to send to sponsors and vendors as well. Where it is appropriate, tie in memberships to sponsorship agreements. This has a two-fold benefit. First, it can increase the value of your sponsorship benefits package (thus increasing your request value). Second, it grows your membership.

Single-shot volunteerism opportunities.

Volunteerism in associations is likely the most important factor when it comes to member retention and satisfaction levels. Associations are unique in that members have to both pay and work for their membership value. Providing members with meaningful service opportunities is a great way for them to find deep value in their association. “Meaningful” is the key word, though. Don’t limit yourself to static committees and long-term positions. Create short, single-shot service opportunities. Someone to pick up a speaker from the airport, and someone to drive him back. Someone to stuff envelopes next Tuesday. Someone to staff the registration desk this month. Someone to work on a task force or lead a focus group. There are often people in an association who are willing to help out but never get asked, or never see the right fit for them. So when you run out of ideas, ask your members what they’d be willing to do and let them at it.

-- David Kinard, PCM

[photo credit: DPM2/Flickr]

Exiting With Grace: On Becoming a Non-Leader

2009-06-27T19:13:00.000-07:00

Possibly one of the most challenging aspects of being a leader is letting go of the organization, group, or community you’ve worked hard to build and trust it into the hands of a new leader or board. For some, this is akin to giving up a child – a baby they’ve been nurturing and watching grow for a whole year. For others, just the opposite, they can’t wait to be rid of their mantle of responsibility.

At each spectrum, and everywhere in between, leaders can do a lot for themselves and their successors if they keep a few things in mind.

LEAVE A LEGACY

Often the last impression we leave with someone is permanent, and can outweigh previous ones. In a recent discussion with an outgoing association president, I talked with her about some challenges she was having with the incoming president being too “change-oriented.” This president felt as if all her efforts and hard work were going to be pushed aside and replaced by the incoming president’s new agenda.

My only comment to this president was to focus on the IT – what was best for the association and think about how she wanted to be remembered. He could finish her tenure with dignity, professionalism and enthusiasm – just as she began it. Or, she could finish it with bitterness, discord and ultimately damage her credibility.

When preparing to leave your leadership role, ask yourself this question, “If you were to receive a marble plaque that is laser engraved with a description of how you began, operated and ended your tenure as a leader – what would you want it to say?” Blogger Jocelyn Harmon writes succinctly about this in Writing Your Organizational Epitaph.

A LEADERS JOB IS TO BUILD OTHERS

As outgoing leader you have both the opportunity to leave a legacy for others to consider and work from, and you have the opportunity to set the incoming leaders up for success. A leader’s job is to build the character and competence of those he or she serves. Your last job as a leader is not only to say thank you to the people who supported you as a leader, but also to ensure that you do everything possible to prepare the way for the next season of leadership.

Thomas Carlyle, the famed historical author wrote, “Tell a person they are brave and you help them become so.” As you prepare to leave, don’t forget to prepare those who will follow. Make sure you equip your incoming leaders with as much information, tools, resources and wisdom that they’ll need to make the next season a banner one for them and the people they serve.

BE A MENTOR, NOT A MANAGER

As you transition to your new role of former leader, your job will likely become one of being rather than doing. I like to compare this season of involvement similar to being a grandparent. All the fun and none of the responsibility my in-laws describe it as they play with my children. As you engage as a former leader, you get to enjoy the privilege of being a mentor and coach. Your role is not to manage the president or new volunteers, and give direction. Rather your job is to offer advice, counsel and provide a sounding board to the new leaders as they face their own issues in leadership.

Finally, as an outgoing leader you have the wonderful opportunity to celebrate. Make sure to take time to celebrate all the work that was accomplished throughout – even the small things. Leading is hard and rewarding work. Be sure not to sell your accomplishments short by forgetting to rejoice in them.

What sorts of ways have you seen leaders effectively pass the torch to others? Share those examples here!

-- David Kinard, PCM

Showcasing Marketing ROI

2009-06-15T08:10:00.000-07:00

One of my favorite non profit marketing bloggers, Nancy E. Schwartz, was recently asked a question on her blog from a reader who wanted some professional help in creating a strategy for her declining organization. Like Nancy, I’ve been asked the same question myself many times and I was interested to see how she would answer.

Her 6 Steps to Showcasing Marketing ROI are below:

Stop asking marketing firms to call your decision makers and stop passing on firm materials as well.
Build understanding of what marketing is and the value that it will bring to the Council — and, most importantly, what the Council will lose if it continues without strategic marketing.
Come to the table with a succinct plan including a budget.
As you implement your initial marketing project, keep management and board posted on progress.
Serve as an ongoing marketing mentor to your management and board.
Once you have one or two successful marketing projects under your belt, then it’s time to develop a comprehensive marketing plan, derived from the Council’s goals.

Nancy is spot on and I suggest you read her entire column. However, I think there is a critical element that needs more emphasis. The biggest problem marketers face today from the Board or C-level suite is not a lack of funding or support but rather their own inability to connect marketing to the strategy of the business and demonstrate top- and bottom-line impact. In other words, marketers continue to run programs, campaigns, and tactics that spend money and create a flurry of activity, but those efforts are not linked to the things that are important to the CEO, Executive Director, or even the Board.

I’ve been marketing for more than 20 years and I’ve never run into a CEO that turned down a good investment in growing the business. But I consistently see CEOs turn down marketing plans that fail to demonstrate ROI. And the ROI I am talking about is NOT on how many calls were generated, or how many column inches were earned in the media, or even how many brochures were mailed out. Those are all activities and related to expenses. They’re not results. What the executive leadership wants to know is did you move the needle on the dial that is important to them. Those dials could include:

New member acquisition
Member retention/churn
Brand loyalty as an indicator of referrals
Income generated from fundraising
Number of new donors
Number of recurring donors
% of fundraising to donor base and change from effort
Share of wallet for donors

And we marketers must be better at financially analyzing the impact of our marketing efforts. It isn’t that we run a marketing campaign and say we spent $5,000 and generated 108 new enrollments. We need to know what the cost per new enrollment is, how one campaign performs against others, and what campaigns are more profitable and contribute to the margin.

Good for Nancy for identifying her top six steps. Good for her reader for asking what she could do better. And good for you if you begin to think in terms of investments from the perspective of the C-level suite.

But, what else would you add to the list of six from Nancy? Would you have a different list? And what is keeping you, or marketing, from getting the support from your executives?

-- David Kinard, PCM

[photo: Gavoon Products]

A New Speak to Get Peoples' Attention

2009-06-04T13:06:00.001-07:00

Well, I am embarrased that it's been nearly a months since my last post. Honestly, I've been sooooo busy doing the work that it's been difficult to find time to write about the work. That's good, I suppose, but I still want to fulfill my mission for this blog and increase your ability to market for good.

I have a backlog of things to write about but one thing that recently came across my radar screen was a podcast Currence and Associates. The podcast is an early glimpse into the AMA's Non Profit Marketing Conference.

As someone who has been marketing non profits for decades, I find Cynthia's comments spot on. Not only does she understand the history of where non profits have been, and what's worked, but she is savvy enough to know that things have changed and new rules are in play. The podcast is a worthy use of 18-minutes of your time.

Something that specifically caught my attention was what Cynthia said, that we need "a new speak to get peoples' attention." In my own work recently, we've been hit by a deluge of sponsorship requests by very worthy organizations. And many of these organizations, unfortunately, have approached us for funding with the message that, "You've been a loyal sponsor for many years and we continue to rely upon your support." While that may be true for the past, it does not take into account the realities of today's market demands.

No longer can non profits rely on the "it's the right thing to do" approach when seeking support. In my position I am responsible for top line revenue generation and bottom-line impact. I have to show a return on all my marketing investments (ROMI), and those organizations that get my attention are the ones that use a new speak -- not relying on the old approach but DEMONSTRATE to me how sponsoring them will improve my business.

This is a new skill -- this new speak -- that must be learned by non profits. And the risk, according to Currence, is not just financial, "but that the penalty is going to be a loss in trust, a loss in brand credibility, and that will have an impact in volunteerism, money, and advocacy -- it is the most far reaching damage that can occur."

If you want to learn more about the AMA Foundation Non Profit Marketing Conference in Chicago, IL, click here.

-- David Kinard, PCM

Online Community Management -- Weaving the Golden Thread

2009-05-18T13:05:00.000-07:00

In a post from January 2009, Tom Humbarger wrote about what happened to the professional online community he was managing when he got laid off and the community was left on its own.

Tom writes,

Durng the time of my involvement, active community management and consisted of:
delivery of bi-weekly email update newsletters
production of monthly webcasts
active blog posting and blogger outreach
uploading of fresh content each week
continual promotion of the community in various forums through guerilla marketing
ongoing brainstorming and strategizing with respect to improving the community experience
priming of discussion forums, and
ongoing communications with individual community members

It’s interesting to discover that a neglected community will indeed continue to function without a dedicated community manager. However, the results are lackluster and the picture are not ‘pretty’.

Reading the comments below Tom's post made me wonder about the philosophy behind community management. Some suggested that the end goal should be to create communities that do NOT need management. I believe this is a wholly bad idea.

Think of it this way. I like going to the movies. I like watching movies. I am going to invite a bunch of friends, neighbors, and anyone else for that matter over to my house to watch and talk about movies. I'll get the TV ready, DVD player all set up, have a variety of movies to choose from, make snacks, and even ensure there is plenty of seating and that newcomers know what to do and who is who.

So, people start coming over, there are the regulars and a lot of people who are intermittent in their visits. After a year, I decide that the movie watching and discussion events can still happen at my house, but I won't be there anymore. Sure, the event can still function as it always did, but that golden thread that wove everything together -- content, people, familiarity, continuity, maintenance, individualization -- all those things are now fragmented and forgotten.

The role of online community manager is far more than just content publishing and functional oversight. It is hospitality incarnate. It is an essential and consistent human element ensuring that all the pieces fit together. To equate it with a short-term facilitator, believing that the truest measure of an online community's viability is its ability to thrive on its own, goes against every successful community (on or offline) that's ever existed. In this case, community engagement is the same online as it is offline -- the rules are basically the same, it's just the medium that's changed.

What do you think? Am I totally on to something here or way out in left field?

-- David Kinard, PCM

[photo credit: HyperLocalEdge]

Social Media Podcasts Now Available

2009-05-14T20:04:00.000-07:00

If you haven't had a chance to stop by my Web site lately, you might want to. I've just uploaded new Podcast interviews that are going to help you with your social media strategy.

I recently spoke with Joel Comm, author of Twitter Power. We talk about how marketers can use Twitter as a marketing and business intelligence tool. It's now obvious that Twitter is no longer just a way for people to share what they're doing in 140-characters or less. Today, Twitter can be a real-time optic into consumer behavior, a trending tool, and is even used as a customer service channel.

Also new to my site are interviews with Justin Smith, author of The Facebook Marketing Bible, and Harry Gold of Overdrive Media. Both highly practical and tactical interviews.

-- David Kinard, PCM

Study Shows Nonprofit Websites Still Suck

2009-05-03T21:06:00.000-07:00

There has been a tremendous amount of emphasis on online and technology-driven marketing for the past five years it is understandable that with the onslaught of new tools it has been difficult for some marketers to keep up the frenetic adoption pace of consumers. Sure, changing organizational cultures, breaking through bureaucratic red tape, and convincing an out-of-touch top management is difficult. But what disturbs me is the continuing neglect of the online touchpoint by most nonprofits.

Recently, at the Nonprofit Technology Conference (no, I didn’t go, but I heard it was great), ForeSee Results presented the results from their study on Trends in Constituent Satisfaction with Nonprofit Websites. Three key things stood out from their findings that make me want to scream and shout:

Nonprofits have plenty of room for improvement when it comes to online customer satisfaction.
Satisfaction is predictive of future behaviors important to nonprofits.
Key areas of improvement for nonprofit websites, in general, are sites’ functionality and the expression of the organization’s image online.

Too often nonprofits think they can get by with sub-par work and a mediocre online presence. Unfortunately, they are judged by the same standards as their for-profit counterparts by a tech-savvy marketplace. As for those who think that their online presence is just not a priority, the ForeSee study found that investing in a website has a direct link to increases in satisfaction, donations, volunteerism, and recommendations.

In fact, a highly satisfied visitor to a nonprofit website is:

• 49% more likely to donate
• 38% more likely to volunteer
• 57% more likely to have a favorable overall impression of the organization
• 65% more likely to recommend the site to others
• 55% more likely to return to the site

The study found key areas of improvement to be the site’s functionality and the expression of the organization’s image. In other words, the site needs to be easy to use, clear pathways to content need to be present, and the site must effectively bridge the space between on and offline ensuring the emotional aspects of the mission are not digitally lost.

There is just too much good information out there on how to build and manage a contemporary site to allow bad sites to last beyond 2009. Make it your priority this year to move your organization’s web presence to the next level. And for starters, get the ForeSee report – it’s free and it will give you ideas on where to start.

-- David Kinard, PCM

Blockbuster Marketing

2009-04-25T10:59:00.000-07:00

In anticipation of the summer blockbuster movie season, trailers have been playing for quite awhile now. The biggest stars, the biggest budgets, the most thrilling, action-packed, and special effects laden shows will all coalesce into a few short months vying for our dollars, our attention, and our word-of-mouth advertising.

I’ll freely admit, I love movies. I love going to the movies. And I especially love movie trailers. They are usually the best parts of the movie, carefully edited and packaged to create the most excitement and anticipation for the film. And, usually, it works.

I was thinking about the marketing we do for non profits, and how we could take a page from what Hollywood is doing.

1. Direct Appeal
Rarely do you watch a movie trailer and not get a pretty good idea as to what that movie is all about. It’s typically pretty clear if the movie is designed to scare you, make you laugh or cry, if it is going to be an action-packed romp, or a thriller that keeps you guessing till the last minute. And, typically, you as an audience member immediately know if that is something you want to see.

2. Emotionally Engaging
All movies trailers are designed to engage us emotionally. Execs know that emotions are at the heart of our purchase decisions and that our brains are wired to remember and recall things from an emotional perspective. Trailers engage us at the deepest core of who we are, what we believe, what our triggers are, and even how we want to feel about things.

3. Integrated Messaging
Movie trailers, posters, advertisements – online or offline – all use an integrated approach. First and foremost they try to keep the emotional connection built from the trailer in all their materials. Messaging is designed to tell a story and as you experience various mediums you get various parts of the same story. Typically there is no disconnect between any of the mediums used to promote a movie.

4. Adaptability
When a movie trailer is launched to the public, the messaging and promotional materials have usually been tested, either by using prior stats on similar successes, or by using focus groups and audience panel feedback. But after the launch, as a wider audience reacts to the upcoming movie, sometimes the message is modified to respond to critics or acclaim. The ability to quickly adapt to audience response is critical to the success of a movie launch.

5. Staged Roll Out
Movies are stories and as the time for the movie’s premiere date, more parts of the story are typically released to the target audience. This helps to maintain interest and momentum going into opening weekend as trailers can be in theaters as much as a year prior to the release of the film. Keeping audiences engaged for that time take a thoughtful roll out of the various story elements.

Okay, so as we think through our own marketing, one challenge for us is to think like a movie producer and find ways to tell an engaging story in stages. As we reveal threads of our story, we can do so by integrating different channels into the mix, and work to ensure our consistent message remains adaptable as we receive feedback. The whole goal here is to build anticipation, excitement, and word-of-mouth buzz for our premiere. And, as we get acclaim after the launch, we immediately tie that into our messaging.

I don’t think there’s any reason to wait for an event to start adding some of these elements into your marketing. So, why not try integrating these ideas into your existing marketing programs and see if you can’t create some blockbuster marketing of your own.

I’d love to hear how things work out if you try this approach. And, if you think I’ve missed an important element, let me know so others can consider adding it into their mix as well.

And, this summer, I'll see YOU at the movies!

-- David Kinard, PCM

Tough Times Marketing: 3 Things to Do Now

2009-04-20T16:58:00.000-07:00

I ran across some notes from my interview with Martin Lindstrom, author of the fascinating book Buy*ology. Martin did some breakthrough work in studying how the brain reacts to marketing messages and how some messages bypass our filters and directly influence what we do, and what we believe. You can listen to the interview here.

I remember asking Martin what a marketer could do TODAY to get frugal buyers to let loose of their purse strings. Whether you’re a local supermarket, non profit shelter feeding the homeless, or a retail store in the mall, Martin’s advice applies.

Link to Something.

Our brains are desperate to make meaning out of the world. It’s hard to store independent information, and nearly everything our brain does has an emotional component to it. Thus, linking your message or marketing event to something already going on creates meaning to the recipient. The most common links are to holidays, anniversaries, or seasonal events. But you don’t have to be so obvious. The goal is to add a meaningful link to the marketing message, so while you’re being creative in your efforts, just keep in mind that obscure links won’t help.

Be provocative.

Let me be candid here. Way too much of what marketing produces is bland, vanilla, and wordsmithed so as not to offend anyone. If that describes you, then you’ve lost your ability to competitively position your product or service. Being provocative doesn’t mean you have to sell skin, sex, and the naughty – it does mean you have to take a stand and be willing to make a claim. In a study done by Doug Hall, he found that messages which were overt and obvious had a 75% increase in their success rate. So, what can you say or do that will make your message stand out (again, with meaning) and cause someone to undoubtedly know what your point is?

Create a semantic marker.

Linking the prior two items together, semantic markers indicate the relationship between statements. Think of it as a mental pivot point: in contrast, thus, because, however, as a result, and furthermore are all common examples of semantic markers. So, in your messaging semantic markers force you to not only make your statement, but think of the outcome or result. I like to think of this as asking what is the outcome of the outcome. Sure your product does X, but what does X get me? If your product saves time, then what can I do with that extra time? Just make sure your semantic markers are about me, not you or your product. I don’t care that your service is faster than the competition – I care about what your fast service means to me AND AS A RESULT what that outcome is.

Again, whether you’re for profit, non profit, B:B, B:C, or anywhere in between, these three simple steps are going to help you increase the power and potency of your messaging. For more information, be sure to listen to my free podcast interview with Martin.

-- David Kinard, PCM

(image credit: National Archives and Records Administration)

Who Wins in a Tough Economy?

2009-04-19T18:17:00.000-07:00

J. Walker Smith, president of the Yankelovich MONITOR, recently wrote in an article for Marketing Management, that “[T]he sure winners in any recession are companies that invent more efficient ways to deliver benefits to customers. These companies win because what they pioneer becomes the new way things are done.” Although Smith may have some logic to this statement, I think he’s way off base. The truest winners in a tough economy are those companies who ALL ALONG provided superior value to the customer. Not those who innovated efficiencies.

It may be an issue of the chicken and the egg – which comes first. For Smith, he says that in good times “a rising tide lifts all boats.” While I certainly agree with that, and have for years said that money covers a multitude of mistakes, I don’t agree that it is innovation during a recession that separates out the efficient from the rest of the pack. Take for example the good people at your local grocery store or the corner breakfast café that is always packed. These people are not huge innovators or efficiency mongers. On the contrary, there is likely a lot they could be doing better according to Smith’s model. But what separates them out is the intimate value they bring to their customers and relationships.

Perhaps if you’re big and bloated, then innovation and efficiency certainly helps to cut costs and find savings while consumers pull back on their spending. But that’s isn’t true success – it’s only refining your business in the areas that should have been addressed while you were on your way up. I call that “paving as you go.” But those companies that have taken the time to develop deep insight into their customers’ core desires, and know how to link and deliver meaningful value to those desires – those are the companies that thrive in a down economy.

During this recession, I still see people at restaurants, the movie theaters, plays, bars, sports events, and in hotels. It’s not that we’ve stopped spending, but we’re only spending on those companies that make us feel good, tap into our hopes and dreams, and deliver consistent value for our scarce dollars. So, I’d say to Smith that if your company is focusing on innovation and efficiency, you’re still going to be behind the true leaders – those whose focus has always been on value delivery.

-- David Kinard, PCM

Lessons Learned are Not Rocket Science

2009-04-06T08:07:00.000-07:00

I was reading through the April 15 edition of the American Marketing Association’s magazine Marketing News; sifting through their coverage of the Mplanet marketing conference held in January of this year. Luminaries of all types were present as speakers. I didn’t attend, but the special section listed four key lessons marketers need to learn for 2009 and beyond.

In a tough economy, innovation is king.
Effective marketing must begin with customer engagement
Nurture and build your brand
For B:B, engagement and retention are key

I’ll admit, I was surprised that this was the list of key takeaways. I mean, duh! Any marketer who has been paying attention for the last 2-3 years could have pulled these themes out as important. In fact, I would guess that about 50 books have been written on these four subjects in the past five years, so none of these lessons should be a surprise.

However, what strikes me as notable is that these key lessons CONTINUE to be key lessons; which means either marketers are not getting it, or the playing field keeps changing and we are having to reboot back to the basics. Or, it’s a bit of both.

I am reminded of a book title by Harvey McKay, Dig Your Well Before You’re Thirsty. In his book he is primarily referring to building your network prior to needing it, but in many ways that thought is the umbrella lesson for the four noted above. This tough economy is NOT the best time to begin working on these issues. If you’re just now starting on innovation, customer engagement, brand building, or retention strategies, you’ll be pushing rope uphill and against the tide. Those companies and marketers who did this important work before the economy tanked are much better suited to the situation and may just be the ones to knock you out of the game.

You can click here for more Mplanet wrap up coverage.

-- David Kinard, PCM

[photo: screen shot of Mplanet 2009 Web site.]

Branding Disconnect Makes Tote Garbage

2009-03-30T11:29:00.000-07:00

Last week I attended an event where I got another tote bag from a well-meaning sponsor. Aside from the fact that we now suffer from an influx of coffee mugs, water bottles, and toe bags (much like we did five years ago with frisbees and mousepads), I was struck by the incredible poor positioning by the company.

REI (Recreational Equipment, Inc) has a longstanding reputation in the Pacific Northwest as being a purveyor of contemporary outdoor equipment and merchandise. From your high-tech sleeping bag, nordic-rated tent, to even a campfire espresso machine, REI regularly impresses customers with the latest and greatest for the outdoor enthusiast. So WHY, please tell me WHY, did they choose to put their orginating date on their bag. AND WHY did they choose a tote bag to convey that message?

Marketers -- we have to stop being stupid and stop choosing the easy way. How does a generic tote-bag further the brand or position of REI? How does putting the only message on the bag your company's origination date reinforcing the image of contemporary -- and even high-tech -- equipment?

The next time your company has the privilege to reach out to a group of people when you sponsor their event, make that thing you give them useful and relevant to your brand. As well, ensure that it reinforces your position in the market as not only the best choice, but the ONLY REASONABLE choice.

-- David Kinard, PCM

Stop the Interruptions!

2009-03-22T21:49:00.001-07:00

Parenting is teaching me a lot about marketing, and how much we as marketers have yet to learn about interrupting our audiences.

Let me set the stage for you:

I walk into the house, arms burdened with several bags of heavy groceries. My eight year old son instantly starts to tell me of the Lego spaceship he has just created and wants me to come see it.
I have my hand in the toilet, scrubbing and cleaning and my twelve year old daughter asks me if I can log her on to the computer so she can play a game.
It is Sunday morning and I am luxuriating in a few precious, extra hours of sleep and one of my kids comes in, wakes me up, and asks if I want to answer the phone (I guess it's ringing).

In each instance -- now as much by habit as by deliberate effort to teach them the importance of time and place -- I say something like, "Hmm, what am I doing right now? Is this the right time to ask me about this? Can this wait until I am done?"

I think we as marketers are doing the same types of things to our target audiences.

This quarter while teaching MBA marketing at Seattle University, I emphasized the importance of ensuring our customer communications meet five critically important criteria in order to be truly effective:

The message being sent must be the right message.
The message must be delivered at the right time.
The message must be delivered to the right place.
The message must be delivered through the right medium.
The message must be delivered to the right person.

In my day job, I tell my own staff the importance of paying attention to these same criteria. It's all to easy to put up another poster, to send out another mailing, or to broadcast another commercial. The challenge for us as marketers is to figure out when our audience is most receptive to our message, and make sure we deliver it in a stand-out way.

Case in point, I remember consulting with a healthcare system that wanted to increase the number of appointments by women for free breast cancer screenings. They had a brochure set to deliver this message. Jokingly, I mentioned that I don't think women are thinking of the health of their breasts when they just come home from work and open the mail. The challenge for us was to think about when women were thinking about their bodies and find a way to introduce our message then and there in a stand-out way. We came up with the idea of shower kits with soaps, a razor, lotions, and a waterproof card on how to do a self exam while in the shower.

Now I am not saying that commercials, direct mail, and posters are bad. They have their place. But the vast majority of these materials are just visual wallpaper to our brains. We must move beyond what's easy to what's effective.

Do you have examples of when you thought through your communications and instead of interrupting your audience you met them in a powerful, integrated, stand-up way?

-- David Kinard, PCM

Use Integration Instead of Interruption

2009-03-05T09:42:00.000-08:00

My professional friend Katya Andresen recently had a visitor -- a door-to-door canvasser for Save the Children. She writes in her blog about his visit, and that she ended up giving him a pledge worth $336. Katya writes:

"...what I really wanted to know was why they were doing fundraising via canvassing. He said because it worked wonderfully. Most of Save’s child sponsors sign up via canvassers, apparently. Save is focused on this approach, scaling back TV ads and other broad-brush, less effective means of getting recurring, monthly gifts...."

I was surprised to read that they've found success in this form of highly-interruptive marketing. With so much focus these days on permission-based marketing, to hear that door-to-door fundraising is working makes me wonder what's going on. But after a bit of thought, it all made sense to me.

Of course Save was not getting any ROI from their TV ads and other "broad-brush" efforts -- it is precisely because they were so generic in nature that their impact was so low. The failure of Save, or any other nonprofit/cause related organization, to see any return from their marketing efforts is due to a lack of integration in their marketing mix.

Right time, right message, right person, through the right medium -- that's the challenge and opportunity we all face in getting out the good word of our organizations. And, when we fail to do that effectively, and resort to interruptive marketing tactics like door-to-door canvassing, of course we'll see an uptick in responses. And just because it's a worthy nonprofit doing the canvassing doesn't make it right.

I'd challenge Save the Children to rethink their approach and find a permission-based model to work from.

What do you think?

-- David Kinard, PCM

[image credit: Save the Children]

From Garbage to Great – Advertising Rating Metric

2009-03-01T22:13:00.000-08:00

I am one of those people who actually likes to watch the commercials. I enjoy advertising and always have. Um, well, I should qualify that a bit. I enjoy good advertising.

There is a tremendous amount of garbage being thrown at us that amounts to nothing more than noisy wallpaper. We as consumers screen and filter out this noise pretty well, too. So, with the power of the remote to skip over what we see, and the power of our own filters to screen out the advertorial noise, it’s no wonder that companies are finding it very hard to see any return on their advertising investment.

Though the current situation is bleak in terms of advertising effectiveness, it doesn’t have to be so. There is a lot of great advertising being done today, and in this week’s Metric Monday I thought I’d give you some pointers on how to evaluate your own advertising to ensure it is in the great category, not the garbage.

When it comes to developing and measuring your advertising, there are five key elements to keep in mind: Attention, Read-through, Cognitive, Affective, Behavior. Each is described in more detail below.

Attention: How well does your ad catch the attention of the target audience? Contrary to popular practice, key to getting attention is not to be obnoxious or blaringly loud. Rather, getting the attention of your target audience relates to one thing – are you pertinent?

Read-through: How well does your advertisement lead the target to go further into the ad itself? In other words, once you’ve got their attention what are you going to do with it? This is where most ads fail. In short, they’re boring and lack interesting qualities that deepen interest.

Cognitive: This has to do with the clarity of the central benefit of your message. What are you offering and is it clear to the target audience? How clear? Are you being overt or is your benefit-laden message hidden amongst jargon? (I like to ask my kids (ages 8 and 12) if they can pick this out. If not, it’s back to the drawing board!)

Affective: This relates to the appeal of your message and its overall emotional impact. My friend Martin Lindstrom noted in his groundbreaking book Buy-ology that every decision we make has an emotional component to it. So, you need to ensure you have an emotional (affective) appeal in your ads.

Behavior: It’s often said the number one failure of sales people is that they forget to ask for the sale. What is your ad specifically telling the target audience to do, think, or feel? What behavior are you hoping for and does your ad support that goal?

So here is the easy way of putting this together. Each element is worth 20 points. Begin to rate each element and add up your score. I’ve included a rating sheet for your use. Of course, this is a subjective tool and should be used in conjunction with a financial metric, but it will help you to ensure that what you put out has the greatest chance of achieving your goals.

Bottom line: Whether you are placing print ads, radio spots, or banner ads on Web sites, your job as a marketer is to fully understand your target audience so that your whole message (visuals and words) is relevant and important to them. Remember, advertising is NOT about you, but about what your target needs, wants, and demands. Take the ad rating sheet I’ve provided and have a group of customers rate your ads on a regular basis. This will keep you on track and effectively stewarding your marketing dollars.

-- David Kinard, PCM

[image credit: riptheskull]

Measuring How Well Your Brand Performs: Using the BDI

2009-02-22T14:14:00.000-08:00

It is a given that every product or service your organization offers does NOT appeal to everyone. In fact, it is likely that there are specific customer groups that are more interested in particular offerings than others. In today’s Metric Monday, I am going to explain how to do a Brand Development Index which will help you identify strong and weak segments (usually by demographics or geographics) for a particular product/service or type of products/services.

The application of this awareness can help you determine if there are pockets within your customer community that tend to purchase specific things more often than others, or why some pockets are under-purchasing compared to their peers. Ultimately, this will help you to create targeted communication strategies to encourage more usage/buying, or to create a product improvement plan to fill in any value gaps.

A Brand Development Index is a pretty straightforward calculation. Again, it is an measurement of how well a product/service performs within a given market group of customers, relative to its performance in the market as a whole. To begin with, you need to be able to specifically identify a target group. The more homogenous that group is the more likely it is your data can be acted upon with confidence. For example, choosing to select only by women may not give you the same confidence as selecting women who are frequent users and who have children in the home between ages 1-9. (NOTE: Whatever criteria you choose by should be linked to your overall research goal.)

Okay, once you have this group identified add up all the sales for a particular product/service by that target group and divide it by the total number of people in that group (you can also divide by households if you don’t have individual data). Hold on to this number. Now, in a separate calculation divide the total product/service sales by the total persons/households. Take your first number and divide it by this new number.

Your calculation should look something like this:

Because your BDI is a measurement of sales by a particular product/service per person (or per household) within a specific demographic group, compared with the average sales per person/ household in the market as a whole, you’re able to quantitatively see how parts of your customer community are buying what you’re offering.

Bottom line: Measuring the total sales, registrations, etc for a product, service, or event is sufficient if you’re needing only a top line number to work with. But if you are interested in creating specific strategies for groups within your community, you need to understand how they’re using your products and services. And because you’re creating an index number that can be benchmarked, now you can test to see if specific marketing messages or campaigns are making an impact.

-- David Kinard, PCM

7 Characteristics of Good Marketing Research

2009-02-22T10:46:00.001-08:00

Yesterday I blogged about how to set up your marketing research plan. A friend noted that it was "too long" so I began to think about how to crystalize what good research is into a shorter hit list. Below are seven characteristics of good marketing research; keeping these in mind should help you in your efforts to gain insights into your communities.

NUMBER ONE: Effective marketing research uses the principles of the scientific method — observation, hypothesis, prediction, and testing. Since the goal of conducting a marketing research project is to uncover useful information, how you conduct your research is vitally important. Good research follows this standard process.

NUMBER TWO: Good marketing research develops innovative ways to solve a problem. This requires some level of creativity in your research. Other than traditional methods such as surveys and polls, in what various ways can the problem be evaluated? Are you even studying the right problem?

NUMBER THREE: Reliable marketing research uses multiple methods to acquire data and shy away from over-reliance on any one method. In your research, always make sure you adopt the research to the problem. In other words, don't say you want to do a survey and then figure out a problem to solve. Also, don’t be fooled into thinking that one method is better than others. Good research recognizes the value of using multiple methods and sources to achieve reliable information.

NUMBER FOUR: Savvy marketing researchers recognize the interdependence of research models and the data collected. The research model you choose will ultimately determine the type of information, its validity, and your ability to act based on findings. Therefore, always base your research efforts on solid models that are clearly defined and as explicit as possible.

NUMBER FIVE: Smart marketers understand the relationship between the value of information and its cost. There are always lots of questions to be asked and problems to be solved. However, to steward resources effectively, marketers need to consider the cost of market research, the value of the information gathered, and the likelihood of management’s ability or willingness to act on such information.

NUMBER SIX: Good marketing researchers show little reliance upon glib or stereotyped assumptions made by managers about how a market works. Often times, those in the midst of a market are unable to clearly see the market. The “forest through the trees” scenario applies here.

NUMBER SEVEN: Responsible marketing research is a win-win-win situation. It shows a healthy respect for the company, the product and the customers and never tries to harm or take advantage of customers.

So, there you have it. Seven ways to ensure your research is going to be useful and action-oriented when you're finished. And, hopefully, this wasn't too long of a post! :-)

-- David Kinard, PCM

5 Steps to Great Market Research

2009-02-21T14:29:00.000-08:00

The use of market research has made a significant shift during the past 20 years. In the past, smaller companies generally did not make significant use of market research and let the big companies spend the big dollars to uncover marketplace trends, consumer opinions and behaviors.

However, today nearly every organization has a plethora of market research available to them because of social media technologies and the Web. This means there really is no excuse if your organization is not becoming more aware of its industry, market, and served communities.

To begin with, it is worthwhile to note there is a difference between marketing research and market research. Although they are closely related, marketing research is typically referred to as the design, collection and analysis, and reporting of data and findings relevant to a specific marketing situation facing a company. In other words, marketing research is more about the process than the findings.

On the other hand, market research is research into a particular market, segment or audience-type. It is generally considered to be a component of marketing research. I bring this difference up not because you need to worry about it in how you do your own work, but if you utilize the services of a research firm this will help you speak their language.

Step-By-Step
There are five basic steps in developing a marketing research project. For sure you can just hit the Web and start looking for information. But without some kind of objective in mind, or idea of how you might use the information you find, that searching around is likely to be less effective in the long run. The five steps are: 1) defining the problem or objective, 2) developing the research plan, 3) collecting the information, 4) analyzing the information, and 5) presenting the findings.

Begin with the End in Mind
There is an old adage that says, “A problem well defined is half solved.” This first step is critical to having a successful and relevant marketing research project. It begins with the end in mind and asks “What do we need to know?” “What could we do with the information we get?” “What if we find out something we didn’t expect?” “Why do we need this information?”

Other questions that need to be asked include is the research objective a long-term or a short-term issue? Is it specific enough to be tested or does it wallow in generality? Is the project exploratory in nature (gathering preliminary data and making suggestions for new ideas), or descriptive (trying to ascertain a quantitative finding), or even causal (an attempt to test a cause-and-effect)?

Whatever the motive or type of objective generated, a clear definition as to the research objective or problem is essential. Articulated clearly, it serves as a true-north keeping your research focused and relevant. Without this clearly defined objective, any research you do will be riddled with unnecessary waste and unclear results.

So, for the first step, take a look in your organization. What customer or industry information do you need to operate your business more effectively that you don’t have? What new product or service could you launch if you just had a bit more information about viability and acceptance?

Map Your Strategy
Before implementing any research project, it is vitally important to map out a research plan that is tied to a budget. Research can get very expensive as the different types of research activities vary in associated costs. Additionally, mapping out a research plan is imperative to identify and articulate how the research will be used to improve or develop bottom-line profitability.

If the research can only be articulated as an expense and doesn’t demonstrate a route to increased efficiency or effectiveness, then go back to step one and rethink your objective. This is a major “A-ha” check point to ensure you’re on the right track.

After a budget has been prepared, you’re now ready to begin looking at what types of information you need. There are two types of data sources available: primary and secondary. Primary data is usually gathered for a specific purpose or for a specific project. It is first-generation data generated to answer a specific research question. Secondary data is data that were collected for another purpose and already exists somewhere else.

There are lots of sources of secondary data available to you. They include internal sources (your database), government publications (statistical abstracts, Census, Industrial Outlook), periodicals and books (encyclopedia of associations and trade magazines), and commercial data (MRCA Information Services, Nielsen Company Reports). Many sources of information are available on the Web. Just be sure to vet the information to ensure its accuracy.

Primary data can be collected in a variety of ways. Observational research, focus-groups, surveys and experiments are just a few. These methods utilize two main instruments to gather information: questionnaires or mechanical devices.

Once the research approach and instruments have been decided upon, the next step is to develop a sampling plan. This plan asks three questions: Who is to be surveyed (sampling unit), how many people should be surveyed (sample size), and how should the respondents be chosen (sampling procedure).

Collecting the Data
The data collection phase of marketing research is generally the most expensive part of the process. This usually involves some type of third-party vendor or firm, or extensive in-house staff hours to conduct the research. Whether the collection efforts are in-house or outsourced, it is important to make sure that the integrity of the data collected is high. The removal of interviewer bias and the standardization of the collection process is paramount.

Data collection methods vary greatly and technology is playing a huge role in its development. Today, choices range from professional interviewers who sit in booths and have computers that randomly dial numbers. When a call is answered, that person’s information pops onto the screen and the interviewer asks the questions and types in responses. Other forms of collection include kiosks in malls, or family-based behavior monitors that record television watching habits and their correlation to buying behavior.

Analyze Your Analysis
However you choose to gather your research information, the tricky part then becomes how you analyze it. Depending on how many variables you have in your research project, the complexity of analysis will vary. There are a variety of statistical tools, models and optimization routines that any research firm worth their salt will know and use for you. This analysis should provide you with an answer to your original question/issue, or be able to generate further questions for study or clarification.

The trick in analyzing the information is not to get carried away with looking at the data in every possible way. Look for your answer. See if there are any relevant connections to other data and move on. Don’t get caught in paralysis by analysis.

Getting the Answer
After the information is analyzed, the last step in the marketing research process is to present the findings. Whether presenting to a board of directors or to yourself, it is important to write up a report outlining your findings. Document your efforts and processes for future reference. You’ll be glad you did! Of course, findings can suffer from a variety of errors. If so, this findings report is the basis for your next research project.

Hopefully this article has helped you consider your own company’s research needs and outline how you might begin your own marketing research project. For recommendations on good research firms in your area, contact your local chapter of the American Marketing Association. They can give you some suggestions.

-- David Kinard, PCM

Is There a Pathway to Social Media Celebrity?

2009-02-18T22:48:00.000-08:00

I’ve spent a lot of time lately looking at the celebrities of social media to try and see what has earned them this celebrity status. These are the people who have tens of thousands of people following them on Twitter (many well over the 100k mark), or those who have blogs everyone is referring to and commenting on.

So, I’ve been thinking about what the qualities are that these celebrities have or that their conversational feeds have. What creates stellar levels of hype around them? What I am seeing is that they are part of a larger ecosystem of four primary groups. Each part is symbiotic to the other – meaning that without one, the whole thing collapses. As well, I think that depending on which group you’re a part of determines if you’ll ever have celebrity potential.

Thus far, I’ve found there are four main ways that celebrities are created:

1. Content is the pivot point – usually.
It seems the social media ecosystem is really made up of four groups – Pushers: the aggregators and promoters of content; Creators: the originators of content; Consumers: the users of the content; and Transformers: those who see not the content, but the ecosystem as the means to an end. A more detailed profiling of the four groups would reveal greater distinctions, but suffice it to say that the primary commodity exchanged is content. The ecosystem thrives on the movement of content from one to another and the Creators, Pushers, and Consumers all live and die by it. However, the outlying Transformers do not participate in the ecosystem because of the content, but because it provides a framework for them to accomplish something else.

One example of this is Wil Wheaton (@wilw). Wil has a gigantic following but appears to use Twitter and his blog as a channel for his various streams of consciousness. Yes, his content is original, but I would submit that content is more for his own benefit – and we just get to be a part of it whereas a Creator is someone who creates for others to use and benefit from. For Wil, the ecosystem appears to be simply an outlet for his expressions. (As of this writing, Wil is ranked 12th with the most Twitter followers at 107k+.)

2. Quality does not equate status; freshness does.
I don’t deny that this is a nearly heretical statement to make, but not everyone who has a massive following is saying anything truly remarkable. Again, thinking of the four groups, those with the largest followings are typically Pushing other content.

Case in point, I was a bit disappointed when I started following Guy Kawasaki’s blog How to Change the World. I hung in there for a month or so, but eventually dropped it from my reading list because I wanted Guy. I love reading his writing but what I got in his blog was other peoples’ content he thought was interesting.

And strangely, this is exactly what makes him so attractive to follow. Social media celebrity Chris Brogan wrote about this in a recent blog post noting that "the most “important” people (in at least the public business sense) I have ever met in my life have all asked me more about myself, and even with me trying hard to turn it around, they were gracious and interesting and still worked hard to know more about me than themselves.”

Now, even though the biggest of the big are not usually delivering messianic insights their key contribution is to scour the ecosystem for fresh perspectives and transmit that freshness out to the rest of us. Key to their celebrity status is their mutant ability to intimately understand the pulse of the ecosystem, find and vet content, then share it with everyone else.

3. It’s who knows you.
If you’ve read Tipping Point by Malcolm Gladwell you’ll instantly get this next element. Celebrities are connectors. Not only will they remember you, your name, and usually something about you after meeting, but they have the uncanny ability to do this same thing with exponentially more people than the average person while finding links between everyone and everything.

It seems that key to becoming a social media celebrity is being known by the Pushers. A good example of this is when Mashable mentioned @cspenn in an article.

Pete Cashmore (@mashable), even noted the marked increase in followers for @cspenn.

Now @cspenn has a long way to go before he hits true celebrity status as he only ranks with the 700th largest following on Twitter. However, the impact of being known by a Pusher is remarkable. Not only do you get a big bump, but if another Pusher happens to find your ideas fresh, then you’ve got more Pushers transmitting your content to the ecosystem.

4. The metric is relative.
Of course, someone reading this is saying, “Hold on a minute. There are those who are celebrities but exist in smaller ponds that exist outside of the mainstream.” And therein lies the challenge of qualifying what celebrity status is and isn’t. For the most part I’ve used followers as the basis for qualifying a social media celebrity. Tracking your followers is easily captured and most commonly used as a metric of status. Blogger and social media ROI guru Beth Kanter noted in a recent post that calculating your ROI “is a much broader concept than just doing the math.”

Certainly there is merit in noting that celebrity status can exist in different circles in highly meaningful ways. For instance, another way of looking at this is to compare winning Best Actor at the Oscars versus Best Leading Performance by a Leading Actor at the Tony Awards. Ben Daniels or Mark Rylance are highly acclaimed Broadway performers, but not part of the popular mainstream conversation.

However, I submit that celebrity status is a state of relative condition within portions of the ecosystem. If you consider the long tail curve, it appears at first that there are only a few who qualify for celebrity status. But if you were to examine detail within the tail I think you’d find that there are repeating patterns of the long tail curve supporting celebrity status within various niches.

So, what does all this have to do with increasing your ability to market for good? Well, I’ve tried to withhold a label of any sort that identifies whether it is good or bad to be a social media celebrity. But aside from that element, I wonder if there is an identifiable pathway to achieving celebrity? Are there gatekeepers to celebrity? If a cause could figure out this pathway, it is possible to gaining greater exposure to your issues? A huge number of Pushers got behind Twestival’s recent event for Charity: Water raising more than $250,000 in grassroots donations. . Is this replicable?

-- David Kinard, PCM

Metric Monday: Satisfaction and Willingness to Recommend

2009-02-15T21:47:00.000-08:00

How do you know if your customers are happy? How do you know if they’re not? How do you figure out the intensity of their feelings? Understandably, most customers who are really happy will tell you. The same goes for those who are not. It’s the unwashed middle that you should be worrying about. They represent the part of your customer base most susceptible to the competition.

Whether your customers are actual consumers of your product or service, donors to your cause, or partners with your organization, understanding what they feel about you – and how intense those feelings are – is an essential metric that when used can help your bottom line. In today’s edition of Metric Monday I am going to offer a few perspectives on how to assess satisfaction and willingness to recommend.

Most marketers know they need to measure customer satisfaction, but not the real reason why. Satisfaction serves as a predictor of future success. It is one of the few forward measurements that can be taken whereas most metrics are latent in nature. Willingness to recommend serves in this same function, but is a good measurement of the intensity of satisfaction. Both metrics quantify an important dynamic. When a brand has loyal customers, it gains positive word-of-mouth marketing, which is free and highly effective (see my radio interview with Andy Sernovitz, founder of the Word-of-Mouth Marketing Association).

Customer satisfaction is generally measured on a five-point scale allowing for two positive ratings, one neutral rating, and two negative ratings. I hate this and think it is a misguided way of looking at satisfaction scores. Here are my problems with this approach:

Customers are either satisfied or not. You can’t be half in love, or half anything for that matter. You either are, or are not.

It’s nearly impossible to quantify the difference between what a score of 4 or 5 is in either direction of satisfied or unsatisfied. What does it mean to be a 4 and not a 5?

Giving customers a chance to select neutral only provides people the opportunity to not really make a choice. That ambiguity doesn’t help you one bit. You WANT to know if they’re happy or not.

Okay, so I suggest that your surveys or whatever tool you use to say, “Hey, are you satisfied with your experience?” use a YES or NO response. You can certainly add a skip logic question if the answer is NO to find out what the problem was. I also don’t see any harm in doing the same for a YES response – find out what worked for that customer.

Then for both YES and NO respondents, ask the willingness to recommend question. This gives you the insight as to how deeply they feel about you. In asking this question I suggest you use a three point scale: No, Maybe, Yes. If you set up your survey correct, you should be able to do some cross tabulations to see how many unsatisfied people answered yes, no, and maybe, and how many satisfied people chose those same options.

Here is an example of what the data might mean to you. If you get a bunch of satisfied customers who say they are not willing to recommend you, then your problem could be that although you’re meeting expectations you’re not very exciting, inspirational, or are seen as an undifferentiated commodity. Basically it means there is no energy behind your brand. In another example if you have a bunch of unsatisfied customers who may be willing to recommend you, then you have a major opportunity to fix something and generate a bunch of advocates for your organization. I’ve created a simple matrix below for you to consider as possible action plans. (Click on the image for a larger view.)

Bottom line: Measuring your satisfaction scores is a must. Collecting and analyzing the data over time will help to identify trends that are critical not only to your competitive success but also to your ability to identify problems and fix them before they become serious problems. Measuring your audiences’ willingness to recommend your organization, or products, is a great tool for identifying action plans to retain customers while growing your base of grass-roots evangelists.

How is your organization measuring customer satisfaction or willingness to recommend? How is it working for you? What actions are you able to take from that metric?

-- David Kinard, PCM

Play the iPhone Music and Market Your Cause

2009-02-11T16:04:00.000-08:00

This is what I love about the human ability -- or drive -- to take a product and transform it into something else. This video, which shows a new app for the iPhone, allows you to blow across the iPhone's speaker and a tone much like a flute emits from the speaker. With a few well-placed fingers, you've got yourself a musical instrument.

So, what does this have to do with your cause or nonprofit? Tons.

First, if you're a struggling music society or arts center, why not have a concert done wholly with technology, not traditional instruments. Not only is this idea fresh and unique, it's buzz worthy and therefore sponsor worthy. A communtiy fundraiser added to the concert and WHAMMO, you've got an instant evening of fun.

The point IS NOT that you need to use the iPhone in your next awareness or communications program. The point IS that you can begin to think about the unusual and find ways to incoporate that into what you do. The public has learned to treat your calls for help as ever present, and never urgent. Masses are looking for somethign to surprise them (not shock them) and give them a moment's respit from the frenzy of their world.

So, put this idea to action by scheduling a brainstorming meeting with your staff and invite a few people who have nothing to do with your organization. Get the sales manager from a local car dealership, get a mail carrier or the UPS delivery person, aks a chef from a nearby restaurant, and how about the kid that works behind the counter at Best Buy. Have them come for a session on how to think about what you do and how to communicate it in different ways. Harvest the low hanging fruit from the ideas and have fun.

-- David Kinard, PCM

What's the Right Price?

2009-02-08T22:12:00.000-08:00

How much is the right price to charge for something? Not only have volumes been written on the subject, but doctorates have been earned just by studying one type of metric around price, pricing, price elasticity, and the economic impacts of prices on consumer behaviors. Well, I am not going to try and cover all those issues in today’s Metric Monday, but I thought it would serve us well to cover two basic price metrics – Reservation Price and Percent Good Value.

Reservation Price is the value a customer places on a product or service and subsequently the maximum price that individual is willing to pay. Percent Good Value represents the proportion of customers who believe a product or service is a “good value” at a specific price. When combined these two metrics provide a marketer an evaluation of pricing and customer value.

To calculate your Reservation Price you need to know the maximum price a customer will not go over. This is going to require some research of your target market (i.e. customers, prospects, etc) and is no easy matter to do. Most market researchers will suggest doing a conjoint analysis (a fancy way of relating variables to one another) but I suggest some basic surveying on your part. It won’t be perfect, but you should get some basic information to use – such as a range of maximum prices your target is willing to pay for something. In doing this, you are essentially combining Reservation Price with Percent Good Value.

In your survey you can ask a two-two part question to get to this data.

Considering the [product/service], would you attend if the price was set X? (your control question).

Considering the [product/service], please indicate the point at which the price goes over what you would be willing to spend.

The first question can be considered your control question and I suggest testing three or four prices using common industry prices, or aggregates of what the competition is charging. By way of testing, you only want to ask their answer to one price, so in essence you’ll have a couple of different survey editions. The second question asks the respondent to provide their maximum price (reservation price). DO NOT ask these questions back-to-back in your survey or you’ll likely get a lowball number or one equal to the control question. Separate them by at least three or four questions.

Now you have two data sets. Take the range of respondents from the second question and associate the number of respondents to each value. For simplicity, you may want to make some minor adjustments in the scale to make the data set more manageable. You also need to know what your variable cost is for the product or service so that you can understand the price as it relates to your organization’s contribution margin (see earlier post for more on this).

When you map out the range of respondents to the second question you’re getting something called a demand schedule. In another column subtract the variable cost from the price you’re charging. This basically shows you how much you lose or make at each price level, and at what point the price becomes high enough that your demand starts to go down.

In the example below I’ve created a sample chart to explain how this looks. Let’s assume that you want to price your conference, workshop, or charitable gala. You want to know what the right price per ticket should be. After doing your survey you get a range of Reservation Prices between $25 and $325. You’ve listed the number of people who said that is the maximum they’d pay, and you’ve also listed your variable costs for that event (I have mine set at $40).

The math from here on is pretty simple. You subtract your variable cost from the price you sold a registration for, and multiply it by the number of people buying it at that price. In the example you will see the contribution margin go up, peak, and begin to decline. Thus, from the data you gathered, it appears that $185 is the optimal price.

Now, back to the survey questions and that control price. This is basically our “good value” price. Most of the time it is hard to get data sets for the Reservation Price study. By asking the control question we’re essentially asking our target if our product or service is a “good value” at a particular price. We can map out the most common answers and check our demand curve price against it. This process is also useful to help you know at what price to set your product/service and what discount levels you can offer.

Bottom Line: If your pricing strategy is akin to throwing a dart against a wall or going with what the competition is charging you are creating a lose situation for your organization. You may be leaving critical monies on the table by not charging enough, or you may be diminishing your market impact by overcharging. Using a method like Reservation Pricing and Percentage Good Value allows your organization to understand not only what your customers value, but also what prices contribute and take away from your top line revenue.

For more on pricing strategies, listen to my radio show with Reed Holden, author of Pricing with Confidence: 10 Ways to Stop Leaving Money on the Table.

-- David Kinard, PCM

From Junk Mail to Power Mail

2009-02-07T10:48:00.001-08:00

Last week blogger Nancy Schwartz wrote about receiving a direct mail piece from one of her favorite nonprofits -- the adoption agency they used. But instead of receiveing a direct mail piece that engaged and nurtured the relationship between the agency and Nancy's family, the piece ended up having them question the strength of the operation. Her experience inspired me to write a bit about how to turn your Junk Mail into Power Mail.

How much mail do you get every day? For some, that daily ubiquitous pile of paper is almost a status symbol. For others, it is just one more hassle and headache in an already crowded day.

The issue of what is so commonly referred to as an overload of “junk mail” has gotten worse, or so a report released by the Consumer Federation of America says. The report, which surveyed more than 1000 people found that 78 percent of respondents believe the amount of unsolicited mail, or junk mail, they receive irritates them "a lot or a little."

Of the 78 percent who found it irritating, 48 percent said junk mail irritates them a lot. That's an increase of 2 percentage points over the prior year's survey.

Direct marketers say, however, that if direct mail is targeted, it is a very effective and welcome form of marketing communications. And the United States Post Office agrees. They rank direct mail third just behind TV and newspapers in marketing effectiveness. The critical ingredient in making direct mail work, however, is targeting.

Think about it, sometimes that “junk mail” catches your eye, and quietly, while no one is looking, you may even open it. Why? The reason is quite simple. The offer or packaging of the mail interested you enough to cause you to look further. Junk mail are only those pieces which promote a product or service you don’t want or need, or a cause which doesn’t resonate in your hearts.

The most savvy direct mail experts all agree that you should have the best offer and packaging in your direct mail piece. However, it is the list that you send it to which determines your success.

Next time you prepare to send out a letter, brochure, or other direct mail piece consider the following questions which will help increase the effectiveness of your list.

Is direct mail the best medium to carry this important message? If not, go back to the creative drawing board and identify the best way to get your voice heard.

Who is the specific target audience for this piece (men, fathers, women, mothers, purchasers of fitness equipment, general public, registered voters, etc.)?

What is the audience’s profile and characteristics (age, sex, lifestyle, work habits, relationship to your product/service/issue)?

What does the target audience do in terms of lifestyle (What do they read on a regular basis, where do they live, or where do they go for vacations, dinner or entertainment)?

When is the best time to reach them with your message (time of year, day, month, event considerations)?

By identifying these basic characteristics of your target audience, you can purchase lists that more accurately match your ideal prospect, thus increasing your direct mail piece’s effectiveness and staying away from “junk mail”.

-- David Kinard, PCM

Non Profit e-Marketing

2009-02-05T10:45:00.000-08:00

In yesterday's radio program I had a great conversation with Allison Van Diest, a senior product marketing manager for Blackbaud (they’re a company that for the past 27 years has created software solutions to support the needs of schools, universities, healthcare, human services, cultural groups, and even faith-based communities). We talked about event registration, email strategies, Web site analytics, online communication strategies, and even fundraising -- and what non profits need to know.

Specifically, online donors are a key growth segment for nonprofit organizations. With the average online donor giving more initially and having a higher lifetime value than conventional donors, the importance of online giving as a revenue stream is growing. In fact, if I heard correctly, the average online donation is $60 for those sites with just a "Donate Here" button. But for those that integrate technology into their broader fundraing communications the average donation skyrockets to more than $120.

What strikes me in today's troubling economic times is that only 6% of non profits say that fundraising is their top driver, and only 36% expect to increase their efforts in this area. With an exptected $11 billion raised in 2008, up from $7 billion in 2007, and the proven micro-donation precedents set by last year's presidential campaigns, this should be a top priority across the board (pun intended).

You can listen to the interview with Allison here.

-- David Kinard, PCM

Trade Show Marketing for Associations

2009-02-03T20:34:00.000-08:00

Most associations are used to hosting trade shows and exhibitions for their own members to attend and for good reason: The revenues from these can generate the bulk of an association’s annual budget. But participating in the right trade show as an exhibitor can be extremely valuable for an association in generating awareness, interest and even growing its membership.

There are four great resources for any organization to utilize when searching for the perfect show to participate in as an exhibitor. The first is available on the Web at TSNN.com. This site has a search engine listing trade shows and seminars, with background and other pertinent show information. Best of all, it's free. Three other great resources are local Convention and Visitor's Bureaus, the local Chambers of Commerce, and the American Society of Association Executives (ASAE). Each of these organizations come into contact with show planners of all types and may even have comprehensive show calendars that you can use in your planning.

There’s no shortage of opportunities either. In past surveys, ASAE indicated their member societies plan 375,980 meetings, expositions and seminars involving more than 272 million attendees. And some of these associations are planning huge trade shows with attendance for the top seven ranging from 65,000 to 148,000 attendees. This doesn’t include the opportunities available via hundreds of millions of dollars spent in “sponsorships” that elicit equal to even greater exposure than a trade show.

It is estimated that 82% of all trade show attendees come to see new products. So, for the relatively unknown association, trade shows are powerful mediums for increasing awareness, allowing it to compete right alongside bigger, more established organizations. And, for those associations already established in the marketplace, a trade show is an excellent venue to “make the sale” on membership or other services. Since most attendees at a trade show arrive predisposed to buy, it isn't uncommon for them to sign up for memberships on the floor, or in follow-up sales calls after the event.

It is best to do some research and make a list of all the shows that will put you in front of the right audience. Just because a show has to do with your industry, does not mean it will attract the right type of attendee. Figuring out who usually attends the show is just as important as figuring out at which show your association should exhibit. You want to ensure that the average attendee is someone who can make a decision on the show floor about your valuable offers. Once you have the ideal shows identified, then it's time to see which ones are affordable for your association.

Before you invest any time in planning or money in developing materials, it is critically important to determine your return on investment (ROI) and how you plan to measure the show’s success or failure. Too many exhibitors cannot demonstrate a return on their investment because they don't start out with a plan. What is the purpose of even attending the show? What do you need in terms of results? Is this show to create awareness, leads or sales? How many leads are needed? How many sales? Are the objectives for the show realistic for your abilities and resources?

Once you have a solid set of objectives, you can identify if a show is the right one to help you, and the clear objectives also help focus your efforts and control your expenses. Many corporate companies can link 60% of their annual sales to trade shows. But they can only do this because they have a solid plan. Trade shows will typically produce results proportionate to the amount of effort put into them. It is not uncommon to attend shows where a booth is understaffed (not enough people), poorly staffed (the wrong people), or not staffed at all. Just letting a show happen to you is a sure-fire route to expensive failure. To get the most out of a trade show you need to put energy, time and effort into planning, promotion, staffing and following up.

Success can be measured, but again, you have to know in advance what you're trying to measure. Figuring this out after the fact is nearly impossible. If you're trying to generate member prospects, then you're going to need some type of promotion beforehand inviting qualified prospects to your booth. Once they arrive you can qualify them further by asking questions and collecting their contact information. (Just having the fishbowl for business cards is a waste of time. You have no idea who is dropping in their cards.)

If you're trying to generate awareness, create pre-show promotion that gets people to your booth. There you'll have demonstrations, free samples, and other literature which is coded so you know where it came from. Then, do some post-show measurement by calling and surveying attendees to see if they remember you, and what they thought of your product or service. Again, you've got to know what you want to measure and create a plan to measure it before you can actually measure it.

Why do all this planning? One simple answer: Trade shows are not cheap. While they can produce significant results for your association, they can also be a black hole of critical resources if not carefully considered and planned for.

If you plan to do a lot of them, then it might make sense to invest in a custom-made display. If however, you are just going to do one a year, then renting a display has some advantages—especially if you're on a tight budget.

Here are the common expenses involved in exhibiting at a trade show. These will vary greatly by the type of booth you expect to have. Obviously larger booth spaces and more complex displays will significantly raise costs.

Travel and lodging for whomever will be staffing the booth if the show is out of town
Employee time for those who are staffing the exhibit (if you don’t have volunteers)
Shipping of materials, display, etc.
Booth rental with supplies (tables, carpet, electricity, chairs, plants, etc.)
Display rental or purchase
Promotional materials
Pre-show promotion or advertising
Post-show promotion or advertising

Depending on the show and its popularity, renting booth space can cost a few hundred dollars to tens of thousands of dollars. It is important to note that not all the "popular" shows are necessarily the best for every business. Many exhibiters show up at these because they have to, not because they get a lot of business from them. Sometimes the smaller shows can produce great sales results.

Because the booth rental fee usually only covers the space itself, you’ll also need to budget for curtains, chairs, tables, plants, carpet, electricity, video or sound equipment, extra lighting, trashcans, and more. Basically, plan to pay for absolutely anything and everything you don't bring yourself. And if you wait until the set-up day prior to the show to order an item from the exhibition management company, expect to pay a sizeable markup for the last-minute order.

The display itself does not have to be a major exhibit expense. Yes, you can likely rent one, but for a few hundred dollars you can get a really nice, lightweight, and portable display. One of my favorite places to get displays is from the good people at Earnest Images and ask for Rick (I receive no benefit from making this recommendation -- I am just a very happy customer). Larger displays with attachments and gadgets will dramatically raise the price. If you want to purchase your own 10'x10' floor display with custom photos, plan on spending a few thousand dollars. Today's displays are flexible enough that if you need to change out the images a year later, you should be able to do that for a modest cost.

But it's not just the display that makes your exhibit a success or not. Successful exhibitors at shows also plan pre- and post-show promotions. They send invitation-style announcements to their existing database of customers or prospects, or they may buy a targeted list from a list broker, or rent the show's attendee list from the prior year. These promotions can be direct mail, advertising, telemarketing, e-marketing or other formats. Your goal is to let people know you'll be at the show and to get them to your booth. A game or promotion where they have to visit your booth for the prize or a free gift often helps. These promotions can elaborate or simple, but plan to spend at least $1000 on postage, lists, and materials.

In determining your costs you’ll also need to account for whatever promotional materials you bring with you to the show such as samples of your product or company literature. Make sure you have enough to do the show and some left over for business afterwards. Creating specialized materials just for a show is a good idea because it can help you track leads or sales afterward. With the advent of quick digital printing, these materials can be simple and expensive to produce, yet professional looking and attractive. Some quick print chains may even be able to print your order in the city in which you are attending the show and deliver the materials to your booth saving you shipping costs.

Participating as an exhibitor can make a huge contribution to your association’s member acquisition and marketing campaigns. But before you register for any event, make sure you have a solid, measurable plan developed beforehand. This plan will help to preclude any unexpected and unwanted outcomes making your trade show experience a positive one.

-- David Kinard, PCM

Metric Monday – How Much is that Marketing Effort Worth?

2009-02-01T12:18:00.000-08:00

The scenario is common – you’re in a meeting with the communications committee and someone suggests that your organization needs a brochure. Lots of ideas are shared about the size, how big, how many, and where it could be distributed. But very little of the conversation surrounds what you want to receive back from that brochure. In other words, what is that piece supposed to do for you in terms of contributing to your organization’s top or bottom line revenues? In today’s edition of Metric Monday I am going to suggest how you can determine if your marketing activities are negatively or positively contributing to your finances. Break-Even Analysis, and Contribution Analysis are two metrics you can use for this purpose.

(Important Reminder: variable costs could be the cost of goods sold, shipping/delivery charges, costs of direct materials or supplies, and/or wages of part-time or temporary employees. Fixed costs remain the same regardless of your level of sales such as rent, equipment expenses, and salary of permanent full-time workers.)

The break-even level is basically the dollar amount – in either donations generated, registrations sold, memberships acquired, etc – that is required to cover the total costs (both fixed and variable) of the marketing effort. Your profit at the break-even level is zero. The equation looks like this: Total Costs = Total Revenue.

Now, if your prices are higher than your variable costs, then revenue generated contributes to covering some portion of the fixed costs. This is a contribution level. So, your contribution can be calculated as the difference between unit revenue and unit variable costs. When you’ve generated enough contribution to cover all your fixed costs, then you have a true break-even scenario. Of course, any revenues generated that go beyond the break-even scenario is profit.

Okay, now that we have these basic financial concepts in mind, let’s go back to the idea behind the brochure. Again, the first question you have to ask yourself is what do you want to receive back from that brochure? What is it supposed to do for you? More often than not, committee members will say it will help to generate awareness. So then you have the difficult task of assigning a dollar amount to what awareness means to your bottom line. For this basic reason, I typically suggest organizations do NOT make a brochure just to have one. Assign a specific, quantifiable purpose to it – a goal that can be measured against. That’s the only way to know if you’re efforts are contributing to your organization’s value.

Practical Scenario: Let’s figure that you want to do a brochure to generate registrations for your conference. To identify the benefit of that brochure you first need to know how much each registration sells for (e.g. $300). Next you need to know the fixed costs to your organization to put on the conference – basically your own organization’s staff, equipment, etc. Let’s say that is $12,500. You also need to know the variable costs to your organization for things like confernece room rentals, meals, badges, speaker fees, etc. Let’s say they are $210). That means you have a contribution per registraiton of $90 ($300-$210=$90).

To figure out your break-even volume you divide the contribution per registration into the fixed costs ($12,500/$90). In this scenario you need to generate 139 registrations. As your variable costs change you recalculate the formula to identify how many registrations you need to cover your fixed costs and achieve a break-even point. If your brochure is more expensive and adds an extra $5 per registration to your variable costs making them now $215, you’ll see you now have to generate 147 registrations to break even. If you need to make a profit on your conference of $5,000, you can calcuate that you now need to generate 205 registrations (I figure this by simply adding the profit requirement into the fixed costs forcing it to be a positive return to the organization).

Bottom Line: Marketers spend way too much of their time just making brochures and doing marketing without fully understanding the goals and impact of their activities upon the finances of the organization. By approaching your marketing activities with a financial perspective you force clarity around what marketing is supposed to be achieving, identify measurable goals, and ensure you’re getting the most value from your efforts.

If your organization is using break-even or contribution analysis I’d love to hear how its working for you. What challenges have you faced in going through this process? What has happened as a result of adding a financial perspective to your marketing?

Obama's Social Media Strategy: Lessons Learned from the Campaign Trail

2009-01-27T13:15:00.000-08:00

A new report has just been released from Agency Giant Edelman.

Says the report:

By examining the social media success of Obama’s campaign and understanding the ways that advocacy groups are incorporating these lessons into their own engagement programs, businesses can learn what is required to remain relevant in this new environment by retooling their communications efforts to successfully leverage social media.

Aside from a bit of a run on there, the report basically says that remaining relevant in this new environment requries a retooling of communications programs. Leveraging social media is a must -- even if your organization is just starting to figure it out.

Key to understanding the leverage points for Obama's campaign and his subsequent presidency is this guiding principle noted in the report (the bolding is my annotation):

Obama is already converting the President’s bully pulpit into a social pulpit, delivering a message that is designed to be taken up and spread by others, with the tools and techniques learned during his campaign. Instead of relying on the traditional one-way, top-down approach to communications, the incoming administration is harnessing the power of public engagement to influence the conversation across various spheres of cross-influence.

What is key here is that the entire communications platform is designed to be used by others. It's not managed, not controlled, but created with the expectation and hope that it will be used in a wide variety of other channels and by a wide variety of other people.

As you think through your own organization's communications programs, are you relying on top-down channels and mediums to deliver your important messages? Is your communications platform designed for public engagement or one-way only delivery?

What organizations do you see as doing a good job at this?

NOTE: I'll be interviewing Lois Kelly, author of Beyond Buzz, and blogger at Foghound, tomorrow (Wednesday, 1/28) at 9 a.m. PST on my weekly radio show Marketing News Radio. You can listen LIVE and even CALL IN with your questions. Go to http://www.wsradio.com. We'll be discussing social media from the perspective of not why you should be using it, but how.

-- David Kinard, PCM

Metric Monday: Measuring Awareness, Attitudes, and Usage

2009-01-26T06:00:00.000-08:00

In a recent survey of non profit leaders and marketers by the American Marketing Association and Lipman Hearne, respondents of small, medium, and large organizations said that building awareness was their top priority. In today’s edition of Metric Monday I am going to suggest a few ways of measuring your organization’s activities toward achieving this goal.

Typically referred to as AAU (Awareness, Attitudes, and Usage), this metric is most useful when results are set against some form of comparator – that is data from a prior term (e.g. year-over-year), different markets (e.g. geographic or demographic), or with the competition. An AAU metric by itself is meaningless until you have a pivot point from which to demonstrate movement. In that light, several data sets are essential to identify valid trends and movement in AAU.

In a nutshell, AAU looks at:

Awareness: the percentage of your target audience (customers or potential customers) who recognize your organization or its brand, either aided or unaided. It also measures what knowledge the target audience has about your organization’s products and services. So, not only do you look to see if they know about you, you measure what about you they know.

Attitudes: this is a combination of what your target audience believes and how strongly they believe it. Measurements cover the target audiences’ perceptions of quality, effectiveness, and value as they relate to your organization, and also cover intention to purchase or become involved with your cause.

Usage: this is simply the target audiences’ self-reported behavior as it relates to your organization.

So, how do you get this type of information? Here are two ideas.
Caveat: make sure you specifically identify the target audience you’re wanting to measure. I can’t emphasize the need for specificity in this step. Saying you want to measure awareness amongst the general population will not give you actionable data as your organization likely doesn’t have the marketing budget of General Electric or Coke. Think specifically about the finite group you want to study.

Use surveys conducted by research organizations who know how to reach your target audience. These might be online, intercept, mail, or telephone surveys that ask a series of questions. USE THE SAME SET OF QUESTIONS over time so you have data points to measure against. Yes, you can administer a survey yourself if you’re measuring your internal constituents, but I’d still suggest you employ a true researcher to help with the set up, collection, and analysis. They’re the experts at this type of work – you’re likely not.

Scan discussion boards and social sites for first-hand comments and reviews. You can gather a wealth of knowledge by being a quiet participant in user forums and sites that are talking about you. Resist the urge to defend and comment. Just listen and regularly monitor the tone and information shared.

Here are a few scenarios of data streams you might get and what to do:

High awareness, high attitude, low usage – I know about you but I do not think highly of you and will not engage with you. Things to do: these people may not know of ways to engage with your organization. Maybe you’re communications are unclear as to volunteer opportunities. Maybe your opportunities for engagement are not what this audience wants. Go to them and find out how they want to engage you and create those opportunities.

High awareness, low attitude, low usage – I know about you but don’t think highly of you and will not engage with you. Things to do: these people should be left alone and you should focus your energies on higher yield opportunities.

Low awareness, low attitude, low usage – basically I don’t know you exist and do not engage with you. Things to do: an awareness campaign might migrate members of this group into another category. You’ll need to evaluate the cost of what it takes to break through the noise in the market space as you compete for attention. Make sure you have a plan in place to engage or disengage these people once you do.

Bottom Line: For many non profits or cause-related organization marketers, the idea is that if more people are aware of our organization then there will be more supporters to our cause and more users of our services. They equate awareness with moving the organization forward and increased success. My friend Katya Andresen, author of Robin Hood Marketing, recently quoted her mentor Bill Novelli as saying, “If your goal in life is to raise awareness, you might as well be shoveling pamphlets out of airplanes. Be in the business of creating action, not awareness.” Ultimately, while AAU may be a sexy metric to follow, it is a poor substitute for measuring your ability to do good.

If your organization is measuring AAU, please share how and what you're learning. If you have other ways you've gathered data for this metric, what are they?

-- David Kinard, PCM

Flashmobs and Non Profits

2009-01-23T14:29:00.000-08:00

How much fun is it to be a part of your cause or organization? This video is part of a public marketing effort by T-Mobile and from the faces in the crowd you can see they're having fun.

From what I can make out, there are plants in the crowd -- those who are part of the event, know the songs, know the choreography. But what is exciting to watch is how more and more people are added into the mix over time, and many who are not part of the marketing program.

This video reminds me of an old camp song that starts, "It only takes a spark to get a fire going." I wonder what could be done in today's cause-related organizations to add an element of fun, of excitement, of spontaneity that would engage all those around you. Here in Seattle, one of our famous companies Pike Place Fish knows how to do this as they are world-famous for their fish-throwing antics and customer engagement (yep, that's them in the FISH and FISH STICKS videos). Here are two for-profit examples of companies who learned to engage those around them. What are good non profit examples?

Whether you like T-Mobile or not, you can't deny the impact these flashmobs have had. Googling t mobile dancing video produces more than 22 million results. YouTube has more than 40 related videos on their site just from that same search and people are talking, buzzing, and sharing. Not to mention those who participated will share the story offline making individual and powerful connections.

Think past handing out fliers in the park. How can you add delight and amazement to your marketing and positively (leave behind the offensive sandwich boards and negative messaging) engage the public in your cause. Think of the smiles and joy you see in the faces of the people in this video -- how can you add that same quality to your own community engagement?

-- David Kinard, PCM

Does Your BHAG Measure Up to King's and Obama's?

2009-01-20T21:28:00.000-08:00

Today -- Inauguration Day 2009 -- Whew!

Okay, so let's put politics aside for a moment and focus on the critical element of what has made Obama the "man" transform into Obama the "movement". It was a Big, Hairy, Audacious Goal. Or more like a whole set of them.

Obama's approach is something that has been talked about by business gurus around the globe for years -- if you want to inspire, engage, and activate a community around your cause, give them something big to believe in. And Obama did just that. With approval ratings at or above 75% he has inspired not just tens of millions of Americans, but the world. Yet Obama gave us not just anything to believe in -- he could have said he wanted to build a giant ladder to the moon and we would have discredited both the man and the goal. So, what made his goals so believable? I'd like to suggest the following:

Big Hairy Audacious Goals require time -- They likely will take 10 to 30 years to complete, but they have a specific end date.

Big Hairy Audacious Goals require more than what we have to offer right now. We must grow, change, and evolve into something better in order to achieve them. We must transform ourselves during the journey.

Big Hairy Audacious Goals are measurable and achieveable. You should be able to envision and describe what success looks like with extreme clarity, with definition, and with a clear sense of what it will take to arrive at that point.

Big Hairy Audacious Goals inspire, focus, and align. They give us something big to strive for, focus our attention on what's most important, and align our resources to achieving that end state.

As you think through your organization's vision and goals -- how well do they match up to these four critical ingredients?

What are your thoughts? Do you think these four are enough?

-- David Kinard, PCM

Validation

2009-01-16T17:16:00.000-08:00

I ran across this video today and was immediately struck by how validation can serve in our internal organizational communications.
First, you have to watch the video (just click on the photo -- and yes, that's one of the guys from the TV series Bones). It's about 16 minutes long, but well worth your time -- at least it was worth mine. I loved it.

Now, without giving too much away, we've all gotten our parking vouchers validated so we can get free parking. Not only does this guy stamp your ticket, but he also validates you. He's not being silly, or even making backhanded compliments...he's just pointing out the best in each person he meets. And the end result is amazing.

It is a growing belief, backed by research, that investing in employee morale and culture results in higher profits. See the Employee-Customer Profit Chain article at HBSP for one such report. You can also listen to Rick Garlick of Martiz Research talk about this on my radio show. Even from the branding side there are many gurus out there today who are suggesting the strongest brands are generated, in part, by strong employee development.

What strikes me here is that in our organizational communications we can do a better job of not just highlighting the work of someone (e.g. "And special thanks to Joan for her work this month on getting volunteers for the community clean up.") but dive a bit deeper into the qualities that made Joan successful, (e.g. "Our community clean up this month was a result of Joan's strong organizational skills and her can-do attitude. She is really good at taking on big tasks and making them enjoyable for others to participate.") It's very different to have your work recognized versus having yourself validated. Not to mention, this type of validating recognition also identifies the behaviors that are important to an organization, and shoudl be modeled.

In external communications, I think our communities also want to hear these types of validating comments about staff or employees. Knowing the above validating statements about Joan makes me want to work with her when I call. It gives me an idea of the kind of experience I might have interacting with her. And that experience directly translates into positive brand associations.

As you plan out the next edition of your organization's newsletter or even awards section of your all-staff meeting, rather than just recognizing the people who did this or that, try validating them as individuals first. Let their actions speak for themselves.

-- David Kinard, PCM

Become Pertinent to Move Beyond Buzz

2009-01-13T15:17:00.000-08:00

Those who know me also know that one of my favorite words is PERTINENCE. My cowboy grandfather taught it to me and I've never forgotten his lesson. To me, pertinence is possibly the most critical element in marketing as it drives the focus away from my-product-my-company to the customer, audience, and consumer. To be pertinent means to be both IMPORTANT and RELEVANT.

Here's a great way of thinking about it. Picture your target audience's perceptive view of the world like that of a submarine's radar screen. Yep, you got it, that green circle with a radial arm going around like a clock identifying the objects within the scanning field. In regular intervals the radar pings the environment for new objects.

Now relating this to RELEVANT and IMPORTANT...relevance determines if your message to that target audience even shows up on the radar screen. It has nothing to do with the amount of noise you make, or the frequency of your message, or even the creative you use. If what you're talking about has nothing to do with the target's circle of concern, then your message simply doesn't get noticed.

IMPORTANCE has to do with how close to the center your message hits. For a submarine, that radar view indicates that the sub is at the very center of the radar screen. Objects close to that center are important to the submarine and they pay more attention to those objects than the ones on the periphery. The closer your message gets to the center of an audience's circle of concern it receives an equal measure more of attention.

In her book Beyond Buzz, author Lois Kelly offers up a poignant message on the importance of straight talk in our communications. In fact, the opening chapter is titled, "Enough with the marketing blah blah blah -- let's talk about something interesting." I couldn't agree more. (If you want to hear more from Lois about her book, tune in to my radio show on Wednesday, January 21 at 9 a.m. PST. You can listen live at http://www.wsradio.com/ and even call in with your own questions. The show, Marketing News Radio, is produced by the American Marketing Association.)

In a recent discussion on Beth Kanter's blog we chatted about ways to measure the effectiveness of our social media efforts (e.g. blogs, facebook, etc). In that discussion I suggest that rather than only looking at ROI (return on investment) metrics such as page views, trackbacks, and comments, maybe we should also add in a new metric: ROR -- return on relevance. I should have said ROP -- return on pertinence.

I think the greatest challenge facing non profit marketers in 2009 is not going to be how to find new revenue sources, how to get more from their efforts, or even how to participate in the digital marketplace. I think those will flow from a deeper and clearer insights into their audiences, understanding what is pertinent -- relevant and important. By getting to this rich and deep level of understanding, the choice of marketing tactics becomes much clearer if not obvious and the focus of raising needed resources becomes more of asking for partnership than donations.

-- David Kinard, PCM

Brands Using Twitter

2009-01-11T21:25:00.000-08:00

Former radio show guest Paul Dunay has compiled a list of various corporate brands that are using twitter to stay in touch with their communities. I especially like this this for two reasons:

1. Many corporate marketers today are decrying the inability of businesses to use and engage with social media tools like twitter to connect and nurture communities of followers. Well, this list puts that to rest. Big and small, they're on here and likely many more exist that just didn't make Paul's list (see the comments for proof).

2. This list makes it clear that non profits must use tools like twitter to tap into the communities that already exist around their cause. No excuses. If you're a member of the American Marketing Association, sign in to your Marketingpower.com account and listen to the member-only Webinar that I hosted back in December. We had three amazing marketers on the program (Toby Bloomberg, Julie Fleischer, and Greg Verdino) give very specific advice and perspective on social media and how it can be used in your own marketing. (And as a side note, all three of these people will be at Mplanet later this month.)

And for those who think that that using twitter may be a silver bullet, let me dissuade you from going down that path. Like any other social media tool, twitter is a mechanism that equips you to dialogue and communicate only. It won't create relevancy, it is a poor substitute for integrated communication plans, and it will never overcome an inauthentic voice.

-- David Kinard, PCM

Ford an Example for Non Profits

2009-01-11T09:28:00.001-08:00

John Gerzema, author of The Brand Bubble, recently wrote in his blog about Ford working with an open platform and CEO Alan Mulally's focus on partnership and connectivity. While I won't try to make the leap between Detroit and non profits (even if there is an inherent pun in saying that) I do like the idea of Ford attempting to climb its way out of economic duldrums through this type of transparency and innovation.

It seems all to common for non profits and cause related organizations to try and go it alone; or at least I think that is a widely held perception. Little islands out there floating in a sea of need. Sure there is partnership, but that's usually in the form of accepting donated services or products to support the mission. But what if that same non profit began to create an open platform where infrastructures were shared between other groups?

When thinking through your partnership possibilities, consider first the recipient of your work. If the homeless are your beneficiaries, then think through what other organizations (for and non profit alike) benefit from solving the homelessness challenge. If you're an alternative school, think through who else benefits from having kids educated and how could others participate and make that education even better.

This kind of open platform -- where there are no secrets, no hidden agendas, and shared ownership -- is where collaboration thrives. It's the truest example of synergy in action where one and one equal three or more.

-- David Kinard, PCM

Rate Your Favorite Non Profit

2009-01-08T23:58:00.000-08:00

I stumbled upon this site today and was really impressed with the idea behind it. GreatNonProfits.org is a site that mashes up a Zagat-style rating with user reviews of non profit organizations across the country. From churches to shelters to 4H clubs, I found dozens and dozens of entries just for my local area.

Says site founder and CEO Perla Ni,

"It struck me that there needed to be an online Zagat, if you will, for non profits that would collect stories and reviews of people -- people like me, the victims of Katrina, and hundreds of thousands of others -- who have seen the impact of nonprofits up close, and can speak personally and firsthand about it."

I think this is a brilliant site and has the potential to provide transparency and street credibility for today's overwhelming number of non profits and cause-related organizations. From a donor's point of view, perhaps this might be a culling feature to identify how to distribute funds. From a recipient's perspective, maybe this could become a new type of yellow pages for referral agencies who are looking for extended services for their own populations. The possibilities are endless.

I did a quick search for my city and found that not every organization was listed so it's probably a good idea to ensure yours is accounted for, and then have a few of your champions (board members, staffers, recipients) write a comment or two. While you're at it, be sure to write a note to Perla letting her know that this is a great tool.

-- David Kinard, PCM

Join the Conversation at Katya's

2009-01-08T12:55:00.001-08:00

There's a great conversation going on right now at Katya's Non-Profit Marketing Blog on who non profits and cause related organizations should target. It all started with a post on Preaching to the Choir.

Join in....

-- David Kinard, PCM

Move Over 4 P's -- Time for the 4 R's

2009-01-06T16:43:00.001-08:00

Last night I was teaching MBA students at Seattle University the foundations of marketing. In review, we hit upon the legendary and foundational Four P's of Marketing. Originally coined by Harvard professor E. Jerome McCarthy in the early 1960s, this simple model has dominated much of the way marketing has operated ever since.

There have been many modifications to the original 4, some have made them into five suggesting People be included, and even Seth Godin suggested a new one -- Purple cow.

But the best addition to the 4 P's I've ever seen is the four R's. RELATIONSHIPS, RETURNS, RELEVANCE, and RESPONSIVENESS.

Cause-related organizations shoudl consider regularly assessing their mission and value proposition to the external marketplace against the four R's. In doing so, I think some will find ways to update and improve their services, engagement, and excitement factor. Following is a quick definition of each element of the four R's.

RELATIONSHIPS -- this has to do with your organization's ability to create alliances and partnerships that improve your ability to fulfill your mission. This isn't just about getting donors to provide free stuff, but rather finding ways to attach your cause into the missions of these organizations so that it becomes their cause too. How expansive are your relationships and alliances into the for profit world? How deep are your connections to decision makers? How wide is your reach because of these relationships?

RETURNS -- this is a big one that many cause-related organizations fail to understand, but is so easy to accomplish. Donors and supporters do not only want to know what you did with the resources you've been given, they desperately want to know the permanent difference you're making in the world. Go beyond identifying how many meals you served, beds provided, acres of forest saved, and wells dug. Tell the world about what happened as a result of those things. Tell us what happened 3, 5, and 10 years later. What permanent mark did you leave on the world? What is your legacy of good?

RELEVANCE -- for anyone who doesn't get this concept, I have a bunch of 8-track tapes I want to sell you. Music hasn't changed much over the past 25 years, but the way we consume it has. People continue to shop and share product reviews with their friends just like they did in the 1980's. The way they do it has changed dramatically. Your cause may be just as relevant today as it was 40 years ago, but is your organization? Have you kept up with the times? Are you a dinosaur in a world of robots? Don't be fooled into thinking that technology is the driver here. It's not; people are. You need to ensure your cause-related organization is relevant in their eyes, meeting today's needs, not yesterdays.

RESPONSIVENESS -- I can get same-day shipping from Amazon. Text messages are instant. Netflix knew that receiving videos by mail was soon to be too slow so they created instant view from their site as well as on-demand viewing through providers like TiVo, Xbox, and others. Keep in mind that the world operates in Web time. Things can be and are instant. This isn't something to be afraid of or to work against. On the contrary, it is an opportunity. Web sites can be updated daily, tweets can go out to communities instantly creating buzz and action, and needs can be met in real time, not on 30-day mailing cycles.

-- David Kinard, PCM

Priorities May Need Adjusting

2009-01-05T13:15:00.000-08:00

The American Marketing Association and Lipman Hearne joined forces to produce a report on The State of Nonprofit Marketing. The report, released in July 2008 identified top priorities, strategies that are working, marketing metrics, and a look ahead at the challenges nonprofits face. More than one thousand nonprofit marketers participated in the survey, with a wide representation of various types of nonprofit organizations. The respondents were fairly senior in their roles within the organization.

What strikes me with perennial disappointment is that these marketers self-reported their most effective strategies for achieving their top priorities, but…

“the highest rated metric – event attendance and revenue – scored only average as indicators of success. While considered a top strategy, public relations efforts were not being effectively measured. Print and interactive advertising, often considered essential in brand building, were also among the lowest in being examined for identifiable, measurable results. In many cases, nonprofits were not measuring results at all. More than a quarter of survey participants were not monitoring web activity or public relations responses.”

In fact, when asked to rate their effectiveness in measuring various tactics, only two items earned a score of 3 (with 1 being poor and 4 being very effective). The remaining list of 19 items had scores ranging from 2.8 to 2.1. What seems unconscionable is that these same organizations year-after-year spend scarce resources on the same tactics without any relevant data to suggest if those tactics even work. Then they write their donation letters asking for more money.

Recently on a LinkedIn discussion forum, I defended non profits as being staffed by well-educated leaders who possess a skill-set that easily compares to their for-profit counterparts. And indeed, their sense of accountability is profoundly felt though some may decry poor results. The amazing things these leaders are able to accomplish with limited resources makes them far better managers than many of their budget-rich corporate peers.

But now I wonder if I was right to make such a claim.

Tracking event registrations, overall revenue, and member recruitment are excellent metrics when trying to assess the organization at macro levels, but non profits and cause-related organizations must do a better job of getting into the details such as tracking the effectiveness and impact of their advertising and direct mail. And these organizations must fully embrace digital tools and track and measure their search engine optimization, earned media, Web traffic, and blogs and tweets.

Maybe for 2009, the first priority should be to ensure all marketing is accurately and usefully measured.

-- David Kinard, PCM

10 New Year Resolutions for Non Profits and Cause-Related Organizations

2008-12-28T21:43:00.000-08:00

This time of year it is not uncommon to write down resolutions for the next year – things that we might do better, do differently, or just plain do. As you consider your organization, whether it be a non-profit, cause-related community, or a for-profit company with a socially responsible initiative, here are 10 resolutions to consider making as you head into 2009. They’re in no particular order, number ten isn’t the least and one isn’t the most important. But all will add to your ability to make a significant difference in the important work you do.

[NOTE: If your organization excels at any one of these let me know. I'd be happy to highlight your work in an upcoming blog.]

Competitively define your mission.
Jerry Garcia of the Grateful Dead said it best, “You don’t want to be considered the best at what you do. You want to be the only ones doing what you’re doing.” How is what you do unique, special, and essential. If there are too many providers of the same thing, people will see most of them as unnecessary. What is it that only your organization does? What will the one big thing that your organization will do in 2009 that sets you apart as different from all the other causes?
Showcase your success stories, not just your needs.
Consumers expect that non profits have needs and that cause-related organizations are usually scarce on resources. It’s okay to ask for things, but make sure that you also showcase your successes. What is the outcome of the work you do? What is the outcome of that? Sure you may serve meals to homeless, provide medication to the poor, or even find childcare for single parents who need to work. But what happened because you did all those things? Showcase the outcome of your work – what happened because you did all those things you do – and give consumers a bigger picture of your organization’s performance.

Create single-shot service opportunities.
According to ASAE, Americans devote more than 173 million volunteer hours each year - time valued at more than $2 billion - to charitable and community service projects. But for as much as that amounts to, there are untapped millions of hours still available. Create opportunities for service that don’t require more than an hour, or a particular task. Let people dip their toe in the water before you ask them to dive in to the deep end.

Create ways for your entire community to engage in conversation.
Technology has changed the way we interact with one another. Twitter grows by an estimated 3-5 thousand new users each day, there are an estimated 70 million blogs, and 8 billion text messages are sent every day. Not participating in this online conversation leaves your organization out in the cold. It’s not so much that you get reporters talking about your organization, you need to get every day people talking about you. Your organization needs to find ways to connect the various constituents with each other – beneficiaries to donors, board to public, staff to public, public to donors, etc. Create ways for conversations to happen and let them happen. No control, no micro managing. Just get people talking and then listen.

Investigate relevancy.
So much is lost and wasted by well meaning non profits because the person writing the gift request letter didn’t make it relevant to the recipient, or the Web site home page is targeted to the wrong demographic. Make 2009 the year of getting to know your community members inside and out. Research your audiences and write profiles for each group, what makes them tick, what they like, don’t like, what they respond to and why. Find out what’s important to them and validate it. Relevancy drives meaning in communications and credibility in relationships. It also drives response rates to your messages.

Glocalize.
Boundaries have little meaning anymore. Technology enables connectivity between once-kept-apart groups. Thus, your cause related organization can now operate with a global mindset, tapping into peoples and organizations around the world. But in doing so, as you take your message beyond your borders – whether they be community, city, state or even country -- But in doing so, find ways to translate your messages and outcomes into relevancy. Make your cause real to those new groups by linking it to their world, their community, and their issues.

Fight mediocrity.
In non-profits it’s easy to get into the mindset that doing well is good enough. That the long hours, the people served, and the low pay should free you from responsibility of any sort of mistakes or poor performance. Jim Collins’ wrote, “Good is the enemy of great.” Make sure in 2009 to raise the standard and strive for being great.

Deepen relationships.
I wrote in a blog entry earlier this month about the need for non profits to build relationships with people prior to asking for a donation, and this notion ties in to the resolutions for relevance and engaging in conversations. Deepening the relationships with all your constituents is the cornerstone element for increasing your capacity to do the good you do. Your for-profit counterparts collectively spend several billions of dollars each year trying to establish the level of emotional intimacy that your organization could very easily tap in to. This should be such an important part of your efforts, you might even consider adding it to your strategic plan and creating metrics around this initiative.

Build out your infrastructure.
Lately I’ve come across a few online conversations where contributors have decried the failure of non profits to appropriately build out their technology and operational infrastructures. I strongly believe that given the sparse resources in most organizations available dollars should go to people and not process improvement. But I also believe that with efficiency comes effectiveness. Taking time to build out your infrastructure can pay huge dividends down the road due to decreases in wasted time, increased effectiveness and clarity, and more powerful tools applied to your cause.

Train the next generation.
Rarely do I find an organization that is working not only to reach current donors and volunteers, but the next one as well. What could happen to stem the desperate needs of the world if important messages and service opportunities were generated and sent down the pipeline to youth and young children? How much more could your organization accomplish in ten, twenty, or thirty years if you worked today to train a new generation of savvy and capable contributors to you cause?

-- David Kinard, PCM

Balanced Scorecard for Non Profits

2008-12-27T22:06:00.001-08:00

Many organizations are finishing up 2008 as not only the end of their calendar year, but their fiscal year as well. Hopefully a new or updated annual plan is in place, but I suspect some may be looking to put final touches on one in January. Sadly, some will continue into 2009 with really no clearer definition of what they're doing than just repeating the prior year and hoping for the best.

One of my favorite tools for mapping out the strategy of an organization, and its corresponding implementation plan is the Balanced Scorecard® developed by Kaplan and Norton. There is a wide amount of literature and content available on the use (and misuses) of this tool so I'll leave it to you to Google the subject to your heart's content. You can also read my blog from November 20 on the subject. However, I wanted to provide some extra content for your consideration.

I've attached a white paper written by Joel Zimmerman, Ph.D. of Creative Direct Response, Inc. He provides a succinct perspective on how non profits might look at this tool and offers up specific modifications that focus on the unique nature of non profits. The suggestions are helpful but not required. At a minimum, a non profit should change the leveling of the four categories to have customers at the top followed by financial as second. This modification is justified given the nature of the organization. But Zimmerman suggests six additional mods that merit consideration – especially if you have a strong donor/fundraising emphasis in your strategic plan.

But a plan is useless if it's left on the table to collect dust, and so is this tool. From my experience in working with non profit boards across the country, you have to work your plan and refer to it on a consistent and regular basis. The reason I like the Balanced Scorecard is that it can also be used as a measurement tool to identify progress toward your strategies; as well as a performance plan for staff and volunteers.

-- David Kinard, PCM

A Tradition of Giving

2008-12-22T21:37:00.000-08:00

A close friend recently noted that my family has a lot of traditions. I didn’t think we did, but I guess my wife and I have always tried to build some sense of recurrence and significance to our family activities. For instance, whenever we travel across the state to visit Grammy, we always stop at a little Mexican restaurant about half way through the trip for dinner. Not only does it help to break up the nearly six hour drive, the tradition of making this stop helps to mark milestones in our memories of various trips.

Another tradition we have is during December – we have an advent calendar where each day we have an activity that sets the tone for the season as well as provide opportunities for loads of family memories. Some are from my wife and my own childhood – watching Charlie Brown’s Christmas cartoon, or Rudolph the Red Nose Reindeer. They were aired on TV when I was a kid; we now watch them on DVD. But either way they are markers of our time together.

This past weekend, we celebrated one of our other holiday traditions. Throughout the year we save all of our spare change and put it in a jar, and the kids save up part of their weekly allowance for “sharing”. Then, on a Saturday morning in December we head out to the grocery store and shop for the local food bank. We team up – my son and I, and my daughter with my wife – and set off on our search to buy enough groceries for a full day’s worth of meals for a family of four. We typically cheat and add in a few extra boxes of this and packages of that along the way, then the kids pick out one ‘treat’ to top it all off. After cashing in our coins and paying for our purchases, we load up the car, travel to the food bank, and drop off all the food. It’s the culmination of a year’s worth of saving and intentional giving. Each time we drop our change in the jar throughout the year, it’s a little reminder of the food we’re going to put on someone’s table.

Of course this is the time of year when need can be most keenly felt – by those who have need, and those whose heart’s may be touched to provide. And it is often more easy to give during this season to the bell ringer on the corner, or to the toy and food drive at your local fire station. But I hope that your giving is not limited to the cold dark days of December, but that you can find a way to make giving a tradition for your own family. How can you build recurrence and significance into your life and create a tradition of giving?

-- David Kinard, PCM

How I Earned $75,000 from Networking

2008-12-17T18:10:00.000-08:00

Ann Amati is a business consultant in the Seattle area. She’s got a great idea on how to convert her networking activities and connecting into dollars by making her marketing more tangible, predictable, and yes, enjoyable. Her story, in her words, is on Lori Richardson’s Web site.

A friend sent me the article. It reminded me of a tool I created for American Marketing Association members many years ago – and it still works great today. I call it the PVEP – the Personal Value Extraction Plan (you can download a copy of this Excel file from my LinkedIn Profile). It basically goes like this: You already attend many luncheons, seminars, workshops, networking events, and other meetings with the hope of scoring some qualified leads that will move your professional life forward. This tool helps you to identify what you’re getting for those efforts. I used it and found that I could track more than $75,000 in revenue to my business in just one year.

Now, don’t get me wrong on this important point. The PVEP tool is not going to make money for you. You still have to do the work of networking, shaking hands, research, follow up, and creating and delivering value to your business community. This tool simply helps you identify where those dollars can be tracked back to. That way you know if you should renew that membership or continue attending those luncheons. It’s also a great tool for sales people to share back with their managers to justify where they’re spending their time.

For the PVEP tool to be most effective, it’s good to also ensure you set goals and have a plan for your networking efforts. That means you don’t just go to the monthly luncheon for XYZ Association to hear the speaker – you go with a networking plan in place. How many contacts do you want to make? How many meaningful conversations do you think you might have? And, how will you track those contacts back to that event?

The tool is a simple form for a simple process – go places, make friends, create value, harvest rewards, pay it forward. I think this tool combined with Ann Amait’s 20 Nickels Plan will get you off to a great 2009!

-- David Kinard, PCM

Let’s Date First Before You Grab My Wallet

2008-12-14T20:23:00.000-08:00

This is the time of year I get a lot of mail from very worthy organizations. Some I’ve heard of before, most I haven’t; some I remember from prior years at this same time. All share a story of deep need teetering on the verge of crisis and the opportunity for me to make a difference. All have no problem asking me for money. Unfortunately, this same experience is being played out across the country, likely in your mailbox as well.

I would like to think that if I had unlimited funds, I would be more than happy to send checks to all these organizations. I could feed the hungry, house the homeless, provide educational kits to children in far away places, and even pay for medical supplies to ease those who needlessly suffer. But I have limited funds and I can’t help everyone. So I make a choice which organization I support. And the decision is pretty easy: those organizations that sought to first understand the motivations I have for giving and created and nurtured a relationship with me over time – they get my money, time, and energy. Every year. The others are like those people in the movies at nightclubs who use bad pick-up lines trying to go from hello to breakfast all in one cheesy opening line.

In his book buyology, author Martin Lindstrom suggests that the noise of advertising and promotion has become just like wallpaper to our brains. We see it but the message doesn’t really register. That exact same thing happens with these requests for help – genuine and important as they may be, they fall on deaf ears because there is no prior relationship to base the request on. But it doesn’t have to be this way.

Whether you’re a non profit or for-profit, I have a new year’s resolution I want you to make. Start in January to establish and build a relationship with your constituents and community. Make regular and non-request contacts with them throughout the year. Keep in touch, tell success stories, treat them like you’re going on a date and are s-l-o-w-l-y falling in love. Woo your community. Then, at the right time, make a small request. Then, once you’ve demonstrated to that participant what you’ve done with their gift to you, say thanks and be quiet. After a period of time – when you’ve been dialoging and sharing – building a deeper relationship, then you can ask for something bigger. Go ahead, pop the question!

Sending me a letter during the holiday season telling me that you’re in need and want money just isn’t going to cut it anymore. In fact, I’ll go so far as to say that it is poor stewardship of the funds you do have. Sure, you’re likely getting a series of donations from that campaign, but I’ll bet your not getting the donations you could if you’d ask people out on a date first.

-- David Kinard, PCM

P.S. If you want to hear more about and from Martin Lindstrom and his book buyology, be sure to listen to Marketing News Radio on February 25, 09. I'll be interviewing him about his book.