Expert: Non-Profits can thrive in the online space

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First, cage the source code.

“Up until now you may have looked at the source code results of your online marketing and seen the majority was from search engines. In order of popularity it was Paid Search, Organic Search, and then Direct-to-Site, right? And click-throughs from your display program or other online ad efforts were infinitesimal. The conclusion is often, “Display doesn’t work, but search is great. Let’s put all our money in search.” Not so fast…. That’s like giving the cash register credit for store traffic,” said Tom Goosmann, Chief Creative Officer, True North Inc. “To grow an online fundraising campaign, you’ll have to lose your dependency on source code data to make campaign decisions. We know your finance team will still want to see that data, and you should show it to them, but if you are making marketing decisions, push source codes to the side, and look at the full picture.”

Second, new to file names are your friends.

“When you start seeing new-to-file names topping 75% (and you’ve got a solid CRM strategy in place), you can see the importance of trawling these waters,” said Goosman. “Your future donors and current donors are online, engaged throughout the day. It’s a pretty good plan to have them see you there too. Even if your organization only has a modest marketing budget, applying some of these strategies will open new pathways to find your elusive online donors.”

Third, think of digital as your audience and your audience as digital.

“Let’s start by extricating this overly-used, meaningless word “digital.” People once painted on cave walls. Now they share photos of their hunt with their followers. Things change. It’s all “digital” now. We are touched by digital messages nearly every waking hour of the day: whether working, leisure reading, viewing, or browsing,” said Goosman.

More from Tom and True North tomorrow, including his top 3 tips to create a solid, digital, non-profit strategy.

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ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Kristina Knight-1
Kristina Knight, Journalist , BA
Content Writer & Editor
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Kristina Knight is a freelance writer with more than 15 years of experience writing on varied topics. Kristina’s focus for the past 10 years has been the small business, online marketing, and banking sectors, however, she keeps things interesting by writing about her experiences as an adoptive mom, parenting, and education issues. Kristina’s work has appeared with BizReport.com, NBC News, Soaps.com, DisasterNewsNetwork, and many more publications.