| by Katya Andresen, Vice President of
Marketing, Network
for Good
The Heart of Robin Hood Marketing
Part One
Are you struggling to motivate people to give money, take
action, or otherwise advance your cause? Are you having trouble
getting the attention of funders?
Robin Hood Marketing is an approach to help you do this
by stealing some of the savvy of the minds of corporate marketers.
The rules are based on my 2006 book, Robin
Hood Marketing, and I am pleased to be sharing them
with you, along with some new content specific to the interests
of GrantStation readers, in this five-part Tracks to Success
series. You can also sign up for regular tips like these
by subscribing to Network for Good's Nonprofit Marketing
Newsletter. Click
here for more information.
Robin Hood Rule 1
The most important values are those of our audiences,
not our own. The closer we align with our audiences'
values, the higher our chances of motivating them to
take action.
I was recently on a conference panel with one audience that
I know nonprofit organizations want to reach - senior management
from three foundations. They all made clear the importance
of Robin Hood Rule 1, because they were complaining that
grant applicants did not understand their perspective. As
one funder explained, they do not sit at a desk reading through
grant applications, looking for new ideas to fund. Their
foundations already have philanthropic priorities, strategies,
and interests. Smart nonprofits learn all about the foundation
and speak to that vision. They start from the audience perspective.
To apply Robin Hood Rule 1, we need a clear sense of our
audiences' wants and values.
If you're approaching funders, read their websites, peruse their publications
and develop a keen understanding of their philanthropic goals. If you're approaching
a potential corporate partner, do the same thing - and, in addition, determine
their business goals. With these audiences, you're going to need to show how
you can help them achieve what they already want to do.
If your organization focuses on individual donors, do some
quick-and-dirty research. Get on the phone with a few of
your volunteers or current donors and ask them some open-ended
questions about the effectiveness of your marketing and communication
efforts. Check out which of your organization's emails they
are or are not opening. The good news is research can make
us far more effective than we would otherwise be as marketers.
If you would like to learn more about research, Chapter Two
of my book offers an in-depth overview of audience research,
and I have also covered research on my blog.
Robin Hood Rule 2
Go beyond the big picture mission and focus on getting
people to take specific action.
You'll be most successful if your call to action is short,
simple, and prominently positioned. A good call to action
cuts through communications clutter with four qualities:
- Specific: Ask for one concrete action.
Telling people to click on a button to donate now is better
than asking them to participate in a fundraising campaign.
Asking parents to read to their children for fifteen minutes
every night is better than asking them to support reading
readiness. Specific actions are easier to do - and harder
to decline.
- Feasible: For most people, if the action
doesn't seem doable, they won't do it. "Save the earth" does
not sound like something any one person can do easily.
Make the step you're requesting small and easy, such as "put
your plastic in your curbside recycling bin on Tuesdays." You
can build up to bigger requests once you have the initial
momentum of compliance.
- Filmable: A good test of whether your
call to action is simple and specific enough is to ask
if it would be possible to film the audience taking the
action you desire. If you don't have a simple visual, your
audience won't either. I can't picture myself as being
against a legislative bill, but I can see myself calling
a member of Congress.
- First Priority: Make sure what you're
asking for is an action that, if people did it, would significantly
and immediately advance your marketing goals and your mission.
If your call to action will only "raise awareness," take
it one step further. You want people to DO something that
will truly make a difference for your organization.
In the next article of this series, we will cover Robin
Hood Rule 3, Reacting to the Forces at Work in the Nonprofit
Marketplace, and Robin Hood Rule 4, Staking a Strong Competitive
Positioning. |
