Communicate!

Helping you win loyal friends through your communications

How to Lose Rona as a Donor

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This is a sequel of sorts to my post that so many of you liked, How to Lose Dennis Fischman as a Donor.

When Rona Stoloff agreed to marry me, she chose to use my last name instead of her father’s last name from that time on.  That was in 1989.  We recently celebrated our 25th wedding anniversary.

Yet at least once every year, the college Rona attended (which is now called Stony Brook University) sends her mail…to “Rona Stoloff.”

Sometimes it’s a newsletter.  Sometimes it’s an appeal letter.  Sometimes it’s an application for a credit card linked to Stony Brook.  If Rona were a less honest person, that could lead to credit card fraud, and the school would be an accessory to the crime!

Rona has written and she’s called, but the beat goes on. No one at Stony Brook can figure out that sometimes people change their names, especially if they’re female.

I don’t wonder why Rona has never given money to Stony Brook, even though she got a fine education there.  What I wonder is how many other women refuse to give to their alma mater because it doesn’t know their name.

Has an organization you support ever gotten your name wrong? Did they fix it?

Youtility: Creating Marketing that People Actually Want

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Jay Baer has some bad news for us…and some good news.

Bad news: In the age of information overload, you’re not going to keep your company at the top of people’s minds by constant advertising.

Good news: You don’t have to.  Getting the ear of the right audience is  better than paying for name recognition by the masses.

Bad news: Just because people can find you online, it doesn’t mean they’ll become your customers.

Good news: Recommendations from their friends influence people’s decisions.  Word of mouth has always been important, and today, it has a new address: on social media.

Bad news: Getting people’s attention is hard. You’re competing with their friends, the latest cute cat video, and photos of their grandchildren (who are probably a lot cuter than you!)

Good news: People will pay attention when you solve problems for them or provide them with information they need.  That’s what Baer calls “Youtility.”

Help, Not Hype

If you have the resources, you can help people exactly when they need it.  Baer talks about the @HiltonSuggests program, where Hilton employees who really know the city they work in will go on Twitter looking for questions they can answer or recommendations they can make…for free.

They are not trying to make a customer today.  They are trying to win a customer for life.  The return on investment is huge.

Not all of us can be Hilton, but could you be Taxi Mike?  This Canadian cab driver personally creates a “Where to Eat in Banff” brochure with his personal recommendations and delivers them to hotels, bars, and tourist traps all around his city.  When visitors need a taxi and they have this guide in their pockets, who do you think they’ll call?

What Does It Take to be Useful?

I hope you’re thinking just about now, “What about me?  How can I help the people who I want to be calling me?”  Baer suggests three ways you can make yourself useful to your audience.

  • Self-serve information.  Be like Angie’s List. Put the information out there in a ways that’s easy for people to find and use for themselves.
  • Radical transparency.  Be like Holiday World. Answer every question people ask. Answer questions they haven’t thought yet of asking.  Answer the tough questions.  Do it where everyone can see it.
  • Real-time relevancy.  Be like Scotts Miracle-Gro. Provide information that’s keyed to the location or the situation of the customer or what’s going on at that season.

How Do I Start?

Read Baer’s book for details about the six blueprints you can use to build Youtility.

  1. Identify customer needs.
  2. Map customer needs to useful marketing.
  3. Market your marketing.
  4. “Insource” Youtility.
  5. Make Youtility a process, not a project.
  6. Keep score.

The Value of this Book

My take: this is a great book because it pulls together a lot of lessons learned over the past few years.  If you are not getting what you want out of your marketing or communications, read the book, and think about how to give others what they want.

Two reservations: Baer doesn’t often address nonprofit organizations.  His idea of a small organization is still a lot larger than many community-based businesses and nonprofits I know.  I’ll try to translate Youtility for these audiences in other posts.

Have you read Youtility? Do you plan on reading it?  What do you think of Jay Baer’s approach?

What Kind of Communicator are You, Anyway?

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So a nonprofit has hired you as its communications consultant, or maybe even its Director of Communications.  But what do they really want from you?

Do they want you to help them raise funds?  To promote their programs?  Or to engage the broader community?

It’s vital that you find out.

Raising Funds, or Building Community?

Author Kivi Leroux Miller says whether you’re a fundraising communicator or a brand-builder/community-builder affects everything you do.

If you’re a fundraising communicator, then most likely:

  • You work for a smaller organization that can’t afford separate staff for both development and communications.
  • You focus on people ages 55+, because they give more money.
  • You use print and email marketing, and you send out direct mail appeals.
  • You also use phone banks and events.
  • You may “be on” social media but you’re cautious about it and see it as a lower priority.

But if you’re a brand builder or community builder, then probably:

  • You work for a larger organization (at least a $1 million budget), and your organization has a written marketing plan.
  • You focus on people under age 55, for the life-long value of the relationship.
  • You see volunteering (including advocacy and fundraising with friends) as equally important with immediate donations.
  • You do more content marketing than asking.  You tell more often than you sell.
  • You use social media regularly, and you aim to engage your community–not just do outreach.

Why It Matters

You need to know which kind of communicator you are, so you know how to direct your effort.  And the client or the employer needs to know too–so they can define what counts as success.

But what if you’re asked to do both? According to Kivi’s estimate, about half of us are asked to do both.  She says:

These communicators are the ones I worry most about, because their jobs are much more likely to be poorly defined, and therefore they are much more likely to burn out and hate their jobs.  We need all the creative, dedicated people we can get in this work, so I don’t want this to happen!

What kind of communicator are you?  Have you been in an organization that didn’t make your role clear?  How did you cope?

 

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